Achieving Alignment in an Age of Disruptive Velocity
16 June, 2017
By Tom Connolly, GattiHR (USA)

Published in the Spring 2017 edition of People + Strategy, the Professional Journal of HR People + Strategy
These days, disruptive velocity is one of the few constants for organizations. Digitization drives disruption, as once-physical businesses are dematerialized into virtual ones with more reach, shorter time-to-market, and less capital intensity, financial or human (Salim, Malone & van Geest, 2014).
- Expedia kills off travel agencies
- Amazon crushes brick and mortar competitors
- Airbnb’s market cap exceeds Marriott’s and precipitates the Starwood merger
- Uber turns the taxi industry upside-down
- Tiny, 18-month-old Instagram and vastly larger, 90-year-old motorcycle manufacturer Ducati are acquired in the same month for the same price ($1 billon each)
- Driverless cars are grabbing all the attention, but driverless trucks will eventually wipe out one of the top 10 largest occupations in America
- Even agriculture is upended as drones, planting robots, and driverless tractors assume more and more of the work
No sector is safe.