From ZeroHedge (click through to enlarge):
Goldman's Top Disruptive Themes
The following eight secular disruptive themes are what Goldman Sachs believe have the potential to reshape their categories and command greater investor attention in the coming years. Critically Goldman focuses on the impact of creative destruction - a term coined by the economist Joseph Schumpeter, which emphasized the fact that innovation constantly drives breeding of new leaders and replacement of the old. These eight themes - through product or business innovation - are poised to transform addressable markets or open up entirely new ones, offering growth insulated from the broader macro environment and creating value for their stakeholders.
Via Goldman Sachs,
In our view, the process of creative destruction is primarily driven by product or business model innovation - often abetted by technology - that results in a superior value offering for consumers, be it higher performance, greater convenience or lower cost. This enhanced value proposition is the source from which economic benefits then flow, first to the innovator and over time to its consumers and competitors. The new product or model often proliferates into a new paradigm until subsequent innovation in turn threatens its dominant position.
From the fall of Polaroid, to the rise of Wal-Mart, to the age of the Internet, which among other things ushered in an information revolution, changed the way we buy/consume, led to the proliferation of mobile devices and social networks, we are seeing a constant evolution of ideas that creates market leaders as others lose their leadership positions. Indeed, the pace of change is becoming increasingly rapid such that relatively recent products can become redundant – for example, the slowing sales of PCs, point-and-shoot digital cameras and music players amid the continued cannibalization from tablets and smartphones.
The Eight Themes:
In more detail: Eight Disruptive Themes
- E-cigarettes – The potential to transform the tobacco industry
- Cancer Immunotherapy – The future of cancer treatment?
- LED Lighting – A large, early-stage and multi-decade opportunity
- Alternative Capital – Rise of a new asset class means growing risk for reinsurers
- Natural Gas Engines – Attractive economics drive strong, long-term penetration
- Software Defined Networking (SDN) – Re-inventing networking for the cloud era
- 3D Printing – Disruption materializing
- Big Data – Solutions trying to keep up with explosive data growth and complexity
(1) E-cigarettes: The potential to transform the tobacco industry. Imagine a product that is possibly >99% less harmful than cigarettes, delivers a similar use experience and offers a better economic bargain—this is the proposition of electronic cigarettes (ecigs). We believe e-cigs have the potential to alter the status quo of the US tobacco market and accelerate the volume decline of traditional cigarettes. We estimate that e-cigs could account for more than 10% of total tobacco industry volume and 15% of the total profit pool by 2020.
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(2) Cancer Immunotherapy: The future of cancer treatment? Cancer immunotherapy has become the dominant story in pharma, with impressive responses and survival data in some of the most intractable cancers. GS initial projections of $10-15 bn by 2025 in melanoma, lung and renal may only be the start. Although initially being studied in later lines of treatment, these agents could be used similarly to how chemotherapy agents are used to today – first line therapy across a diverse range of tumor types.
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(3) LED Lighting: A large, early-stage and multi-decade opportunity. Driven by their small and energy-efficient footprint, LEDs have evolved through several adoption cycles over the past decade, starting with handsets in the early 2000s and moving to TVs in the most recent cycle. We see the next phase of LED growth in general lighting, which is now entering the beginning of a multistage adoption curve that will extend over the next several decades....MUCH MORE*McKinsey--"Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy"
