The disruptor wins it all

FORD Motor company sold about three million vehicles last year. Tesla, the electric car maker, has just caught up with Ford's market capitalisation. Guess how many vehicles Tesla sold last year? All of 76,000! This is the new world - one that belongs to disruptors. From Apple 10-15 years ago to Amazon and Tesla, the disruption juggernaut has carried on. It has laid low many conventional companies (think Nokia), shifted the technology narratives (think Kodak), shaken up skills and attitudes, and more significantly acquired mammoth scale almost unnoticed. Market cap is just one indicator. Amazon has over 300 million customers, Apple has unspent cash of over US$250 billion (slightly below Israel's gross domestic product) and Google employs 75,000 people. We are clearly heading for a Jurassic moment in corporate annals.

If the disruptive innovation of these companies is awe-inspiring, so is the rapid acceleration of their path-breaking ideas leading to dominance in 10 to 20 years. Companies in the previous era needed more than 50 years to scale up, and those were not smooth rides. It is equally vital to note that consumer appetite for disruptive products and services has grown astronomically. We are able to digest new technologies, new ways of running our lives and new conveniences as these get thrown at us non-stop. Generation Z and the millennials have skilled themselves up to receiving new things - and they make up over 50 per cent of the global population now, according to Pew Research Center.

What makes a successful disruptive strategy? What common features do we see in companies or products which have gone on to dominate their categories and to even rule our daily lives?