The companies that shape the future are not always the ones that see it first. More often, they are the ones willing to act on it before everyone else.
Few stories illustrate this better than Kodak. In the 1970s, a Kodak engineer developed one of the world's first digital cameras, giving the company an early glimpse of a future beyond film. Yet, the technology threatened the very business that had made Kodak an icon. Faced with a choice between protecting its legacy and embracing disruption, Kodak hesitated. The rest is a cautionary tale in corporate history.
Today, AI presents business leaders with a similar dilemma. Across industries, organizations are grappling with a fundamental question: protect what has worked in the past or embrace what will define the future?
As Jeffrey I. Cole puts it: "The era of reacting slowly to disruption is over."
It is a conclusion drawn from more than three decades spent studying how technologies transform industries, institutions, and human behavior. A leading authority on media, technology, and the digital future, Cole has tracked successive waves of disruption, from the rise of the internet and mobile technologies to social media, COVID-19, and now artificial intelligence.
Cole is also the founder of the World Internet Project, the longest-running global study of online behavior spanning 35 countries, and co-founder of the Global Disruption Investment Fund, giving him a unique perspective on disruption from both analytical and investment lenses. His work has informed governments, regulators, and some of the world's largest companies, including Microsoft, Sony, Coca-Cola, HP, and Ericsson.
In his latest book, Disrupters at the Gate, co-authored with award-winning journalist and historian Harlan J. Lebo, Cole argues that disruption rarely arrives from where organizations expect it. It emerges from unexpected corners, breaches established defenses, and reshapes industries before incumbents have time to respond.
In this conversation with ai:sight, he discusses why AI may be the most consequential disruption yet, what separates companies that adapt from those that fade, and why no enterprise can ever consider itself truly "Kodak-proof."
The anatomy of disruption
From cargo ships to quantum computing, and the internet to COVID-19 and AI, the book's premise is that disruption is no longer a once-in-a-generation event. It is becoming a constant force, reshaping industries, institutions, and everyday life at a pace few organizations are prepared for.
What prompted you to write Disrupters at the Gate now?
Well of course, because of disruptions, most authors (me included) never put a pen to paper! That is a disruption that came with the personal computer, although a few authors still resist technology when they write.
The “Aha” moment for this book came from the extraordinary speed at which massive disruption is arriving. Historically, a massive cascading disruption (one that leads to dozens of “aftershock” disruptions) occurs every 100-150 years. Examples would include the Industrial Revolution or the development of the automobile.
But now we see major disruptions practically on top of each other. We have experienced three huge disruptions in the space of 25 years: 1) the introduction of the internet 2) COVID and 3) AI. And we can see the fourth - quantum computing - on the horizon.
The era of reacting slowly to disruption is over. Every company, government and person (think COVID) must understand what is happening and ways to fight or embrace that change.
What makes your perspective on disruption different?
My perspective differs in two ways:
It comes from having advised major corporations around the world, sharing insight that shows they are ripe for disruption. Good examples of these are the banking, music, or taxi industries. All were doing extraordinarily well when I was warning them of the risks of what was coming. Their reactions were to maintain complacency, never believing that an interloper- sometimes two guys in a garage- could displace their extraordinary success. That reaction is typically followed by doubling down and burying their heads in the sand. I saw this firsthand.
My perspective is not just how the business is disrupted, but how people are disrupted as well. Weight-loss medications like Ozempic are good examples of this; they are changing the future of healthcare and insurance, extending lifespan, and redefining how people live their lives. Looking at the list of winners and losers resulting from those medications – fashion travel, restaurants, movie theaters, markets, therapy, and dozens more – shows the impact of weight-loss medications on daily life is enormous.
COVID, too, was as much or more about human disruption as it was about companies that were deeply affected.
Given your experience, you must have the ability to identify companies with disruptive potential.
I do more than track change and share that insight with relevant companies and others. I like to get involved, build things, and help create real change.
I had all this knowledge about how disruption works and where it might strike next. I wanted to “put my money where my mouth was” by identifying new players who would emerge (the winners in AI for example). The Global Disruption Fund was started by several CEOs: Wesfarmers (the giant conglomerate in Australia), Telstra, Seek, and the biggest wealth manager in Australia.
We studied companies by talking to CEOs to see who best understood what was happening and were not complacent, no matter how successful. And we looked at the vitality of their products and services, how the marketplace was changing, and the quality of their teams.
People bought into the fund believing that the collective five of us could agree on winners in digital, energy, fintech and other places. Fortunately, it turned out well.
When does disruption breach the gate?
