Are you losing hope? You're not alone. We're constantly beaten to death with bad economic indicators and exhausting political yammer from the left and right—neverendingly delivered, in real time, by our social media masters. It's enough to wear down even the most optimistic proponents of hope: that intangible lauded by religion, Hallmark cards and certain political campaigns.

A recent study by the National Small Business Assn. finds that 60 percent of small business owners feel confident about the future, down from 75 percent in December. Moreover, 34 percent believe there will be another recession in the next year, up from 14 percent in December.

Thrive? Grow? Fuggetaboutit. In today's business environment, if you can survive and maintain—in other words, if you can keep running in place fast enough—you're considered a winner.

But it takes more than survival to move ahead and meet the future; it takes disruption.

Take a look at the number of new businesses that get started because somebody loses a job. Tracking the average age of entrepreneurs, academic and writer Vivek Wadhwa found that even in 2008, at the height of the entrepreneurial youth renaissance, the number of business founders age 50 and older was double that of those under age 25. And the trend is continuing.

This isn't necessarily happening because the entrepreneurs have gotten smarter over the years—although there's that—but in large part because the jobs they once thought they would retire from have disappeared. 

So what's the secret to creating good disruption? According to a recent Forbes study of the world's most innovative companies, the leaders of these organizations—including Fabrizio Freda of Estee Lauder, S.D. Shibulal of Infosys and Jeff Bezos of Amazon—have five "discovery skills" that keep them engaged:

  1. They ask provocative questions
  2. They observe the world "like anthropologists to detect new ways of doing things"
  3. They network "with people who don't look or think like them"
  4. They experiment with new ideas and experiences
  5. And then they use these behaviors to trigger new associations, which help them connect the unconnected—and produce disruptive ideas.

Add it all up and it can be summarized by the leadership of people who are creative, confident and supported enough to look beyond what works to see what could work even better. This is especially important in a world that's changing as quickly as ours.

Although there's something to be said about carefully considered and implemented processes and the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy, following in anybody's footsteps isn't the same as blazing an original trail.

 
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