Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Driverless Cars Making Growing Disruption


There are a growing number of news stories on the growth of the development of driverless cars. There was a story in the Wall Street Journal (link here) about Google's driverless car. The main focus of the article was how the vehicle is now being tested in urban areas like Mountain View California. Another article from USA Today by Chris Woodyard (link here) discusses the Milken Institute's predictions about driverless cars. It mentions how car manufacturers are planning on having driverless cars by 2020. Assuming these vehicles get to mass market, the disruption could be enormous.

During testing of the Google vehicle, there have been a total of 2 accidents after driving over 700,000 miles with both accidents happening when someone was behind the wheel. If these numbers continue, you can best believe insurance rates will change. The Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Kevin Vincent even speaks about the increased road safety as a result from having these cars on the road. Insurance companies are probably working on the models now. At least they should be.

Another item in the stories is the idea of having less vehicles. That might be a little worrisome for dealers, but only in the long term. Short term sales would still cover the loss of total vehicles on the market.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

It is All About Supreme Court and Aereo Today

In the world of disruption, the decision by the Supreme Court in regards to Aereo will most certainly be the beast today. Precedents on copyright law, privacy law, shape of cloud matters will be enhanced by SCOTUS today.

With cable companies already getting hit hard by the likes of Netflix, a major hit by the court agreeing with Aereo will quite possibly cripple the business model of the likes of Comcast and TWC.

What is not in dispute is the disruption that companies like Aereo continue to create.

A link to the story provided by recode is here.



Wednesday, April 16, 2014

SolarAid Disrupting Humanity

In a recent tweet by @richardbranson, he highlighted the disruptive nature of SolarAid. They have sold over 1 million solar powered lights in Africa. The disruptive impact of such a simple product is yet to be measured. The time in front of a healthy source of light while being educated can only positively influence everyone around including those that use them.

Keep it going SolarAid. For more information, check out their website at www.solar-aid.org and follow them at @solaraid.

 Email and let us know how this blog has helped your product, service or process. Let us know if there was a collaborative connection made by reading this blog. 

If there is something positively disrupting going that you would like to make this blog aware of and promote, email at dailydisruptor@gmail.com. The submission will get reviewed and posted when possible. As always, comments are welcome.  


Friday, April 4, 2014

Massive High Frequency Trading Disruption (Michael Lewis and Brad Katsuyama)

Michael Lewis (acclaimed author of titles such as "The Great Short", "Moneyball", "The Blind Side", and others) has now written a book named "Flash Boys" covering how High Frequency Traders have rigged the market in their favor. But he also writes about how Brad Katsuyama and others are fighting back with creating another exchange (named IEX) to fight off the unfair advantage that the other exchanges are unable to curb.

This book and 60 Minutes expose (shown here) has set off a firestorm around Wall Street. Some have come out on one side or the other of the issue. But most have not.

Check out the expose, the book, and see what all the noise is about! There is no doubt that there is now a disruption on Wall Street. It's just a question of how big a disruption it will become.


Monday, February 24, 2014

Big Chicago Daily Disruption with Digital Lab

It was announced yesterday that Chicago will be receiving over $300 million in federal grants to put together a Digital Manufacturing mecca. The Bloomberg story link is here. The coverage on Twitter has been extensive.

This is a large disruption in the Chicago tech and startup communities. To have a major tech initiative within Chicago shows that there are many different parts of the Chicago community coming together to grow. This level of cooperation between education, business, and government should be able to produce high level results both in jobs and revenue for all involved.

More can be found by following @DigitalLab.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Daily Disruptor for Feb 6 (Vani Hari and Subway, CVS and Tobacco)

The following Daily Disruptors have been found today

- Vani Hari's work is making Subway a better place to eat. Hari's blog Food Babe exposed the chemical azodicarbonamide  being in Subway's bread (blog link here) has assisted in pushing Subway to remove  the chemical from its bread. You can follow Vani at @thefoodbabe.

-CVS has determined that selling tobacco products does not fit into its business model and therefor is removing them from its stores. CEO Larry Merlo was out in front explaining the decision on CBS (link here).

Congratulations to both companies for making positive changes. Seeing leaders not being fearful to change for the betterment of both society and its longer term reputation is encouraging.


Email and let us know how this blog has helped your product, service or process. Let us know if there was a collaborative connection made by reading this blog. 

If there is something positively disrupting going that you would like to make this blog aware of and promote, email at dailydisruptor@gmail.com. The submission will get reviewed and posted when possible. As always, comments are welcome.  

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Jan 31 Daily Disruptors (Aero, more)

Here are a list of today's Disruptors:

- Aero reaches capacity in New York. The ultimate broadcast disruptor is not taking any more subscribers in the New York area. The Fast Company story about it is linked here.


Email and let us know how this blog has helped your product, service or process. Let us know if there was a collaborative connection made by reading this blog. 

If there is something positively disrupting going that you would like to make this blog aware of and promote, email at dailydisruptor@gmail.com. The submission will get reviewed and posted when possible. As always, comments are welcome.