Stop thinking in straight lines or get left behind by the revolution

Revolutionaries from the past have a tendency to morph into romantic icons; think Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Robespierre.

From the safety of history, it’s possible to admire their determination and dedication without condoning their often destructive and violent tactics.

Yet living revolutionaries are not always so popular beyond their immediate following. They threaten the status quo and, for many, a comfortable way of life. So why have I sub-titled my new book “Why Entrepreneurs Should Act Like Revolutionaries”?

Read more: We need to free the disruptors and let businesses off the leash

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” said John F Kennedy. And I believe that peaceful upheaval is essential if we are to cope with the challenges the rest of the century is bound to throw at us. As Kennedy implied, the alternative could be even worse.

It’s a cliche, but also a fact, that technology is progressing too fast for us to keep up. I think of the old steam trains still in use in India. They chug along, passengers packed in so tightly they can hardly breathe. Now the Prime Minister has commissioned India’s first high-speed railway from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. The new trains will travel up to 200 miles an hour – no more sitting on the roof. Those who can’t afford a ticket will have to stand back and watch as the future shoots by.

This could be our fate as well, unless we can rise to the occasion and find a way to jump onboard, taking all those also waiting at the station with us too.

Just consider the huge bullet trains driving through our business landscape: Amazon upending the world of retail (now with a market cap of $765bn), Spotify ($28bn market cap) disrupting the entire music business, Netflix ($142bn market cap – worth more than Ford and GE and “creeping up on Disney”), and London-based Deliveroo, revolutionising the fast-food business and achieving 107 per cent growth over the past four years.

Today’s technology goes beyond previous linear approaches, with algorithms sorting through billions of pieces of data to find patterns and connections unrecognisable to humans.

In the same way, we must stop thinking in straight lines about major world issues, such as poverty and inequality, science and art, policy-making and regulation, left and right divides, business and public service. We need leaders and entrepreneurs with duality, who can think and act using both sides of their brain. As Einstein said: “logic will get you from A to B, imagination will get you everywhere”.

It wasn’t so long ago that the secret of success was incremental change, historically all adding up to a substantial improvement to the bottom line. But we’ve moved beyond this now. Like the disruptive businesses mentioned above, we need to rethink the model, be creative, take a risks, and ruffle the surface.

What technology is also doing is cutting out the middle-man. Crowdsourcing is taking the place of bank managers, Airbnb, Expedia and Booking.com are replacing the travel agent, Ryanair has pioneered the self check-in, and journalists now look to Twitter to monitor public opinion.

This transfer of influence is only part of the current power shift. The combination of technology, social media, and the way people now absorb information means that the top-down centralised way we have been running the world for the last couple of centuries is no longer a viable model.

We have before us a time of enormous opportunities. However, these could easily slip through our fingers due to the conservatism of the establishments that dominate the economy.

As an established business person, I may not sound like a natural revolutionary – but I became an entrepreneur for the joy of doing things differently, to rethink the model and to change things in ways that would eventually bring benefits to everyone.

I can see that a revolution is coming – in business, technology, enterprise and politics. Fighting it isn’t an option. It is time to harness it.

Read more: A future society driven by tech must have freedom at its heart