Think opportunity! Entrepreneurs thrive on change and innovation. Major disruptions open the door for new products and services to replace established and mature businesses. If you’re looking to create a new business with a large potential, look for established businesses that can be disrupted with a cheaper, simpler, smaller, or more convenient substitute. We’ll look more closely at the entrepreneurial process in the next chapter.

For managers in large, successful businesses, the challenge to disruptive innovation is to create an appropriate response. Contrary to popular belief, managers in these organizations are not powerless. They can become disruptive innovators themselves. But the evidence is overwhelming that their disruptive response must be carried out by a separate group that is physically and structurally disconnected from the business’s main operations. How? By either creating a new business from the ground up or by acquiring a small company and keeping it separate from the corporate constraints.

These separate groups are sometimes referred to as skunk works—defined as a small group within a large organization, given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by corporate bureaucracy, whose mission is to develop a project primarily for the purpose of radical innovation. These skunk works, in effect, are entrepreneurial operations running inside a large company. Their small size allows employees to be enthusiastic about their mission and to see the impact of their efforts. To be successful, though, they can’t be hampered by the cultural values or cost structure of the parent organization. They need enough autonomy so that they don’t have to compete for resources with projects in the primary organization.

What career advice can we offer you in a disruptive world? Here are some suggestions:

• Never get comfortable with a single employer. You can’t build your hopes on working in one organization for your entire career. Your first loyalty should be to yourself and making (and keeping) yourself marketable.

• Keep your skills current. Disruptive technologies will continue to make established jobs and professions obsolete. Learning no longer ends when you finish school. You need to make a continual commitment to learning new things.

• Remember that YOU are responsible for your future. Don’t assume your employer is going to be looking out for your long-term interests. Your personal skill development (Hint: All those employability skills we’re having you work on throughout this book), career progression, and retirement plans (yup ... not too early to start thinking about that, too) are all decisions that you need to make. Don’t delegate your future to someone else. You need to actively manage your career.

• Finally, take risks while you’re young. Few people have achieved great results without taking a risk. They quit a secure job, or went back to school, or moved to a new city, or started a new business. While risks don’t always pay off, setbacks or failures are much easier when you’re 25 than when you are 55.