Disrupt or Be Disrupted: the Drone Industry Inflection Point

John Chambers, former CEO of CISCO, addressed the Xponential conference today – warning companies that as the drone industry reaches the inflection point before exponential growth, they must disrupt or be disrupted.

Chambers sees the drone industry exploding by mid-2017, leading to huge changes in industry everywhere.  “We are transitioning to an interconnected, inclusive environment that will effect every citizen in this world. … It’s going to be about disruption,” he says. “I’ve talked to almost every government leader in the world -they understand this.”

Chambers argues passionately that the economic impact of transitioning from the information age to the digitization age cannot be underestimated: “The internet of things and digitization will be the biggest transition that has ever occurred. “

Saying that large businesses need to be encouraged to adopt drone technology, he exhorts drone businesses to understand the way that they need to sell their solutions. ” We need to get our message tight and crisp in terms of business outcome.  Talk about the speed… to get results.  How fast can you implement it and how fast can you scale?”

Chambers offers these hints to drone businesses who need to sell their solutions to large companies:

• Don’t start with the drone – start with the business opportunity.
• Understand the IT implications – get the data to the right person.
• Tie into an overall digitization strategy.
• Speed and scale to results.
• Don’t think vertically as a solution – take a horizontal approach off of platforms and technology
• Get the sponsorship of the CEO and head business leads: they’ll understand the need to adopt a disruptive technology.
• Develop an ecosystem of partners.

Chambers told the drone industry that they needed to have the courage to work together and adopt common standards, and that cooperation was critical for the US as the regulatory environment risks putting US businesses behind the rest of the world.  “We have not been successful in getting the head of our country involved,” says Chambers. “If we don’t move we get left behind… the time to move is now.”

“Cameron got it early in the UK, Netanyahu gets it in Israel…  We’ve gotten comfortable with not having to move as fast.”

“Disruption” is a recurring theme in new fields.  This will be the first in a series of articles exploring the disruptive technologies and policies important to the drone industry.