Digital Disruption

My current reading is a book called Digital Disruption by James McQuivery as I'm becoming increasingly interested in the way that the digital developments have the capability of fundamentally changing almost every industry. He talks about a disrupters mindset which is, of course not unique to the digital world. Joseph Caxton was extremely disruptive when he launched his printing press. Modern disruptors naturally use IT and when combined with the almost ubiquitous communications networks we now have this is an extremely powerful combination. This blog is an example as it is all being done using technologies developed and mass rolled out not just in my life time but in that of my children. This combination has the power to change everything,  so is anything certain? 

I actually believe that one thing is. Right at the beginning McQuivery says:

"Companies used to get dominance through scale. In the first half of the twentieth century, that scale came from manufacturing, and companies like GM ruled. Later in the century, dominance came from supply chain ( think Walmart ) or information mastery ( think Amazon). But in the twenty-first century, none of these sources of scale matter. Only customers do. This is truly the age of the customer".

I agree. This is the age of the customer, consumer and citizen. The trick is figuring out who the customer is and what they actually want. As an energy guy I naturally think of this industry and suspect that the answers to my questions have not really been addressed by that industry. We still think in engineering  ( what should we build? ) and finance ( who will pay? ) terms.   Certainly the customer doesn't seem to be at the centre of energy policy development. Yet.