In March 2006, the Tom Peters! Company posed four questions to a gathering of senior executives:

• What is the predictable nature of the business environment in the 21st century?
• What is the source of the pressure for change?
• What do executives believe is the fastest route to business failure?
• What qualifies as a road map to success?

The answer to all four questions was . . .

. . . Disruption.

Is it any surprise? After all,

• The only constant is change . . .
• That sound we hear coming up behind us (no matter who we are) is the footsteps of someone with a new value proposition and a hardy appetite for the business we – just yesterday – mistakenly characterized as ours . . .
• whole business categories have been/will be forced to change or die – think print shops and their suppliers, camera makers, the music industry, just about any kind of retailer, movie houses, radio, television . . .

Speaking of television and creative destruction, John Muszynski, whose Starcom agency controls eight-and-a-half billion dollars in television advertising, recently put TV executives on notice: the prevailing model of setting advertising rates upfront, without measuring effectiveness, has an expiration stamp on it. "As long as behaviors involving TV stay strong, your market will stay strong. You are the most powerful mass medium, with the power of sight, sound and motion on your side, and you produce some damn amazing content. We get that. But here’s where your challenge becomes much bigger – you must keep perpetuating TV-interaction behaviors. Because I guarantee you, your ’share of behaviors’ will be reflected in your ’share of media budgets.’"

The share of behaviors is being diluted by the proliferation of screens on which viewers can watch content: television (where cable advertising dollars now exceed network expenditures), computers, iPods and telephones.

The share of media budgets is being diluted by the pay-for-click model that made Google a powerhouse. Nobody claims it’s a perfect design, but no one disputes pay-for-click is disrupting the vulnerable mass media marketing model.

And so it goes. Category by category, the question is not, "Are we vulnerable to disruption?" but "What will disrupt our business plan and who will be behind it?"

Download The Discussion Questions…