In 1473, a disgruntled Dominican friar and scribe wrote a bitter plea to the Vatican Doge: "...stuff at such a low price that anyone and everyone procures it for himself in abundance ...They shamelessly print, at negligible price, material which may, alas, inflame impressionable youths."
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
In doing so, Filippo de Strata revealed himself as an early victim of a disruptive technology.
He was, of course, complaining about the arrival of Gutenberg's printing press which effectively destroyed his business model.
Prior to that time, it might take a skilled scribe a year to copy a single manuscript, but now Gutenberg's invention could produce a dozen high-quality copies in a few weeks.
And, as he says, books were considerably cheaper, putting them within reach of people who previously could not afford one.
For all de Strata's florid protests, it would be difficult for us to now argue that mass-produced books have been anything other than a benefit to countless people.
It's no accident that disruptive innovators are almost always outsiders rather than existing market leaders because it takes a bold move to unwind years of investment in a proven technology.
That includes not just plant and equipment, but the entire supply chain.
MORE GREAT READS:
It can mean flipping a product's positioning in the market. And, crucially, it can overturn an organisation's culture, leading to internal resentment.
A few businesses manage to achieve it, but history is littered with the shells of those who failed.
A revolutionary innovation isn't necessarily disruptive.
Automobiles, for example, were invented many years before they became mass-market products. That didn't happen until Henry Ford combined the idea with an efficient manufacturing process to produce a reliable, affordable product.
Predicting the arrival of a disruptive technology is inherently difficult, and frequently impossible.
While listening to customers is almost universally considered a good thing, it is often the case that they don't know what they want until they see it. It is, for example, said that if you'd asked someone before the Model-T Ford what they wanted, they might have said "a faster horse".
If we stretch the definition a little, we could also say that ecosystems can also be disrupted by a newcomer. An Australian example is the arrival of cats and foxes that have caused the loss of huge numbers of native animals.
And, although not proven, another possibility is the Earth's second mass extinction during the Devonian Period.
That may have been related to the innovation that allowed plants to rapidly colonise the land, leading to a major drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which triggered a sudden drop in temperature.
The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is at 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM.
Send your questions to AskFuzzy@Zoho.com; Podcast: FuzzyLogicOn2xx.Podbean.com
