Jay Samit - Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation

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To all those who seek to disrupt the status quo with big ideas. May this book shorten your journey.

When new users discover LinkedIn, most intuitively grasp that it offers a useful way for individuals to pursue jobs and provides a way for companies to recruit those individuals. But even today, not everyone recognizesand thus not everyone truly capitalizes onthe larger capabilities that LinkedIn unleashes.

When I first started talking about LinkedIn with Jay Samit in 2006, though, he got it. He understood that LinkedIn is more than an online rsum service and even more than a tightly connected distributed-trust recruiting tool. Jay recognized immediately that LinkedIn is a powerful network-intelligence platforma way to build relationships, research competitors, learn best practices, surface new workplace trends, and ultimately identify opportunities.

Now that Ive read about the unique tactic Jay used to launch his career in the entertainment industry after graduating from UCLA in the early 1980s, I understand better why he grasped the full implications of LinkedIn so quickly. As you will discover when you read the anecdote yourself, Jay was already looking at the world through network-intelligence lenses at a time when most people still thought the only things that networks delivered were new episodes of Cheers and Dallas .

Embracing innovation has always been a hallmark of Jays career. Whether creating the market for royalty-free digital stock photography or trying to get major record labels to adopt new digital distribution strategies, Jay has always looked toward technological disruption as a positive force.

Instead of learning one way to do business, then settling into complacence, he has actively sought ways to create new markets; introduce new products, services, and operations; and broaden consumer bases. Instead of closing his eyes to change or simply trying to endure and survive it, he has responded to shifts in the market with foresight and a mandate to make the most out of the new opportunities that disruption creates.

And thats the mind-set all professionals should aspire to now. In this networked era, new technologies introduce change at faster and faster rates. Tightly connected social platforms further accelerate and amplify these technological and economic shifts. Disruption is the order of the dayand it trickles down, reshaping industries, companies, and the careers of individual professionals.

Whatever industry youre in, the technologies that drive it are going to change. Your customers are going to demand new solutions. Your competitors are going to alter their tactics. To stay relevant, you must keep your career in permanent beta. That means committing to a lifetime of learning and professional growth, a lifetime of strategic adaptation.

To successfully navigate todays professional landscape, you must understand the dynamics of disruption. The currents of change shift more quickly and with more force now. If youre not ready for these shifts, theyll clobber you. But as Jay teaches in this book, you can learn to spot them early. You can swim with the currents of change instead of against them. And when you do that, disruption can propel you toward opportunities, creative challenges, and prosperity.

Reid Hoffman, November 2014

Psst What would you do with a million dollars? the sexy disembodied voice would whisper to passersby. After stopping in his tracks and looking around, the surprised pedestrian would see a visual parade of yachts and race cars, mansions and glamorous women in evening gowns dancing across the kiosks twenty-inch screen. The year was 1984, and California was in dire straits. The country was emerging from a recession, and Californias unemployment rate was at an all-time high. Finally, and with much fanfare, it was decided that the troubled state would run a lottery, the revenues of which would generate the sorely needed funds for the states schools. A multi-million-dollar contract would be awarded to the company that developed the best technology system for selling the new lotterys tickets. My prototype kiosk with built-in motion detectors was going to be my ticket to fame and fortune.

At the time, I was a twenty-four-year-old with a small multimedia company that did special effects and production work for hire. Our specialty was producing video games and interactive training programs on laserdisc. When the lottery was announced, I had a big idea: why not apply my expertise in the arcade video-game business to help the lottery become more interactive and fun? I partnered with Syntech, a lottery machine manufacturer that supplied ticketing hardware to create a player-activated terminal dubbed the PAT 2500. The PAT 2500 would actually talk to potential customers and encourage them to buy tickets. I outfitted the seventy-nine-inch-tall computer kiosks with laserdisc players, motion detectors, and speakers. The kiosk would beckon to anyone who came near it. Using Intel 8031 microprocessors, the kiosk was state-of-the-art. Its hard to imagine this now, but in 1985 this rudimentary contraption was one of the very first commercial machines capable of handling audio and video. At the time, almost no one had a computer in their home or on their desk, and the computers that were used in workplaces were shared by multiple users and had small, monochromatic displays. The PAT 2500 featured a twenty-inch full-color display and capacitive touchscreen. I was convinced that my machine and I were going to revolutionize the way lottery tickets would be bought and sold all over the world. At twenty-four years old, I was sure I had figured out how to become a billionaire.

I was competing for the lucrative California Lottery contract against GTECH, who manufactured a primitive adding-machine-size unit that displayed greenish numbers on a black CRT. There was no comparison. I was sure my time had come. I was the young Turk disrupting the lottery industry! I was to the lottery what Henry Fords Model T was to horse-buggy makers!

I was wrong.

We werent awarded the contract. GTECH won the contract, and I was stuck with an amazing kiosk in my garage. I was nothing more than a guy with big ideas; I was intent on changing the world, making a lot of money, and having fun along the way, but after I lost the lottery contract I was broke and dejected.

With no lottery prospects, I spent the night before I was to fly home to Los Angeles from Sacramento tossing and turning. That night, thinking about who I was and how desperate I was to make my mark in the business world, I began what I would later come to call self-disrupting. I analyzed all the pieces that came together to form my identity. I began to define what unique experiences and knowledge I had that would set me apart from my peers. I thought about the way I made decisions, how I processed and responded to information, how I approached problems. I thought about the way I presented myself to the world and how I communicated my abilities to potential business partners and clients. And I thought about how I was spending my time and energy. If I was going to find opportunities to make a name for myself in the world, I was going to have to change something in my approach. Then I started thinking about my business in those same terms: Where was the value in my lottery machine? How could I put it to use in a different way?