The Great Disruption: How business is coping with turbulent times

by Adrian Wooldridge

Based around a compilation of his popular Schumpeter columns, Adrian Wooldridge takes a look at the forces that are disrupting today's fast-moving business world.

The disruption has many causes: the internet's rapid spread; the challenge from emerging markets in innovation and manufacturing; clever management techniques that are forcing companies to rethink strategy; robots advancing from the factory floor into the service sector; and much more. These developments are shaking business and social life to its foundations, producing a new set of winners and losers, and forcing everyone to adapt and change.

The Great Disruption explains:
- The forces that are disrupting today's business world, and the management gurus that predicted them.
- Who are the winners and the losers, and how institutions have tried (and often failed) to change.
- How classic management problems, such as talent management, distribution, and outsourcing persist, but with a new twist.
- What the future holds for companies, universities, competition and society.

It also reminds us why Joseph Schumpeter's ideas about creative destruction are particularly valuable today.

Genres: Business, Economics, Technology, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2015

About the author

Adrian Wooldridge (born November 11, 1959) is the Management Editor and, since 1 April 2017, the 'Bagehot' columnist for The Economist newspaper. He was formerly the 'Schumpeter' columnist. Until July 2009 he was The Economist's Washington Bureau Chief and the 'Lexington' columnist.

Wooldridge was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied modern history, and was awarded a fellowship at All Souls College, also at Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in philosophy in 1985. From 1984 to 1985 he was also a Harkness Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley.

Reviews

[Kym Hamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a regular reader of The Economist and therefore the Schumpeter column so this was new and thought-provoking reading for me. I really liked how all of these columns were grouped into themes and it made an excellent commuting companion, whether on my regular tube commute (I could read 4-5 in my 30min journey) or a quick single column dip whilst waiting for a flight to board, take off or land (you know, when you can't use your laptop). The book became a bit dog-eared from being carted around in my backpack for a couple of months but it will definitely stay on my bookshelf for re-reading.

[Book Grocer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purchase The Great Disruption here for just $8!

An interesting collection of one columnist's work in The Economist that covers quite a range of topics. Easy to dip in-and-out of, it is a good read for those new to Business and Economics, and those who have devoted years to it.

Elisa, Book Grocer

[Yates Buckley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snippets of ideas, articles, covering a broad range of sectors with a business tinge. The disruption aspect is not well articulated, the turbulence is vague...

[Temple Dog · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wooldridge states that critics dismiss TED talks as Starbucks for intellectuals. I would offer that The Great Disruption is a 200 plus page TED talk desperately seeking an unenlightened audience.

Nothing new or terribly interesting here. This book is so 1.0.

TD