85 Disruptive Ideas -- Ranked -- BloombergBusinessweek

This week's issue of Bloomberg Businessweek is pretty good. It celebrates its 85th birthday by "chronicling the most disruptive ideas of the past 85 years, those entrepreneurial earthquakes whose tremors are still being felt. Disruption is a trendy word, but it's used here without endorsement. To add a little tension, we've gone to the trouble of ranking these 85 disruptions and counting down to an overall world-changing champion."

I think they got it about right. I certainly cannot argue with their "85-disruptive-idea-countdown."

It would be interesting to go back and look at how many of the 85 disruptive ideas had their beginnings between 1960 and 1969 (inclusive).

Ranking, year, disruptive technology:

• 71. 1965: Singapore expelled from federation with Malaysia, Singapore becomes an independent state.
• 67. 1964: Southern Strategy -- five southern states give their electoral votes to Barry Goldwater, the start of the Republican takeover of the Deep South.
• 64. 1967: Super Bowl I.
• 63.  1960: OPEC.
• 14. 1968: the cubicle.
• 9. 1960: the pill.
• 4. 1962: Wal-Mart.
• 3. 1965: Green Revolution. Disease-resistant wheat seeds developed by Norman Borlaug are introduced in India and Pakistan.

Missing from the list:

• hydraulic fracking, probably goes back to the 1940's
• the Bakken (as a phenomenon, not a geographic location); perhaps, 2000
• identity theft, perhaps the Target breach in 2013
• deep-sea drilling, date unknown, maybe 1961
• Apollo, 1969
• US as world policeman (remember, these are disruptive "ideas" -- not technology per se), 1945
• US interstate system, 1956
• impeachment, as a viable political tool, 1974
• triangulation, as a viable political strategy, 1996
• assassinations, as a viable political strategy, zenith in the 60's, 1963
• international terrorism, as a viable geo-political strategy, 1966