Both discomfort and its more intense cousin, disruption, are forces that you can leverage and ride, just like a surfer rides a powerful wave. They can propel you forward and give you an exhilarating ride with high-fives all around when you hit the beach, or they can wipe you out. In surfing, if you get wiped out you can get back up on your board and try again—a little bruised, perhaps, but ready to go another round.

Destruction is another matter. If it’s aimed against you, it’s just plain bad and dangerous for your business—indeed, possibly for your industry. It’s like an earthquake. There’s nothing good about an earthquake. All you can do is hang on and hope to survive and rebuild.

Hello, Automobiles. Goodbye, Horses

Historically we’ve seen entire industries wiped out by a new, destructive industry.

A good example is the horse industry of the early twentieth century.

Huh? Horses?

You bet. At the turn of the twentieth century, the primary mode of transportation for millions of people was horses. You could ride them or use them to pull your carriage. By 1915, there were 26.5 million horses in the United States, working on farms and in cities. The human population was a little over 100 million. That made one horse for every four people. Think about it—one horse for every four people!

Do you know how much a horse eats? The average thousand-pound horse typically needs to eat fifteen to twenty pounds of hay per day. It needs to drink five to ten gallons of fresh water every day. It will produce, on the average, 37 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons of urine daily.

Do the math…. In 1915, the US population of horses consumed roughly 500 million pounds of hay per day. They produced 750 million pounds of manure per day, and a lot of it went onto city streets.

This was the status quo in 1915, the year with the most horses living in the United States. The point is that if you were in the horse business, then business was booming! Demand for your product was incredibly high. Everyone wanted and needed a horse. Everyone had to feed their horses, every day, seven days a week. Everyone needed saddles, bridles, horse barns, carriages, and all the things that went along with horses.

Innovate? Why? There was no need to innovate. Business was booming!

Then along came the automobile, powered by internal combustion engine. Its most powerful and successful advocate was Henry Ford. In 1915, there were approximately 2.5 million cars and trucks on the road in America. By 1925—just ten years later—the number had exploded to over 20 million.

The automobile destroyed the horse industry. And rightly so—the vast horse industry was cumbersome, environmentally horrible, and unsustainable. By 1960, there were just three million horses left in the United States, mostly on farms, the stables of the very wealthy, or in the wild.

While the automobile destroyed the horse industry, it only disrupted the carriage industry. Why? Because carriage builders could easily pivot to making automobile bodies. If you’re making a wagon or a carriage, you don’t care if the damn thing is pulled by a horse or propelled by a gas engine. It’s still got four wheels and seats! In fact, right up until 1984, many Cadillac cars were sold with a special “Body by Fisher.” Founded in the late 1800s by the Fisher family, the company began as Standard Wagon Works, and then in 1908 became the Fisher Body Company with a contract to build bodies for the newly formed Cadillac and Buick companies. The profitable relationship lasted for nearly eighty years.

What Industries May Vanish Next?

What forces of destruction have we seen recently?

• The vinyl phonograph record industry has been destroyed.
• The photographic film industry has been destroyed.
• The taxicab industry has been pummeled.
• The coal mining industry is almost gone.
• Passenger railroads—at least in the United States—are an endangered species.
• Newspaper publishing—hanging on by a thread.

Who’s next? How about…

• Gas stations, as electric vehicles become dominant.
• Hard-wired landline phones, which are already nonexistent in developing nations, where everybody has a mobile phone.
• Old-line electric power plants, threatened by alternative energy sources.
• Plastic credit cards, which will be replaced with mobile payments.
• Digital storage media—CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, external hard drives, memory cards—many are becoming obsolete.
• Your industry? No? Are you sure?

Remember, by “destruction” we mean that no matter how clever or determined you are, if you choose to enter a dying industry you’re going to find either a shrinking market or no market. For example, you may be in the business of making the world’s finest coal-fired electricity plants, but it won’t matter: you won’t find a market.

Powerful, life-changing innovation can either destroy you or your competitor. It’s always better to be on the side that survives!