Disruptive Futures Institute Releases The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption (Volume I)
Why This Guidebook Today?
Over the past few years, the Disruptive Futures Institute delivered hundreds of keynote talks, courses, and executive education programs on decision-making in uncertain environments to the world’s most innovative organizations. Given the overwhelming interest, the Disruptive Futures Institute is publishing The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption for release to a general audience.
This Guidebook draws on decades of strategic insights advising founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, boards, and shareholders in Silicon Valley and globally on evaluating their competitiveness, strategic investments, innovations, and disruptions ahead. The Guidebook explores the next-order implications of our increasingly unpredictable world and how to prepare for, leverage, and drive the systemic disruptions ahead.
Disruption is no longer merely a single or recurring event but a steady state. Everything in our lives and the world around us is constantly changing, but our institutions, governance and incentive structures are not updating for resiliency. Many of us continue to rely on flawed assumptions, assuming that the world is predictable, linear, stable, and controllable. But the cost and missed opportunities from these wrong assumptions is increasing.
Staying relevant means developing capabilities to prepare more imaginatively — both for resilience and capturing new opportunities. The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption shows you how.
What This Guidebook Is… Not!
Let’s get it out of the way. This Guidebook is not about technology, trends, or succumbing to the latest shiny gadgets from Silicon Valley. The world does not need another generic, hackneyed techno-optimist book on exponential technologies, disruptive innovation, business optimization, digital transformation, or predicting the future of […].
While favoring plurality, openness, and possibilities, it can also be helpful to highlight those doors which we intentionally keep closed, or at least slightly ajar:
- We don’t treat the future as fixed or singular
- We don’t seek to predict the future
- We don’t overfocus on the future to the detriment of the present
- We don’t over-index trends because we focus on signals over noise (as trends continue… until they don’t)
- We are not dogmatic, theoretical, or academic.
Instead, our Guidebook explores systemic change through multiple lenses as disruption needs to be assessed holistically, with 360-degree vision. The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption widens and deepens our perspectives, changes the narrative structure around uncertainty, and helps every reader understand, anticipate, and navigate systemic disruption.
Systemic Disruption: Impact Cascades and Spillovers
Disruption is generally neither new nor bad; it is simply accelerating. The world’s fundamental paradigms are increasingly changing.
Systemic disruption is a constant that establishes entirely new paradigms, which themselves will evolve. The single most dangerous mistake is looking at disruption as isolated, special cases or independent episodic events.
Prior experiences, credentials, and legacy answers are no longer sufficient to address systemic challenges. The indeterminate environments of today require new decision-making, new types of leadership, and new operating models.
Introducing The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption
“Finally, Spitz and Zuin have developed a body of knowledge to help us excel in times of uncertainty. This comprehensive guide is a great testament that, by thinking broader and deeper, it is possible to devise ways to face and embrace the most daunting challenges of our times.”
- Dr. Terence Tse, Professor at Hult International Business School, Co-founder Nexus FrontierTech
This Guidebook is a field guide for businesses and individuals alike to navigate change; a compass; a system of content, resources, and ideas on how to stay relevant in our complex and unpredictable world.
The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is a four-Volume Collection published by the Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco:
- Volume I — FOUNDATIONS. Reframing and Navigating Disruption: How to make sense of our complex, nonlinear, and unpredictable world.
- Volume II — FRAMEWORKS. Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty: Practical frameworks to help you and your business stay relevant in the 21st century.
- Volume III — YOUR LIFE. Beta Your Life: Existence in a Disruptive World: What does constant change and uncertainty mean to you as an individual?
- Volume IV — YOUR BUSINESS. Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation: What does our unpredictable, complex, and systemic world mean for you as a business?
Cathy Hackl, founder of Journey, Tech Futurist & Author, wrote the Foreword to Volume I:
“This Guidebook offers a rich and practical set of resources for anyone — organizations, entrepreneurs, policymakers, educators, and learners — to capitalize on disruption… Together with a wide array of contributors across the world, the Disruptive Futures Institute team connects foresight strategy and futures intelligence, complexity and systems thinking, artificial intelligence and exponential technologies, innovation and failure, design thinking and science fiction, philosophy, and Zen Buddhism.”