Since disruption comes from unexpected places (not from competitors – that’s innovation), it is almost impossible to know that disrupters are at the gate until the gate has been breached. The disruption of retail should have come from Walmart of Target not a bookseller in a Seattle garage. You cannot look at every garage or dorm room in the city, or in every country in the world.
You know when the gate is breached (Napster becomes available on the internet for example) and then the battle is joined. Since it is impossible to know that disruption is upon you until it has arrived, operating in a constant state of awareness to prepare for disruption in advance is critical.
Why disrupters win
Most organizations know how to respond to competition, but only a handful know how to respond to disruption. As Jeffrey Cole explains, transformative change rarely arrives from expected rivals. Instead, it emerges from unlikely places, exposing the vulnerabilities of even the most successful companies.
Across the many examples in the book, from container ships and smartphones to COVID-19, GLP-1 drugs, and AI, what do leaders consistently misunderstand about disruption?
Most leaders are focused on the competition: Coke vs. Pepsi, Hertz vs. Avis, Microsoft vs. Apple. Your competition is where innovation, not disruption, is likely to occur. Innovation is about increasing market share, which is the focus of most leadership. Disruption is about turning the marketplace upside down. It is easy to know where innovation comes from. It is exceedingly difficult to anticipate where disruption comes.
Across your case studies, organizations often move through denial before acceptance. Why do legacy business models struggle in periods of disruption?
Incumbents with legacy businesses have so much to protect. Disrupters in a garage have nothing to protect and little to lose.
When your successful company, often after 100 years (but not often that much anymore) is threatened, it is jarring. There is an infrastructure, accepted ways of doing things, and a lot of ego involved in maintaining the success. The first reaction to disruption if you are successful (and most are when they are disrupted) is to feel that it is a small attack by an insignificant player. Leadership believes that nothing could challenge the incumbent with its many employees, big marketing budgets, teams of attorneys, and millions of loyal customers. All this makes them more lethargic and less nimble. The disrupter has none of this and can truly do what works best without anything to protect.
And, as many disrupted players learn (banks, Barnes & Noble, and many others), legacy means nothing.
Can large enterprises recreate a startup mindset?
Not easily. Google had its Moonshot Program where employees were given a day a week to develop whatever inspired them with no accountability that it would help the bottom line at the company. The program was a great idea, but ended up not doing what Google really wanted and it was discontinued.
In the 1980s, GM created Saturn as a separate company not bound by GM’s rules or bureaucracy. For example, there was no bargaining in a sales room. Customers liked the car, but it was always perceived as a threat and a GM aberration. GM’s other brands and dealers helped do it in.
The simple fact is that large, profitable companies (where most CEOs want to work), carry a lot of baggage and the culture is not set up to accommodate “two guys in a garage” or their culture.
Rochester, New York, arguably invented much of the modern digital world. Yet, why didn't Rochester become the Silicon Valley of the digital age?
There is no compelling answer as to “why the Silicon Valley?” Some say good weather. We know that Stanford University contributed to the culture; lots of high-tech companies maintain a direct or symbiotic relationship with the University.
Rochester had The University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology and some of the most technologically leaning and impressive companies in the world: Kodak and Xerox. Kodak invented the digital camera and Xerox’s PARC (in California) invented almost everything else.
Rochester had everything the Silicon Valley had (except the weather) and it had it for much longer. Kodak had been a leader since the 19th century. But as we describe in detail in the book, Xerox and Kodak both failed spectacularly, having a massive impact on Rochester and its future.
When AI breached the gate
For decades, AI lived in research labs, boardroom discussions, and science-fiction narratives. Then, almost overnight, it became a mainstream capability in the hands of millions. Unlike previous technology shifts, AI's adoption has been immediate, global, and potentially more consequential than any disruption that came before it.
At what point did AI truly breach the gate, making it impossible for leaders to look the other way?
For sixty years scientists said that “AI has a great potential and it always will.” It was featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as the Terminator movies. It was the disruption we knew about and were waiting on, although many felt it was the stuff of science fiction and would never arrive.
Then larger chips, better coding, and smarter tech people figured out some of it. It felt like it came without warning at the end of 2022 when a free AI program, ChatGPT, arrived and received 100 million downloads in two months. AI then was crude compared to what it became in less than a year.
As soon as ChatGPT was released, it seemed to be the largest technological disruption since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Today, it looks like the most significant technological disruption of all time.
Now, Anthropic’s Claude is transforming every few months and creating its own upgrades.
What makes AI fundamentally different from the preceding technology disruptions?
AI builds on those disruptions, especially the internet.
