Self-Driving Cars are not Disruptive
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’ ”
— Henry Ford
Self-driving cars are are just a faster car. This isn’t what the world needs, the world needs a transportation paradigm shift. Automation can provide the disruptive change we need, but not in the form of cars. Self driving cars are as disruptive today as a sports car has ever been. How can a technology claim to disrupt if it doesn’t solve the real problems of its predecessors? Self-Driving cars may by a little safer and a little faster than their predecessors, but so was the 1963 corvette.
Incrementalism vs Disruption
The term “Disruption” gets thrown around too freely these days. Granted, there’s no single definition for the word, it’s open to some interpretation. Comparing disruption to incrementalism sets the bar for what’s truly worthy of being called “Disruptive” with a capital ‘D.’ Incrementalism is the process of making an existing thing better. We can improve current techniques, products, and systems incrementally or we can completely replace them with something disruptive. Incremental change improves existing solutions to a problem. Disruptive change introduces a completely new way of solving a problem. Every few iterations of technological advancement provide us with an opportunity to…
