In this week’s news from the future:

• An Australian consortium has just launched the world’s first digital energy marketplace for rooftop solar – effectively making ideas around central government-controlled energy supply irrelevant in the future – The Guardian
• Amazon prove once again that they are a company in an innovation mission with the launch of the Amazon Treasure Truck – Amazon

• The art of great storytelling was important in the past, and will be too in the future. Pixar – those people that made all of those rad animated films –  have now made a great course on storytelling, free – for all to learn how – Khan Academy 
• Going from disrupted to disruptor – how to reinvent your company for the future – McKinsey
• Is the future of education the exact opposite of how we are educating children right now? – The Star Press

The classic business school bell-curve.

At one stage, Blackberry was the hottest brand in South Africa. Every kid wanted to own the device which was a symbol of the new mobile age.

But Blackberry was arrogant.

They overestimated their own brand appeal and got killed by Apple and Samsung in the global fight for ‘share of mind’. They most probably didn’t even see it coming. Blindsided by their own brilliance – Blackberry ignored the forces for change that were happening around them and slowly dug themselves into a shallow grave.

To be honest – you could copy and paste this sentiment and replace all reference to Blackberry with the word ‘Nokia’ too.

It may be hard to remember in 2016, but BlackBerry was once not just a dominant force, but an innovative one, with handsets beloved by businesses, politicians, and fast-typists around the world. via

BlackBerry is handing over production of the phones to overseas partners and turning its full attention to the more profitable and growing software business. It’s the formalization of a move in the making since Chief Executive Officer John Chen took over nearly three years ago and outsourced some manufacturing to Foxconn Technology Group. Getting the money-losing smartphone business off BlackBerry’s books will also make it easier for the company to consistently hit profitability. via

In summary, this comedy skit, featuring the legendary Ronnie Corbett, seems to put a nice neat bow around the whole thing:

Related: Why it’s vital to know what’s going on in the world – LinkedIn

Dollar Shave Club – the quirky, cheeky in-your-face US razor subscription service, was recently sold to Unilever for $1 billion. That a lot for an e-commerce business that’s just 5 years old and has 190 employees.

But apart from the obscene amount of money that it was sold for, the Dollar Shave Club case study just goes to prove once again, that no company or category is safe from disruption by a couple of kids with a laptop and a touch of creativity.

If you look up the term ‘daylight robbery’ in the dictionary – a classic example of this phenomenon are razors. See the big companies see the only way they can compete here is to out-innovate each other with more blades, lubricating strips, lights, fog horns, ones that are powered by a hamster on a wheel etc, etc. Meanwhile all you really want is a single blade, that for goodness sakes, just works.

Dollar Shave Club spotted this gap, sourced well-priced razors from Korea, made a quirky video themselves and posted it on YouTube, sold razor subscriptions for just $1 a month for a ‘to-your-door’ delivery service  – and over time built up a business with revenues of $240 million per year, which took 8% of the US razor market.

The online business was founded in 2011 by Mark Levine and Michael Dubin to combat the high cost of razors. The idea was rather simple. Instead of paying $10 or $20 a month at a store for disposable razors, a Dollar Shave Club subscriber could go online and set up a regular order to be shipped to his home monthly at a fraction of the retail cost. via

Not bad for a couple of hair-brained hooligans.

The take out here is that two guys and a silly video were able to take on the might of Gillette, and win. The tools for their takeover were simple; a plan, a product (which they didn’t make themselves) an arrogant competitor and a YouTube ad, which aired for free.

There’s nothing remarkable about the guys that started Dollar Shave Club. They’re not sending people to Mars or reinventing the way we communicate, but they’ve capitalised on the phenomenon of globalisation and the arrogance of a giant that was not able to imagine that there was another way to do things.

This story really should send cold shivers down the spine of every company that believes in the illusion that there is a ‘moat around their business’. If you are not imagining the unimaginable – you’ll meet your match at some stage, and when it happens, probably give it a label like ‘a black swan’. But black swans are not rare. They are as common as pigeons and make even more of a mess when they pay you a visit.

Five years and a price tag of $1 billion – well played Dollar Shave Club, well played.

On the surface of it, the movie Moneyball is about baseball. But it is also a great movie about disruptive innovation too.

The film is based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 nonfiction book of the same name, an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team’s 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane’s attempts to assemble a competitive team. In the film, Beane (Brad Pitt) and assistant GM Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), faced with the franchise’s unfavorable financial situation, take a sophisticated sabermetric approach towards scouting and analyzing players which resulted in them winning 20 consecutive games, an American League record.

There are however also great examples of how disruption of the status quo leads to breakthrough innovation. As a bit of a summary here are our…

5 Lessons in Innovation from the movie, Moneyball:

1. Break problems down into smaller chunks – try not to look at the challenge in its entirety, but rather break it down into easily accomplished steps that you can tick off as you go along.
2. Hire people from outside of your circle of competence – if you want to be different, you need to surround yourself with people who are different.
3. Determination is an important driver of success – success comes from a competence and a good plan, but often grit and determination are the key ingredients to hanging in there until the world catches up.
4. Don’t be sentimental – if the old stuff isn’t working any more, toss it out and replace it with something new. Do not fear the process of getting rid of ‘holy cows’.
5. Break the rules – aim to fail – the most powerful position you can be in is when you have ‘nothing to lose’. Complete freedom and radical improvement are a direct result of not giving a damn about what others will think. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.

If you haven’t yet seen Moneyball, do yourself a huge favour and watch it. The baseball bit of it is just part of the story, the real value is in the underlying message of disruption.