AI is different (or evolved) in a couple of ways. Never has so much rich data and ability to problem-solve been placed in the hands of almost everyone on earth at the same time. The internet’s information took 20 years to be accessible to almost everyone. Until AI, you needed to understand information, where to find and how to make sense of it.
AI has no learning curve. It shares that quality with television. In the 1940s, no one had to be taught how to use a TV. With almost everyone experienced with radio, when they watched TV, it had the same on/off switch, volume button, and channel selector. The screen added no complexity and people could use TV immediately. No learning.
An AI engine looks exactly like a search window engine. You enter your request and hit enter. There is no learning. Anyone with internet access can use AI. Over time, users learn how to phrase prompt requests and what AI’s powers are, but this amazing tool is available immediately.
Another important difference with AI is that no other technology has been so far ahead of the law or understanding what its use may mean. There are currently few – if any – guardrails and if governments ever get together to regulate, it will probably be too late. In the last weeks we have seen AI escape from their “cages” onto the web hacking at random. We have also learned that thousands of AI users are asking dangerous questions, such as how to create a virus or poison gas and the best way to distribute it. And according to experts, they are getting accurate answers.
AI is different, because the scope, scale, possible terrifying impacts, and wonderful benefits are so much greater than anything that has come before.
What does AI's adoption tell us about the future of technological change?
Until AI, the World Internet Project (WIP) showed how the web, mobile, broadband, social media, and more were created in the highly developed world (mostly the U.S.) and took a decade or more to reach most of the globe. In 2010 the difference between internet use in the U.S or Britain was still far more advanced and widespread than in Africa or other less developed counties. And everywhere, technology was mostly used by highly educated, high-income citizens.
AI was born in the U.S. but (partially because of the short learning curve I mentioned above and the fact that internet use by 2022 was a global and widespread) it was used by the whole planet within weeks. Never had penetration levels jumped so fast. It was a global tool almost from its birth. That is unheard of for technology.
WIP’s global reach (35 counties) demonstrated phenomenon almost immediately. This is likely the new norm for technology. The internet provides the base for most new developments.
Building a Kodak-proof enterprise
If disruption is inevitable, how should organizations respond? Cole highlights that resilience lies not in predicting disruption, but in building the capacity to adapt before it arrives, as shown by Apple's willingness to cannibalize its own successes to the rapid transformations forced by COVID-19.
Apple chose to disrupt its own successful iPod business to create the iPhone, while Kodak struggled to move beyond film. When should companies disrupt themselves?
Easier said than done. The short, uncomplicated answer is before it is too late, frequently when the product is still successful but losing momentum or purpose. CEOs know they would likely be sacrificing their careers to do what Apple did with the iPod.
Around 2015, I believed that banking was about to be disrupted. The arrival of ATM cards took most customers out of the bank, and online banking let them do it from home or later, on mobile. Suddenly, to customers, there was no difference between Bank of America and Wells Fargo. A century of legacy in a branch meant nothing. And customers didn’t like bank surcharges, ATM fees, and other “gotcha” fees.
We put together a comprehensive list of the steps big banks had to accomplish to avoid complete disruption by newer players. I presented this to a number of bank CEOs and they all agreed with the list. But they pointed out: “Keep in mind if I do what you suggest (and I should), I will be gone in 12 months. The average tenure of a bank CEO is three years if all goes well. I can’t look at ten years from now, I don’t have the time to look beyond 24 months.”
Self-disruption can work better at tech companies controlled by founders with large stakes. Steve Jobs could look at the long term and had the support and equity to cannibalize a flagship product and diminish profits in the short run. He could do what was best for Apple and, if he hadn’t suffered from a fatal illness, he would still be running the company today.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations transformed in weeks what would normally have taken years. What are enterprises forgetting about agility?
When we have to act, we do. COVID disrupted everyone, everywhere all at the same time. That had never happened before. Within five days, work moved home, and school did as well (to disastrous results). We moved shopping, entertainment, and everything else home and online. What couldn’t be done online didn’t happen. I wrote a piece asking what COVID would have been like if the internet had never been invented (following the theme of It’s a Wonderful Life: What felt horrible would have been immeasurably worse.)
COVID forced us to do things we never wanted to do and had long resisted. The disappearance of cash was vastly accelerated. We can now see the end of cash and COVID moved it along. Almost no one liked telemedicine, but we had no choice during COVID; doctors wouldn’t see us (except for life threatening problems) and no one wanted to be in a doctor’s office or hospital. We found that we liked telemedicine with no commute or long waits in an office. It changed medicine.
The parts of COVID that were intolerable reverted back as soon as possible. The best example is online learning – although probably not soon enough.
