A specter is haunting the economy – the specter of disruption. It is approximately as real as the specter of communism that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described in their ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’. It has killed millions of people in just a few decades.
Whoever thinks that disruptive technologies are just pipedreams that hardly affect ‘normal industries’ because buzzwords such as Digital Business Transformation, Big Data and almost Everything as a Service are not natural enemies, will experience disruptions which will throw even the best business models into reverse in just a few years. There is at least one industry that could write a book about it: We in the media cannot banish the spirits that we have conjured.
Globalization saw the beginning of what started as a war of the platforms and will end with unpredictable consequences. Hopefully, what remains afterwards will be more than just Facebook, Google and associated companies. Surely: Somebody has to and will continue to bake the small (analog) buns, because we cannot eat bits and bytes. But under whose control and at what price? That is the question.
Our next special edition, which will also be appearing in the press center as an E-paper, attempts to answer what is difficult to comprehend: How To Survive Digital Disruption. We have consciously anglicized the working title, since all sectors, companies and people will have to rise to this international challenge, whether they like Anglicisms or not. Those who have subscribed to our German newsletter will be informed as soon as the special edition is online.