Want to know what’s keeping Africa’s business leaders awake at night? Uberization, that’s what, says Nicholas Nesbitt, IBM’s general manager for East Africa, in a CapitalFM guest column.

Concerns about disruption are so intense that new buzzwords such as “Uberization” are entering the business vernacular — a sign of the impact that disruptive taxi service, Uber, is having, not just on taxi services but on business across the world.

The head of a leading transportation company described why new disruptors like Uber are striking terror into the world’s business leaders:

“It’s where a competitor with a completely different business model enters your industry and flattens you.”

What’s really under assault here is the business model — the very principles on which the incumbents founded their success, Nesbitt said. The disruptors are striking at the jugular of the fundamental assumptions that went into the DNA of traditional companies.

Today’s disruptors are reshaping entire markets. Many of them had their start in Africa or expand to see the continent become their fastest-growing markets. Their influence can rapidly spread across the globe, Nesbitt said, according to CapitalFM:

For example Safaricom has disrupted Mobile Payments with M-Pesa, forever blurring the distinction between banks and telcos. Start-up Pesabazzar is challenging the traditional insurance brokerage model. Kenyan innovators like BRCK are re-inventing not just power supplies but how education and training is delivered to schools and businesses. And companies like Tugende are innovating new financial models to empower small business. The list goes on and grows daily.

Part of what’s driving the rise of wannabe disrupters is that the barriers have never been lower. Today’s disrupters can have a global impact, need less investment and require fewer resources, Nesbitt said.

Many disrupters start out  tiny teams and grow fast. Support for innovators make it easy to turn an idea into a prototype that can find an audience. This helps new ideas and approaches to spread like wildfire. Granted not many make the leap.

“Of course, today’s disrupters can’t be complacent either,” Nesbitt said. “Tomorrow they are potential fodder for the new game changer, unless they too can outthink the next disruption that is inevitable.”