COVID taught us that the internet allowed us to reluctantly but very efficiently be agile. We learned that decisions could be made with great speed when lives were threatened.
What makes an organization truly ‘Kodak-proof’?
There is no such thing. All over the world, people unknown to each other are tinkering to do things better. They don’t necessarily have a disruptive goal. But here, tinkering comes from nowhere and turns industries upside down. Novo Nordisk was working on a diabetes drug and then discovered it led to efficient weight loss.
Companies can look at the limitations of their products and their marketing, and study how customers feel. Banks would have learned that many of its customers “hated” them. That meant that customers would rapidly flee if disruption brought new options. Companies can look at these threats and do their best to immunize against them.
But organizations can never know they are safe against future change coming from people and places they do not know.
What leadership capabilities matter most in the AI era?
The leadership needed to understand and work in an AI environment is not any different than what was required during the era when the internet changed almost every business plan. The two differences are the speed at which AI had deployed around the world and the fact that, thanks to the internet, the barriers entering into the media, setting up businesses, and building a supply chain have either been eliminated or almost completely leveled.
The next wave of disruption
While AI dominates today's business agenda, Cole believes leaders should already be looking beyond it. From autonomous vehicles to the societal consequences of AI-driven automation, the next decade could bring disruptions that ripple far beyond individual industries and reshape how people live, work, and interact with the world around them.
The book presents GLP-1 drugs as a striking example of cross-industry disruption, affecting healthcare, food, retail, travel, insurance, and consumer behavior. Beyond AI, what could be the next major disruptor?
There are several developments that can change huge elements of society and daily living. The one that I have focused on is driverless cars. Autonomous vehicles mean the end of taking car keys away from parents or grandparents, the handicapped or blind not being able to get anywhere on their own, and the end of drunk and distracted driving and road rage. Ultimately, (in about 30 years), I believe humans will not be allowed to drive. By then, 36,000 road deaths a year in the U.S. will be reduced to 25 or less. There will be no need to own a car when one can quickly appear, take us somewhere, and then disappear. Homes will be redesigned without garages, parking lots (2/3 of mall acreage) will disappear. Body shops will decline, as will personal injury lawyers. This is just the beginning of the list. Driverless cars really do represent a cascading disruption that leads to massive change in many industries and activities.
What excites you and concerns you most about the decade ahead?
Almost all my hopes and concerns about coming disruption arise from AI. While 24% of the people we talk to believe AI can or will mean the end of humankind, I don’t take that threat seriously. How can you? If true, everything else becomes irrelevant.
The threat I worry most about with AI comes from job loss. This was happening already before AI, with automation. We could see the loss of jobs for drivers and cashiers. But AI is now displacing coders, lawyers, and doctors (to a degree), and, according to the head of Microsoft AI, 80% of white-collar workers. Even if we find a way to replace the lost income, that is only a small part of the problem. The larger issue for workers without jobs is “what is my purpose in life” – a question that, if left unanswered, could lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, and civil unrest.
On the positive side, the democratization of information that started with the internet and the ability to solve “unsolvable problems” through AI is extraordinary. Most sources of that kind of information were restricted to elite universities and research labs. AI is for everyone, and users are not priced out. Almost everyone can get everything they need from the free versions of Chat, Claude, Gemini, and others. Never has “elite knowledge” been so accessible with no barriers.
Finally, what is the one question every board should be asking right now?
This one I’ll keep simple: since it is impossible to know that disruption is upon you until it has arrived, operating in a constant state of awareness by preparing for disruption in advance is critical.
‘Disrupters at the Gate: When Visionaries, Trailblazers, and Two Guys in a Garage Turn the World Upside Down’ is now available at all leading bookstores.
Disrupters at the Gate: When Visionaries, Trailblazers, and Two Guys in a Garage Turn the World Upside Down, highlights the transformations that arrive from unexpected places to turn business models and human behavior upside down.
About the author
Jeffrey I. Cole is one of the world’s leading voices on media, technology, and the digital future, spending more than three decades tracking change and anticipating what comes next.
Cole founded the World Internet Project – the longest-running global study of online behavior, spanning 27 years in 35 countries – and directs the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School. As a UCLA professor, Cole taught more than 35,000 students and twice received the Distinguished Teaching Award.
Cole has advised four U.S. presidential administrations, the FCC, Congress, and the Department of Defense, along with global government leaders. Among his industry clients are Microsoft, Sony, WPP, Time Warner, AT&T, CBS, NBC, ABC, HP, Coca-Cola, and Ericsson. Cole co-founded the Global Disruption Investment Fund, which identified companies poised to disrupt and be disrupted.
