Dave Jones and Pierre Loewe write in Chief Executive Magazine …

“Discontinuities are big, foundational shifts which have the potential to fundamentally change the rules of the game. They occur when trends from different areas combine, resulting in game-changing, long-lasting modifications to the external landscape. If you can identify them earlier and exploit them better than your competitors, you will win. If you don’t, you will be left behind.

You need to assess how the current crisis has affected the discontinuities you were anticipating before the recession hit. Say that until recently, you thought that being “green” meant addressing your carbon footprint. But did you know that by the time we emerge from the recession, “green” will likely mean using efficiently multiple scarce resources, such as water? If your stakeholders are asking about your carbon footprint today, then tomorrow they’ll be asking about your water footprint. You need to get ahead of this opportunity – IBM and Toyota already have.

Lesson: Analyze how the recent events have changed the external landscape — impacted the discontinuities you had previously identified, or created new, unexpected ones.”