Entrepreneurs often miss market disruptions once they’re in business, and today, disruptions are everywhere. “There is no safe industry,” says Jeff Cornwall, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University. “We can’t assume we’re going to find a safe little niche to operate in.”
This is from an article that Chris Penttila wrote for this month’s Entrepreneur magazine about industry disruption.
Change creates most of the opportunities that drive the 50% of our economy in the hands of entrepreneurs. And that process of change doesn’t stop once we open the doors to our new business. Change and industry disruption are a given in almost every corner of our economy. We live in an age that Peter Vaill once described as “permanent white water.”
While change and disruption are the fuels that drive entrepreneurial opportunity, they can also sew the seeds of failure for entrepreneurs who do not recognize that they have to keep moving.
Entrepreneurs should think of themselves as sharks — if they stop swimming forward, they will drown.
