We’ve gotten so used to information technology either directly or indirectly disrupting one industry or another that we’re prone to think disruption is a phenomenon driven by the microprocessor. But a new technology that allows an entrepreneur to upend the status quo is not a new story. It’s happened many times before.
An excellent article from the American Business History website can help us explore “how the upstarts can take over whole industries from older companies with deeper pockets, how these Davids slay their Goliaths. Here we briefly examine one of the most significant but seldom reported technological advances of the twentieth century,”
And it’s NOT I.T.
I hope you’ll take in the lessons of an old disruption: “The Unsung 20th Century Technology that Disrupted an Industry.”
