LAST week, when insurance giants Discovery Holdings and Liberty Holdings presented their annual financial results, one could not help but notice the difference innovative leaders bring to the business.

In Discovery's corner you had the highly innovative and entrepreneurial Adrian Gore, while the Liberty team was under the leadership of Bruce Hemphill. Gore was aggressive and talked about all the opportunities the year held, while the Liberty response centred on better mining of the client database and then trying to roll out products that suited these clients.

I've let the respective presentations roll around in my head and it kept coming back to one line from Adrian Gore when he said: "Discovery is very good at disrupting the market."

The economy as it stands right now is perfectly suited for disruptive players, and you can see a number of them emerging.

People and companies are reviewing what is important; this encompasses the way they have been treated by the companies they deal with, as well as the relationships they have with banks and their suppliers.

I asked a number of leading entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who they believed to be the most disruptive entrepreneurs. Responses in the high-level listed space included Capitec's Riaan Stassen and Adrian Gore.

Those in the unlisted environment included the SuperSport team, which has made big strides into Africa, Jan Kotze (Instant Life), Justin Hartman (Afrigator), Sean Riley (AD:Dynamo) and Adriaan Pienaar (WooThemes). The two up-and-coming personalities to watch are apparently Tyler Reed (Aduity) and mobile guru Emma Kaye.

I received the following note from Dennis Comninos, co-director of the strategic project management course at the UCT Graduate School of Business, which I thought tied in quite nicely on the subject.

Let your creativity floor the competition

It read: "In business, there's a bit of buzz about getting things back on track; back to the way they were before the global financial crash of 2008/9. But let's pause and take a breath. Maybe it's time to reflect on what we have just been through and think about what we need to do differently, and better."

Comninos went on to say that he expects to see fewer "mega projects" and that "bang for buck" is taking precedence with businesses which can adapt to rapid change.

These comments on their own are probably not ground-breaking for people in the small business sector. They do, however, serve to highlight that more and more opportunities are opening up for entrepreneurial and disruptive-type businesses that can change the status quo.

Comninos concluded: "Culturally, so much emphasis has been on time and cost: having it now, making it the biggest and spending the most. Now, they're starting to realise that value - and project return on investment - is important, and they never spoke about that before. It's been a rude awakening."

On that note, I am going to sign off with a challenge to you: if you operate or manage a business in South Africa, go and have a look at your business practices and models on how your product or service reaches the client.

See if you can identify any items where things are done a certain way, simply because this has always been the case or just because it's the industry standard.

You may just hit on the competitive advantage that gives your business a welcome boost.

- Fin24.com