In sterile conference halls across the country, you hear talk of fresh young disruptors, but what the industry really wants to hear about is Google, writes new guest columnist Joe Haslam

The scare-the-pants-off-them presentation on ‘disruption innovation’ goes as follows. Managers at Nokia and Blackberry knew what Apple and Android were up to even before their customers did. In response, they did all the things you would expect. They prioritised relationships with their biggest accounts; they weren’t lazy or stupid. Yet these once great companies are now shadows of their former selves, and it will happen again unless you start to understand the new business models being created out there in the startup world.

When I give this presentation, the two examples I use of these difficult-to-compete-against companies are Uber and Airbnb. Although still private, both companies share data on their blogs about how the companies are doing. And at recent valuations of $17 billion and $10 billion respectively, there must be already a hell of a lot of rides given and nights booked. Yet even after telling these stories, as well as stories from other industries where incumbents have been displaced by disruptors, the reaction is still one of curiosity rather than alarm. It’s only recently that I uncovered that it is a different name that invokes every manager’s Voldemort complex.

To get a heated debate going, a frisson of excitement in an otherwise sterile conference room, the name you need to invoke is one that is commonplace, yet at the same time mysterious and elusive. Even if you want to talk about Uber or Airbnb, what the industry is really interested in is Google.

Read the full article at Reuters Events (former EyeforTravel)