We are once again in the midst of the creative destruction of industries. By way of background, the term “creative destruction” is from Joseph Schumpeter’s 1939 book, Business Cycles. He believed that business cycles were caused by innovation. Stu L. Hart and Mark B. Millstein in their 1999 article titled, “Global Sustainability and the Creative Destruction of Industries” (Sloan Management Review, ISSN 0019-848X, Vol. 41, Nº. 1, 1999) linked Schumpeter’s business concept of creative destruction to the business drivers of sustainability.
I agree with Hart and Millstein. A lot of people think that the current destruction we’re seeing is exclusively the …