5 Examples to Research Industry Disruption to Safeguard Your Career

Research Industry Disruption to Safeguard Your Career

I am often asked, how do I research industry disruption after speaking on this topic. This is where the magic of google comes to play.

I am going to give you a sample of Google search terms that I will use for these five industries.

Pharmaceutical
Furniture
Publishing
Finance
Non-profit

I chose these industries somewhat at random as I sat in my living room looking at stuff in the room. COVID-19 has disrupted just about every industry and if you expect to thrive into the future you will likely need to understand and then take advantage of that disruption.

You will want to substitute other words in your search to see what works best for you and your industry.

If you want to get the other posts in this series check out the links below:

Let’s get started with how to research industry disruption.

Pharmaceutical

I plugged the search term “disruption in the pharmaceutical industry by COVID” into google. Below is a screenshot of what was returned.

What I picked up from scanning these articles is the following:

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Digital transformation is key
Artificial intelligence is making a significant impact
Supply chain resilience needs to be addressed as so many drugs are manufactured in Asia

Try substituting other words or phrases for disruption, like innovation, disruptive innovation, or change.

Furniture

I picked furniture because I have read article after article where customers are purchasing new furniture and are getting delivery dates not in a few days or weeks but in months in the future.

I plugged the search term “disruption in the furniture industry by COVID” into google.

What I picked up from scanning these articles are the following:

Supply chain issues in much of the manufacturing are in Asia
There is a need for greater automation like CNC machines to reduce the need for labor
Raw material costs continue to increase

If you are in the furniture industry, use industry terms or phrases in your search.

Are you starting to understand how to research industry disruption?

Publishing

I plugged the search term “disruption in the publishing industry by COVID” into google.

What I picked up from scanning these articles are the following:

There are tremendous changes for K-12 and Higher Education publishers
Acceleration of digital learning impacts educational publishers
Gaming, Music, and Streaming video had blow-out years but will this continue?

You will probably want to fine-tune the phrase “publishing” as it is a very broad term and is used across a broad spectrum of publishers of content. When you research industry disruption the words you choose are very important.

Finance

I plugged the search term “disruption in the finance industry by COVID” into google.

What I picked up from scanning these articles are the following:

A surge in refinancing home mortgages
Increase in defaults on a variety of loan types
Increase in financial crime

This was an arena that I knew was going through disruption but it got me to rethink the types of disruption.

Non-profit

I plugged the search term “disruption in the nonprofit industry by COVID” into google.

What I picked up from scanning these articles are the following:

Non-profits had to adapt how they did fundraising
There has been an explosion of demand for service related non-profits
Non-profits are shifting how they deliver services while maintaining income streams

This is an area that I am very familiar with as I have served on multiple non-profit boards and tried my hand as a non-profit fundraiser. Some non-profits have had to rework their business models depending on whether they have a traditional donation, membership, or fee-for-service model of raising money.

Your Next Move to Research Industry Disruption

I have given you a single search phrase and shown you the results across multiple somewhat random industries.

You will need to “play” with these search terms based on your knowledge of your industry and the results that are returned.

Once you have come up with a set of Google searches, I suggest you create a Google Alert. If you are not familiar with Google Alerts Wikipedia states:

Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by the search engine company Google.

When new content becomes available for your searches you will be informed via email.

Now you are armed with a method to discover industry disruption. What is you next step?

Marc Miller

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