BREAKING THROUGH DISRUPTION 5 DECODING DISRUPTION At-home augmented reality car shopping. Silicon- based storage systems for renewable energy that can power cities even when the sun isn’t out. Smart speakers that know which products consumers need, even before they do. The way we live today is driven by new innovations that we scarcely could have dreamt of a mere generation ago. While consumers are demanding more personalized and flexible services, business leaders are left to navigate an ever- changing landscape. C-suite mentions of “disruption” during earnings calls, investor conferences, and company announcements have increased significantly over the past decade. And with it, the anxieties of executives across industries. As Jorge Paulo Lemann, co-founder of 3G Capital, put it, “I’ve been living in this cozy world of old brands, big volumes, nothing changing very much, and you could just focus on being very efficient and you’d be okay, but now we are being disrupted in all ways...we are running to adjust.” 2 Top executives are right to be worried. Most of the 10,000 companies we analyzed—71 percent—are currently either in the throes of, or stand on the brink of, significant disruption (see Figure 1). 3 In our previous research , we found that disruption is not completely unpredictable, it can be decoded—good news, since understanding it better makes it more manageable. Based on its current level of disruption and susceptibility to future disruption, each industry can be located in one of four distinct periods—Durability, Vulnerability, Volatility or Viability.