Be Your Own Disruption

August 15-19th.  Wow, what a week.  Google enters the hardware business and HP exists.  And, there are rumors that BlackBerry will get into the music business in coming months.  I always knew it was hard to see into the future, but its getting just as hard to see the present.
In a previous blog entry I questioned if there actually is a tablet market or just a iPad market. "Is There Really A Tablet Market?"  Well, with HP's quick exist out of the tablet game the carcasses are starting to pile up pretty deep outside the walls of Fortress iPad.  With nine million iPads being purchased every quarter, the competition has put a scratch on the iPad's empire.  Now, with HP's exit out of the hardware business, perhaps there is validity in Steve Job's musings about the "post PC" era.
How did we get here?
The Harvard Business Review offers up some interesting thoughts: HP's Decade-Long Departure. It goes something like this - HP, and many other PC makers, were at the top of their game and started "consolidating" and "leveraging" which is what you do when you occupy the throne of status quo.  Meanwhile Apple was paying serious attention to "mobility".  Rather than creating off the shelf patchwork mobile products and leaning on the equity of its strong brand, Apple created a real complete solution.  Enter the iPod and enter the beginning of the end of the world as we knew it.  Rather than improving and maximizing the current category they disrupted and created a new space.
The best thought in the article is when it is suggested that right now you can be sure that Apple is contemplating the "Post iPhone" era.
We should all be contemplating the demise of our own products and brands.  The best hedge against the unpredictable future is to be your own disruption.  The disruption is coming...it might as well be you.
As Dwight D Eisenhower said, "Plans are worthless.  Planning is everything."