Followers of TechFutures are well aware of our near (OK, total) obsession with the role disruptive innovation plays in both creating and destroying industries. For a long time we’ve been pushing Fast Second as both the best book and strategic approach for large companies in mature industries (know of any of those around here?) to use in reinventing themselves as we rebuild Northeast Ohio’s economy.

The announcement yesterday that Disney will acquire Pixar will, as it plays out, reinforce the wisdom of the Fast Second approach either as an example of how to do it right–or as an case study of how a strategy is only as good as the execution that accompanies it.

But as this article from Fortune Magazine points out, Steve Jobs real strength as a CEO has always been his ability to Master the Art of Disruption:

“Jobs has proven himself unrivaled in the art of managing disruption. Many entrepreneurs talk about turning ideas into products that change the world. Yet the landscape is littered with first movers who ended up finishing last. In so many cases, being out in front just makes you a target for deep-pocketed rivals. Think back to the early PC manufacturers or the spreadsheet- and word-processing-software makers. Can you recall any of them? Does VisiCalc ring a bell? XyWrite? Probably not. But Microsoft’s Excel and Word are still with us. What about portals and search engines? Pioneers like Alta Vista, Lycos, and Excite got steamrollered by Google. More recently NetFlix and TiVo have created hugely popular new businesses in the realm of movies and television, but they are in peril of being usurped by cheaper digital video recorders from cable operators and video-on-demand. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry brand has become the Kleenex for remote e-mail, yet the company must shudder at the introduction of each new multifunction cellphone.

“At both Apple and Pixar, Jobs has been able to simultaneously harness technology in a way that throws the status quo into disorder and ride that chaos to the front of the pack. What’s more, he’s established two different models for how to do it. Apple’s trick has been not just its game-changing tech breakthroughs (music and computers made easy) but its relentless push to disrupt itself before others have a chance to do so.”

We’re excited by many of the things we see happening in the region, from work in alternative energy to sustainable/renewable products that bring the agriculture and polymer/chemical industries together to the rapidly growing base of Information & Communication Technology companies in the region. But as we’ve pointed out before, if we really want to rebuild the region, we are going to have to have greater cooperation and joint efforts between both large and small companies that, like Steve Jobs, excel by mastering the art of disruption.