A review of Disrupt with Impact by Roger Spitz
By James Holcombe
Disruption isn’t just what happens when your cat jumps in front of your webcam during a video call. Disruption isn’t just a way to describe startups toppling big businesses or new technologies upending entire industries. For Roger Spitz, disruption is the exponentially increasing, systemically intersecting, and unavoidably omnipresent force for which humanity must practice strategic foresight skills to transform behaviors and create new paradigms.
Spitz is well-known in the foresight community as a leading voice on climate foresight, anticipatory leadership, and, of course, disruption. Spitz is an advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, Chair of the Disruptive Futures Institute, and Founder of Techistential, a global strategic foresight consultancy. Most recently, with Lidia Zuin, Spitz published a four-part series, The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption. Now, Spitz has created an accessible guide for individuals and organizations to understand better how strategic foresight can allow us to adapt to and thrive within disruption.
In Disrupt with Impact, Spitz has one central message: disruption is no longer a singular event. Instead, disruption exists as a constant force, running alongside everything we do. Disrupt with Impact is Spitz’s guide to understanding why disruption has evolved and what we can do to survive this new normal.
Disrupt with Impact begins by compelling readers to think beyond our historical notions of disruption. Joseph Schumpeter, who popularized the phrase “creative destruction,” challenged the negative connotation of destruction and reframed it as the reinvention of dying industries and economic practices to allow new ones to emerge. More recently, Clayton Christensen coined the idea of “disruptive innovation” to describe how startups can harness their limited resources to build more cost-effective products, topple entrenched market leaders, and disrupt entire industries.
Today, we face what Spitz refers to as Disruption 3.0. Disruption is no longer limited to global pandemics, economic recessions, and technological breakthroughs. Disruption is holistic. Disruption is omnipresent. Disruption is unavoidable.
“Disruption’s scope is broader, its features more nuanced, its speed faster, its shape exponential, and its scale larger. Disruption is now systemic.”
Spitz argues that there is a rising cost in assuming predictability. The world is no longer VUCA, an acronym used in the U.S. military to describe things as Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. For Spitz, this acronym no longer encompasses our new reality. Spitz’s acronym ‘UN-VICE,’ instead of advice, describes a world that is UNknown, Volatile, Intersecting, Complex, and Exponential. Spitz urges readers to stop relying on known precedents and reliable advice. In an UN-VICE world, new strategies must emerge.
Systemic disruption is neither good nor bad. Intersecting industries and volatile environments spur new fields and find novel ways to create value. Disruptive forces spur innovations, such as rapid vaccine development and asteroid trajectory alterations.
For those new to foresight, Part One of Disrupt with Impact teaches readers fundamental concepts in futures studies: scanning, time horizons, drivers of change, black swans, and more. Spitz dissects each concept while providing his unique lens and approach to understanding change. Spitz also identifies five primary “metaruptions,” his way of describing the most complex types of disruptions with the most widespread impacts.
Traditional strategic planning assumes that change is linear, project plans follow clear milestones, and short-term visioning is paramount. In today’s world, organizations need tools to prepare themselves for uncertain futures and ongoing disruption. Spitz outlines popular foresight techniques for organizations to embrace, such as scenario planning and backcasting. Spitz also creates a six-point system for organizations to approach unpredictability.
In Disrupt with Impact, Spitz dedicates several chapters to what he sees as some of humanity’s most critical systemic challenges and opportunities.
Every organization must become an energy organization in the face of climate change. The “Greenaissance” era is the opportunity for unprecedented investment in new energy models. Apocalypse is not unavoidable, but transforming our habits, values, and markets is required. We can create public-private accountability mechanisms by reimagining traditional business models and corporate metrics while allowing industry to thrive. Spitz provides a comprehensive list of emerging green technologies that he expects to be critical innovations for combatting climate change.
Another imminent risk that humanity faces is the irreversibility of artificial intelligence replacing human decision-making. “Techistentialism” is Spitz’s neologism that describes the nature of humanity in an increasingly technological world. Technology is omnipresent, irreversible, and unpredictable. Spitz’s UN-VICE is to update our educational systems, anticipate unintended consequences, imagine next-order consequences, and sound alarms for potential irreversible inflection points.
“Info-Ruption” is how Spitz describes the disruptive changes in how we interpret, use, and misuse information. Ransomware is its own profitable industry, and disinformation is weaponized for political gain. Among other strategies, Spitz stresses that data literacy, Socratic questioning, and valuing diverse viewpoints are ways in which we can teach people to counter insidious Info-Ruption.
Through each chapter, Spitz invests considerable time into breaking down the issue and why Disruption 3.0 requires a deep understanding of each problem. Organizations must utilize systems thinking to navigate these novel problems. No domain is immune from intersections with these critical issues. Spitz also provides case studies and examples of organizations and technologies effectively navigating disruption.
One of Spitz’s most urgent messages is the need to become AAA: Anticipatory, Antifragile, and Agile. The AAA framework encourages governments, businesses, schools, and individuals to transform their traditional decision-making paradigms amid ongoing disruption.
Resiliency is no longer the key to surviving disruption; instead, we must be antifragile, able to thrive and strengthen in the age of constant disruption. By harnessing foresight capabilities, we can become anticipatory and respond more quickly and effectively to change. With an antifragile and anticipatory foundation, we can practice agility, pivoting quickly through feedback loops.
Spitz concludes Disrupt with Impact by summarizing his key themes and providing a six-step guide for individuals and organizations to self-reflect and apply each component of Spitz’s framework.
Seasoned foresight practitioners will find much of the content in Disrupt with Impact familiar. What will be unfamiliar to even lifelong futurists will be Spitz’s unique approach to managing ongoing and future disruption. Spitz has spent considerable time and effort building a robust framework that individuals and organizations can utilize to better prepare for themselves in an unpredictable world.
Disrupt with Impact is both a foresight primer and an encyclopedia of disruption. Organizational leaders will find helpful tools for navigating and thriving in disruption. Individuals will appreciate the comprehensive overview of today’s disruptive forces and how these challenges will affect their lives.
While I’m not sure Merriam-Webster will adopt the array of neologisms, abbreviations, and mnemonic devices, Spitz’s message will prove over time to be an essential reminder of how we — individuals, organizations, and humanity — can thrive in the face of disruption. To achieve this, each of us must disrupt, with impact.
James Holcombe is a lifelong futurist who didn’t know it until a year ago. He is a current graduate student at the University of Houston and an emerging foresight practitioner interested in the futures of healthcare, education, and whatever he’s thinking about at any given moment. His professional experience includes technology consulting, data analytics, and writing food reviews for brunch restaurants. When not explaining strategic foresight to his confused family and friends, James enjoys playing video games, sipping vodka cocktails, and spending time with his cat, Tyler.
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