Innovation has always been disruptive; the invention of the automobile destroyed the business model of the blacksmith, and steam engines made it cheaper to import cotton textiles from India than to spin them in the mills of northern England.

What is new about the digital phenomenon of creative destruction is its speed and fierce unpredictability. Digital change comes at a pace that demands fast decisions and flexible technology. It is messy and disruptive, yet businesses that shy away from change will struggle to survive. Digital disruption wiped out more than half the Fortune 500 businesses listed in the index at the turn of the millennium, and that turbulence is far from over. In what it calls “a gale warning” to business leaders, one analyst predicts that, over the next 10 years, roughly half of S&P 500 businesses will be swept away or rendered obsolete.