Sep 09
9
Disruption And The Great Game
When Obama was elected in the US a huge sigh of relief could be heard around the world.
Now sanity could prevail. The dreaded Bush and Cheney cabal would no longer be in power. And so troops would come home from Iraq and Afghanistan and global warming would be combatted (and maybe even Santa Claus would really exist).
Now several years later the reality of global politics and the “Great Game” seem to dictate that things continue just as they have done regardless of the political colour of the leaders.
So now it appears that we have left leaning governments over a large part of the world: the UK, USA, Australia means that a large part of the English speaking world looks to the left right now for its leadership.
I was reading that the anti-war movement in the US, which has been silent since the election over there, is planning to become more vocal over the next few months about bringing the troops home. They are going to circulate the episodes of a documentary called This Is Where We Take Our Stand that interviews soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan who speak out about civilian casualities and conditions within the military.
This activist standpoint is also starting to be noticed with the election of representatives of The Pirate Party to the European Parliament. The name, counterintuitively, could become one of its biggest assets over the next 3 to 4 years when the next elections are held in a variety of countries and a global youth movement finds that it, along with the parents, have been totally disenfranchised by those companies whose interests are to maintain the status quo at all costs.
Fortunately they are countered by a very small group of venture capitalists whose fundamental premise is to invest in disruptive businesses.
What are disruptive ideas and businesses?
These are the ideas that are hugely viral and have incredible potential to derail the current status quo, where there is a demonstrable and massive market together with a massive amount of available margin to be captured. In other words businesses where there are billions if not trillions of dollars on the table.
Over the next three to four years there will be enormous amounts of capital invested in so called clean tech for instance, because the existing system of coal fired power generation is a major problem to the planet. And one of the most powerful memes that is out there is climate change. The politicians already know that the concept of clean coal is a sham. Problem they have is that there isn't an alternative at the moment and it takes years to bring on a new power station. The power companies know that they have one true ace in the hole which is that their real asset is that they own the distribution system for the power and the billing systems.
The same situation holds true for energy used in transportation. It isn't just oil availability. Its oil refining. And its petrol distribution that are the crux of the mobile energy crisis. But there are people working on trying to solve these truly big problems. And believe me, there is some big big money being invested in disrupting the existing system.
Solar power, so called water splitting (to release hydrogen) both provide part of the answer.
Most smart people think that both these ideas are about ten years away from going main stream.
Someone will come up with a way of fast tracking the ideas though. While the people are content with watching the latest episode of Idol on TV (and remaining idle) some researcher somewhere will come up with a short cut that can make mass production of non-petrol powered cars a reality. Whichever nation gets that technology first is going to control the planet for the next fifty years. This is the great race.