The contribution of digital technologies to the Australian economy is forecast to be $139 billion by 2020, when it will equate to 7% of Australia’s GDP (DAE 2015a). This represents the size of Australia’s digital economy and illustrates the significant role technologies such as cloud platforms, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will play in driving economic growth in Australia.¹

Disruption is the result of the rapid evolution of a business that fundamentally changes the market it operates in. The terms ‘disruption’ and ‘innovation’ have almost become interchangeable since the Harvard Business School Professor, Clayton Christensen, coined the term ‘disruptive innovation’ in the 1990s. Today, the fear of not innovating is driving businesses to look for opportunities to transform or innovate to stay relevant to their market or compete against start-ups who are not held back by legacy constraints. When looking at successful disruptors in different markets, one thing becomes apparent: you shouldn’t try to be faster than your competitors; instead, you should aim to be better than them.

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This article was first published in The Australian Corporate Lawyer, Summer 2018, Volume 28 – Issue 4, pg 16-17.

^{1 Deloitte Access Economics, 2017, p. 1, in Australia’s Digital Pulse: Policy Priorities to Fuel Australia’s Digital Workforce Boom, a report prepared for Australian Computer Society}