The giant wave of disruption in a literal version: surf lessons

The journalistic notes, the academic researches and the reports of consultants on innovation have a favourite metaphor territory: that of natural cataclysms. Exponential technologies are “meteorites” and traditional business models are “tectonic plates” which move and cause earthquakes in the economy. But perhaps the most cited analogy is that of the disruptive tsunami, where most people will have to surf giant waves to keep us afloat.

There is a sport where this last metaphor and reality merge into a single entity. For history, philosophy and openness to creativity, surfing has dozens of points of contact with the innovation agenda. Beginning with its rate of change and unique reinvention: in recent years, the diffusion of tow surfing (surfing by tow, where a person transfers the watercraft to the surfer hundreds of meters offshore, impossible to reach only through swimming with the table) allowed to multiply several times the height of surfable waves, which in their most recent records exceed 30 meters.