The Great Disruption: the End/the Beginning of Everything

by michael belfiore I had the pleasure of being one of two featured speakers along read more »

by michael belfiore
I had the pleasure of being one of two featured speakers along with Paul Gilding at the 2012 Global Supply Chain Business Summit in Singapore a couple of weeks ago.

Paul’s book, The Great Disruption, and his talk on the subject pretty much blew me away. I’ve been thinking about them ever since. In fact, I dare say Paul’s ideas have changed the way I think about the future and the role of innovation in our society.
In a nutshell, goes Paul’s argument, our current way of life, specifically our economic system—no, the very premise behind our world economy—is doomed to fail. We’re hitting the wall now, the beginning of the Great Disruption.
That’s because our way of life is based on unlimited growth. And of course, we live on a finite planet. We need to transition to a steady state economy, one in which we produce just what we need, and not ever-growing streams of stuff to keep our economic engine going.
Only way we’ll make that change is after we hit the wall good and hard, ...