11 Sources of Disruption

You have observed a troubling tendency that often leads to the disruption of business models. Please describe it.

All too often, business strategies fail to effectively account for external change in the world. When faced with deep uncertainty, leadership teams tend to focus on recognized variables. This practice lures them into a false sense of security and results in a narrow framing of the future — making even the most successful organization vulnerable to disruptive forces that then appear to ‘come out of nowhere’. Futurists call these external factors ‘weak signals,’ and they are important indicators of change.

You have identified 11 such sources of external change that can sneak up on an organization. How did you go about assembling this list?

As a quantitative futurist, my job is to investigate the future, and that process is anchored by intentionally confronting internal and external uncertainties. I have developed a framework called Future Forces Theory, which shows that disruption usually stems from 11 influential sources of macro change. These sources broadly affect business, governing, and