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Articles on Disruptive forces

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FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers at hearing on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Dangers of the witch hunt in Washington

A ‘witch hunt’ is what Trump called investigations into his campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election. An anthropologist explains the connection between witch hunts and social control.
There are a lot fewer workers on the assembly line today. And it’s not just car manufacturing that has seen jobs lost to automation. Ford Europe/Flickr

How to guard your career against rapid technological change

If you leaving school today to embark on a career, what should you study to protect your job from automation and outsourcing?
Facebook knows what you’re doing. What you’re watching. How you’re feeling. Khakimullin Aleksandr/Shutterstock/Wired

Privacy is fast becoming the real disruptive force in digital technology

Did you recently buy a Samsung smart TV? If you are worried about privacy, you may be wondering how smart that decision was following the manufacturer’s warnings that its voice-activated televisions may…
Many governments are realising high-growth tech companies have the keys to their country’s economic future. Peter Dasilva/EPA/AAP

We need to put high-growth tech companies on the G20 agenda

The world was a very different place in December 1999 when the first G20 met in Berlin. Steve Jobs had just taken back the reins at Apple, but Facebook, Google, Twitter and the dot-com bust were figments…
Could Bitcoin turn banking on its head? Elentari86/Flickr

Banking’s huge profits almost ready for the taking

Australia’s big four banks are the most profitable in the world. Last year they made A$27 billion in profit, up 9.5% on the previous year. Tech leaders in Australia say the financial industry is ripe for…
High growth enterprises, or ‘gazelles’, are a growing source of global employment. Smithsonian's National Zoo/Flickr

Rocketing regions: the jobs of the future in gazelle headquarters

Do you know someone who has lost their job in the last few years working in IT, media, finance or retail? These industries and many others are already feeling the pinch of “online gravity” - a special…
Corporate data, once resigned to magnetic tapes, is now able to be manipulated on a much finer grained scale. TunnelBug/Flickr

Big data and big business: it’s what you do with it that matters

The crucial thing about “big data” is the data. “Big” is relative, and while size often matters, real disruption can come from data of any size. This is not a new idea, being several hundred years old…
Dell and IBM are two companies feeling the pinch by the growing corporate shift towards cloud computing. Mauritz Antin/EPA

Clouds bear down on computer hardware companies

When Amazon, known by most as an online department store, extended its web services business into Australia in 2012, few outside the IT sector noticed. Data released last week by the Australian Securities…
Sharing programs such as Melbourne’s bicycle network encourage a ‘collaborative consumption’ culture. flickr/avlxyz

The sharing economy spooking big business

Earlier this year, I travelled to Melbourne for a conference. Instead of paying to stay in a hotel like I normally would, I paid a local couple to stay in their spare room. On arriving at their clean and…
Online, businesses are fuelled by a different set of economic forces than those that exist purely offline. x-ray delta one/Flickr

Why there’s no Pepsi® in cyberspace

The world of big business is littered with once popular but now discarded household names like Kodak, Borders and Blockbuster. In this disruptive forces series we find out who might be next, uncovering…

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