Disruption -- the term -- traces its root to a 15th century Latin word ‘’disruptionem’’ that essentially means to “break apart, shatter, break to pieces.” Linguistically, it is not a very harmonious term, meaning, you would not wish for your life to be disrupted too often.

But in a world that is hyper-connected and hyper-revolutionised by the Internet, disruption is not really an unpleasant thing that threatens or upsets order. In fact, we live in times where disruption is embraced and celebrated.

Just think about how the Internet has disrupted our lives. Today, data flies through undersea cables connecting continents at gigabit rates. Every single minute, users upload 72 hours of video on YouTube, share 2,460,000 pieces of content on Facebook, send across 2,77,000 tweets on Twitter and punch in 204,000,000 emails. All this in a single minute.

Internet: The beginning

With its humble beginnings as a network that strung together a few disparate computers via ARPANET, to its emergence as the World Wide Web (www) that connects billions of devices across the planet, the  Internet is undoubtedly one of the biggest catalysts of change. It connects people and enables collaboration.

Since the 90s, when Internet arrived in India, there has been a steady growth in the number of users. In fact, India today is the 3rd largest country in terms of Internet user base, and has one of the highest growth rates in terms of users. Thanks to one of the most affordable data-rates in the world and fastest growing mobile market, Internet (especially the App-type) is becoming fairly ubiquitous and its impact is there for all to see. Little wonder, when a leading e-tailer in India decided to go big with a Billion-Dollar Sale, it created a lot of buzz. The company apparently did meet its sale target of achieving $100MN in GMV in just 10 hours. That is a cool INR 600 crores (approx) of sales in just 10 hours!

It is not just the private sector that is driving these big numbers. Take the case of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) that provides online ticket booking services for Indian Railways. When the website (irctc.co.in) was launched in 2002, there were just 27 tickets booked on its launch day. Today, the average daily sale of train tickets through the portal (which is the world’s second busiest with 3 crore registered users) is around 5-6 lakh. The site has even registered a record 14,800 tickets issued per minute at the peak. With the Railways now launching a mobile App version, the numbers will only increase from here on.

Every corporate, every entrepreneur, every government today is building strategies around Internet. From the launch of a new portal to launching a nationwide Digital Roadmap, Internet now is at the heart of every plan, every initiative.

At the same time, we are seeing the emergence of the Internet of Everything (IoE), which promises to be the disruptive force of the coming decade. With its seemingly limitless potential, India’s adoption of IoE will perhaps have the greatest impact in shaping its growth story over the next few years.

It was in the 90s again, when HBS Professor Clayton Christensen used the term disruption to coin a new term, namely disruptive innovation, to essentially describe a process in which a product or an idea takes shape in market, usually in the bottom rung and then moves up steadily to take the top spot. A ubiquitous Internet (available on multitude of devices) or rather IoE is that disruptive force that is going to change all, right from the way we learn to how we earn. Guess, it’s time we stopped using the term in a negative sense, being wary of disruptive things. It is now time to either love, promote or be a disruptive thing. It is going to be the new norm.

Source:http://www.moneycontrol.com