What are your disruptive skills?

Don't forget that your disruptive skill may not be one skill, but an unusual intersection of ordinary skills.<p>It's tough to claim to be one of the world's best php programmers, unix gurus, or apparel e-commerce experts.<p>But there may not be many excellent php programmers who are also unix gurus and apparel e-commerce domain experts. For the right customer, that <i>combination</i> is your disruptive skill.

Every time someone says 'disrupt' my skill is at suppressing the desire to vomit a little.

She keeps using the word "disruptive", but actually only discusses uniqueness of skills. Probably just a bit of PR.

I got a big "Help us improve our site" overlay that greyed out the content I was trying to read. Here's a suggestion to improve any website that includes these sorts of ads: stop "disrupting" the people who want to read your content.

Interesting question. I also read through the HBR blog by W.J. Your disruptive skill is not easy to identify unless you also have the ability to expand your Johari window. Unless you minimize your unknown-unknown window, you don’t have the opportunity to realize the disruptive skills. What you do daily isn’t your disruptive skill. It is those unique skills that help you redefine yourself and also makes others see you differently. Disruption can happen only when you have realized it and for that, you need to be aware of the skill.

I can think about taxonomy and categorization, finding relations and differences. Building a mental landscape that cover the domain and try to be flexible and simple. But a good design requires times and some rules to follow, that rules may appear unnecessary but they are the one that allow you to go far.

It baffles me that someone can accurately assess that "you are strong in searchlight intelligence." It seems so difficult to measure. I can't imagine claiming that at an interview and supporting it with a few anecdotes.

agree with you ryanmcgreal but i liked the core message of the article--thought it had value--most hbr articles read similar