What is an example of creative destruction?

Streaming kills video stores: Netflix's rise wiped out Blockbuster — the same wave that created one destroyed the other.

Where do you see creative destruction in everyday life?

Streaming kills video stores; The smartphone era; Cars over horses; Schumpeter's gale; AI reshaping work.

Don't bet your security on the permanence of any incumbent — including the tools and skills you currently rely on.

Curated by Paulo de Vries · reviewed 2026-06-01

Progress means the new constantly destroys the old. Industries, jobs, and habits get swept away to make room for what comes next.

Streaming kills video stores
Netflix's rise wiped out Blockbuster — the same wave that created one destroyed the other.
The smartphone era
Phones absorbed the camera, the map, the music player, and the calculator, retiring each.
Cars over horses
An entire economy of stables and farriers vanished as the automobile remade transport.
Schumpeter's gale
He called it the 'perennial gale of creative destruction' — capitalism's engine and its cost.
AI reshaping work
New tools dissolve some tasks while creating others, churning the job market as they go.

Don't bet your security on the permanence of any incumbent — including the tools and skills you currently rely on.
If you lead in something, be willing to disrupt your own approach before a competitor does — incumbency breeds the trap.
Build for adaptation, not for the assumption today's winners last — the next wave buries whatever dominates now.

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