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.

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.

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.

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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.  

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.