Spotlight
Reinvention :
Lessons learned from an ancient catastrophe
By Izak Smit , PPS Group CEO
If that asteroid had not hit the earth , we would not have been here today …
Reinventing means change , something old must give way for something new to emerge . Josef Schumpeter , the economist and one-time Austrian Minister of Finance , coined the term “ creative destruction ”. Innovation and reinvention are usually messy and often associated with a degree of suffering . Think about the millions of jobs lost or those that totally disappeared during the previous century as industries were reinvented : horse carriage and harness makers , blacksmiths , telegraph operators , railroad employees , switchboard operators , farm workers … On the flipside , think about the millions of new jobs created : pilots , computer programmers , car mechanics , medical technicians , professional athletes , TV announcers , optometrists , electricians , truck drivers , engineers …
And destruction is not bigger than when that asteroid hit the earth 65.5 million years ago . The impact and the dreadful blackout that followed finished off the dinosaurs . Once the dust had settled ( literally ), mammals could finally enjoy the sunshine without the threat of being eaten by reptilian monsters . It must have felt as though the doors to a grim and forbidding prison had at last swung open , ending a curfew far more extensive than that imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic .
When the dinosaurs were still in charge , mammals barely survived , clinging on at the edge of extinction . Back then , mammals were mostly small and squirrel-like . They could only emerge at night . Many developed evolutionary tricks to help survive the terrifying dinosaurs . Most gave live birth to their offspring , so their eggs did not become something else ’ s breakfast . And since they could not leave their hiding places , they developed their own personal soup kitchens in the form of
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