- Cathy Hackl, Excerpt from the Foreword to Volume I, “Reframing and Navigating Disruption”
To flourish in this increasingly complex, unpredictable, and nonlinear environment, we must understand the velocity, trajectory, and magnitude of the underlying drivers of change, whether technological or otherwise. Doing so requires casting assumptions aside, throwing out the old playbooks, rewiring our mindset, embracing the unknown, and taking agency of our own futures.
The authors are Roger Spitz, in collaboration with Lidia Zuin. A foresight strategist, venture capitalist, and writer, Roger’s expertise lies at the intersection of futures studies, systems thinking, and sustainable value creation, building on 20 years of leading global technology M&A and investment banking businesses. Lidia is a journalist, science fiction writer, and professional futurist. Her work focuses on innovation, emerging technology and trends, virtual reality, and gaming.
“Change makes people uncomfortable, yet it is inevitable… So how do we cope with and confront change we may not be ready for? Roger Spitz and Lidia Zuin take us on a ride to find out, deconstructing disruption to make the process not only easy but exciting and hopeful.”
- Shelli Brunswick, COO of Space Foundation & Forbes Technology Council
Launching Volume I: “Reframing and Navigating Disruption”
On November 29th 2022, the Disruptive Futures Institute launched the first standalone book of its four-Volume collection The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption. The next three Volumes will be released in December 2022, January and February 2023 respectively.
Volume I — “Reframing and Navigating Disruption” — lays the foundations for how to make sense of our complex, nonlinear, and uncertain world.
Volume I chapter titles include:
- Your Introduction to Disruption: Why This Guidebook, Today
- New Mindsets for Driving Disruption
- Our Best “UN-VICE” for the Disruptive Futures
- Constants and Drivers of Disruption
- Navigating Disruption: Anticipating Inflection Points
- Thinking in Different Time Horizons
- It’s Alive: Technology, Innovation & Unintended Consequences
- Artificial Intelligence: Big Data & the Future of Decision-Making
- Info-Ruption: The Internet of Existence & Cyber Insecurity
- Existential & Climate Risks as the Ultimate Catalysts
- Glossary of Disruption Terms
Buying The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption
The printed Guidebook is available to order at bookstores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble…), while the eBook is downloadable on Apple Books, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Kobo…
To discuss bulk order discounts and custom offers, including using The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption for academic or executive program curriculum support, please reach out to: info@disruptivefutures.org.
Sample Praise
Further media interest, press coverage, and praise reviews are available on www.thrivingondisruption.com
“Helped us rewire our perspectives and the assumptions we make about the world and its possibilities.” — BENEDIKT BÖHM, CEO DYNAFIT & EXTREME SKI MOUNTAINEER
“This book teaches readers how to embrace disruption to own their destiny and spark pathways to innovation and should be required reading for anyone who hopes to make an impact on the world. It is truly one for the ages.” — SHELLI BRUNSWICK, COO OF SPACE FOUNDATION
“This four-volume book provides us a blueprint to study, understand, and tackle disruption at different levels of reality — from knowing to doing to meaning and being.” — SHERMON CRUZ, CHAIR, ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL FUTURISTS
“Never before has the world needed such tools, frameworks, and practical applications to inform not only how to survive, but thrive.” — KARA CUNZEMAN, LEAD FUTURIST, CENTER FOR SPACE POLICY, THE AEROSPACE CORPORATION
“What’s unique about this Guidebook is how it connects fields and areas which are often treated separately. Roger’s collaboration with fellow futurist, journalist, and science fiction writer Dr. Lidia Zuin is critical for illuminating a diverse set of topics in a way I’ve never seen before…” — CATHY HACKL, FOUNDER OF JOURNEY
“Roger Spitz and the team at the Disruptive Futures Institute have done us all a favour and given us a guidebook for managing these challenging times… I recommend the books heartily.” — DR PETER HAYWARD, FOUNDER OF FUTUREPOD.ORG
“Roger and Lidia address the disruptive nature of our world and offer a toolkit to thrive with it. This book is not like other writings on innovation. It is practical, actionable, and mixed with references and examples… and makes a case for an essential manual for anybody who wants to equip themselves to be relevant for the uncertainties of tomorrow.” — ANDREY SHTYLENKO, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY GROUP, HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL
