Whether it’s technological shifts like generative AI or geopolitical instability, we live in a world of undeniable change.
For innovation leaders, the instinct often drives them to look for new data, but Scott D. Anthony, clinical professor of strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, argues that the data stays unclear until it's too late.
Instead, he suggests we look backward. Since "history doesn't repeat, but it certainly rhymes," the stories of the past offer a guide for grappling with the epic disruptions of the present.
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The Fog of Disruptive Change
When right answers disappear, look backward for patterns
Although we are operating in a unique moment in history, we have actually been here before. Scott points to 1620, when Sir Francis Bacon identified three things that changed the state and appearance of the entire world: the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder. These three shifts stretched across 2,000 years.
Today, Scott notes, we face four simultaneous shifts, and we haven't even left the letter 'A': autonomous vehicles, augmented reality, additive manufacturing, and artificial intelligence.
"Technologies are advancing exponentially. The lines between industries are blurring, expectations of our customers, of our colleagues, of our children, are shifting really rapidly," Scott explains.
He uses the metaphor of "the fog" to describe this environment. When the fog comes down, the right answers aren't clear. You can see the outline of buildings, but you can't read the clock face.
Scott warns that "in a world that is facing persistent, disruptive change, the right answers aren't clear. The data are unclear. By the time it becomes clear, it's too late to do anything about it."
Lessons from Gunpowder
Audit yesterday's defenses vs today's threats
To understand the stakes of this fog, Scott takes us back to the year 1453 in Constantinople. For 1,000 years, the city had been safe, protected by the Theodosian walls. These were not just lines in the sand; there was a moat, two physical sets of walls each 15 feet thick, and 96 towers buttressing them. They had never fallen.
But the disruption of gunpowder had been brewing since the year 142. By 1452, a mysterious figure named Orban appears. He offers to cast a cannon for the Byzantines, but they pass. He then brings that same technology to the invaders, the Ottoman Empire, promising to shatter the walls of Babylon itself.
Scott describes the scene: "Imagine how it felt, walls that had stood for 1000 years now face a half ton cannonball flung over a distance of a mile." The city fell in 50 days.
The lesson for modern organizations is stark.
Scott asks, "What are the defenses you have now that you built for yesterday, that are powerless in the face of disruptions of today?"
However, we must also recognize the human cost of this change. Disruption is not just about market shifts; it casts a shadow. Reading from a history of gunpowder, Scott highlights that the craft attracted "daredevils, visionaries, Mad Men," many of whom found "not fortune, but disfiguring burns and death."
"Disruption takes things that were complicated and expensive, makes them simple and affordable... but a persistent lesson is that disruption casts a shadow," Scott says. "It casts a shadow when companies lose. It casts a shadow when people have to deal with the second order effects that can be bad of disruptive change. It casts a shadow when you suffer those burns, whether they are literal burns or metaphorical ones."
For leaders today, this means that leading with care and compassion is a critical requirement.
Florence Nightingale's Method
Follow her 4 proven behaviors
If disruption is the context, who are the people who successfully drive it? Scott introduces Florence Nightingale, not just as the "lady with the lamp," but as the "triple disruptor" in healthcare. Her story dismantles the myth of the solitary genius.
"Innovators aren't superheroes," Scott says. "Disruptive innovators are people who are curious, who are collaborative, who are persistent."
Nightingale's disruption began in the Crimean War in 1854. She encounters hospitals with open sewage and infectious disease. She uses the telegraph, a disruptive technology of her time, to demand better hygiene standards. When she returns to London, she collaborates with William Farr, a statistician, to visualize the data she collected.
Scott points to her famous "polar area chart" (or Coxcomb) as a disruptive visual. The chart made it undeniable that the hospital was deadlier than the battlefield due to infectious disease. This led to the Public Health Act of 1875, shifting the entire paradigm from treating disease to preventing it. Life expectancies, which had been flat for centuries, shot up.
Scott highlights the specific behavioral patterns Nightingale followed:
She was curious: She tried to understand the root cause using data.
She was customer-obsessed: She focused entirely on the patient.
She was collaborative: She worked with statisticians and the government.
She persisted through ambiguity: She handled setbacks and kept pushing.
Scott also notes that "innovation cannot be perfectly forecasted… it is predictably unpredictable, because surprises always happen, but there are clear patterns."
The iPhone and The Power of Perseverance
Disruption rewards decades of patience
Scott's research into the iPhone revealed a surprising lesson about the timeline of disruption. While we think of the iPhone as an overnight success launching in 2007, the story actually begins in 1952 with a man named Don Stuckey at Corning.
Stuckey made a mistake. He set a kiln to 900 degrees instead of 600, creating a "gooey mess" that turned out to be a hybrid between glass and ceramics, 14 times stronger than glass. Corning tried to find a market for this material, called "Project Chemcor," for two decades. Since they failed, in 1971, the project was shelved.
It wasn't until 2007, when Steve Jobs demanded a glass screen for the iPhone that wasn't plastic, that this technology found its “aha” moment. Corning revived the project, and it became what’s better known as Gorilla Glass.
"Disruption rewards patience, often over very long periods of time," Scott says. The gap between invention and impact can be decades. "Every story takes longer than people anticipate."
Even the immediate success of the iPhone wasn't clear-cut. Scott reminds us that "even the great ones can get it really wrong." When the iPhone launched, it had no App Store because Steve Jobs was concerned about maintaining control over the device experience. It took his team's advocacy to convince him to open up the platform, enabling Apple to truly begin its ascendancy.
The Fear to Fun Framework
Make disruption playful to beat fear
Innovating often feels like stepping off a cliff. Scott shares a historical proclamation from 1548 by King Edward VI issued "against those that doeth innovate." In that era, to innovate was to question the King and God.
While we don't have royal proclamations against us today, the fear is real. "It's kind of scary to be the one who takes that step into the unknown when you see a new disruption," Scott admits, recounting his own sweaty palms the first time he rode in a robotaxi. So, how do we handle this fear?
"We have to recognize there's an element of fear in this. How do you fight fear? You make it fun," Scott says. "You approach it with a smile on your face. You look for the opportunity in it."
He adds an optimistic call to action for all leaders facing the fog. "Yes, you recognize there are downsides, there are shadows to every disruption, but there also is the immense possibility of making the world a better place."
Positioning for the Next Wave
Fusing assets and entrepreneurial energy, and developing our wisdom
As we stand in the fog of today, what are the shapes emerging in the distance? Scott identifies specific frontiers where he expects to see "truly miraculous things" happen.
He points to Clean Tech as a sector that is still "too much in process" but holds massive potential. He also highlights New Food and alternative proteins as a major shift.
Perhaps most interestingly, he points to the convergence of physical technologies. "When you bring additive manufacturing and drones together, you're going to see some real changes in the retail and distribution landscape."
For leaders today, the directive is clear: "Artificial intelligence, clean tech, new food, these are the frontiers of the next disruptions."
One of the most persistent myths in innovation nowadays is that it belongs solely to the startup entrepreneur. Scott challenges this, drawing on his experience as both a venture capitalist and a corporate advisor. "We underappreciate the people inside large organizations. They are in the best position to drive disruptive impact."
He points out that incumbents are not the Byzantines of 1453; they are not blind to change. They can see it. The difference is in their assets. "Inside large organizations, we have the resources, we have the access, we have the money that the entrepreneurs are scrapping and fighting for," Scott explains.
The magic happens when the two worlds come together. "When we fuse together assets of scale with entrepreneurial energy, we can do some truly amazing things."
Yet, having the resources doesn't always make the work easy. In the age of AI, the problem has pivoted from finding information to filtering it. "It's only gotten harder… AI is creating so much noise, getting the real signal underneath it is increasingly hard," Scott observes.
He compares the development of wisdom to going to a gym.
You don't go to the gym to use a forklift to lift the weight; you go to struggle against the resistance. "Wisdom comes from experience. It comes from struggle. It comes from pain."
In this noisy environment, the ones with real expertise can look at a hallucination or a false signal and identify it for what it is. "Continuing to work to develop our wisdom is the only way through it," Scott advises.
The walls of yesterday won't protect us eventually, but curiosity, collaboration, and a willingness to endure the struggle will guide us through the fog.
