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What will disrupt the fridge?

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 24 Aug 2017
Disruption innovation expert David Roberts.
Disruption innovation expert David Roberts.

Disruption has been happening to industries for hundreds of years, but only in the last two decades has the concept been studied, says David Roberts, a speaker at the SingularityU South Africa Summit, taking place in Johannesburg.

He described to the audience at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit conference centre how the 300-year-old spice trade eventually led to the fridge through a series of industry disruptions, and what he thinks will come next.

Roberts is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on disruptive innovation and exponentially advancing technology.

He noted there are lessons entrepreneurs and businessmen can learn from previous industry disruption.

"The areas that are ripe for disruption today are no different to the areas that were ripe for disruption then: complex experiences, broken trust, redundant intermediaries and limited access.

"If you are in any industry that features even one of these areas, you are potentially in an industry that is ripe for disruption. So there are lessons that are timeless... but we have only understood disruption for about 20 or 30 years.

"Now that we understand disruption, we can actually go back and relook history and understand why things happened and who was responsible for it."

In the case of the spice trade industry, once one of the largest in the world, it was disrupted by a man who invented the insulated warehouse: Frederic Tudor.

This was because it was believed spices preserved meat. "They didn't, they just made rotten meat taste better."

Tudor started shipping blocks of ice around the world, which did actually preserve meat.

Within 20 years, the price of spice plummeted and the industry collapsed from its former glory, said Roberts, describing it as a slow-moving train wreck that no one saw coming.

He noted there are no records of any companies that were in the spice trade that jumped over into the ice trade.

"Not even the same ships that were used to carry spice were then used to carry ice. Nobody made the change. We can learn lessons about the evasiveness of disruption from this and how difficult it is to see."

Even though Tudor disrupted the once-booming spice business, his industry was also soon disrupted. The ice-maker was created and that started being shipped instead of blocks of ice cut out of lakes.

The ice-traders tried to convince the public that 'artificial ice' created in an ice-maker was not as good as 'natural ice'. This campaign did not gain lasting traction, nor did the ice trade business.

Ice-makers meant people could now have ice at home in ice-boxes that stored their food. A block of ice was delivered to doors in the morning with the milk and they would be placed in the top of these specialised cupboards.

"And as you can guess, the ice-box gets disrupted by the fridge, and none of the people in the ice-box business get into the fridge business. So the fridge evolves and we all end up with a fridge, so it should be obvious, what disrupts the fridge?" asked Roberts.

No one in the audience was able to give him an answer.

"So you see, we can look back and ask how could they not know ice was going to disrupt spice, but it is not so obvious."

Roberts said disruption keeps on going and the refrigeration business may be disrupted sooner than we think. He shared some thoughts on what he thinks may disrupt it.

He noted there is now a way to produce milk that does not require refrigeration: "They use radiation, kill off all the bacteria and medically seal it, which means real milk can now last on the shelf."

Other technology advancements have led scientists to discover the gene in fruit that ripens it, and they are now starting to tinker with that gene and modify it, which would make fresh fruit last a lot longer.

However, he said, things like drones and delivery companies will probably ultimately disrupt the household fridge.

"In New York City, Amazon now delivers food and fruit in under an hour. And there are people there who have already unplugged their fridges.

"Now, I'm convinced the most likely thing which will end up disrupting fridges more than ever will be drones. Because even in San Francisco, if you build just two drone stations, you can get anywhere in just 60 seconds. So if I can get anything cold within a minute, I am not going to keep a Frederic Tudor warehouse in my house."

He pointed out that drones were not even invented until about five years ago and have become very affordable.

Roberts said there are no sanctuaries from disruption. "Every industry that we know of is subject to disruption in the next 20 years, so understanding disruption and the base cause of it, exponential technologies, is not optional, it's critical."

The SingularityU South Africa Summit is the first of its kind to take place in the African region.

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