Disruptive Technology
Definition:
A disruptive technology is a significant innovation, discovery or technology that creates new markets and displaces a previous technology or manual process. The history of human progress is largely a catalog of disruptive technologies. The invention of the wheel was a disruptive technology that allowed more goods to be carried with less effort. Likewise, the plow massively increased the amount of food that a community could produce.
In today's, technology-rich environment, there are many areas of opportunities for disruptive technologies. Outsourcing (and in sourcing) is in itself a disruptive process, that is driven and tightly linked to disruptive technologies. In the 1980s, a new generation of copier technology made it possible to move printing functions into the corporation, placing corporate copy centers and walk-up copiers in every large firm. The addition of color copiers and a sophisticated range of scanners and printers vastly increased the range of products that could be produced internally, making copy centers more difficult to manage, leading to a new wave of outsourcing.
Rather than a linear process where work moves from the client to the outsource in ever greater quantities, disruptive technology is better described as a cycle, where work moves back and forth between the client and the outsourcer as new disruptive technologies are introduced. In some of these cycles, a disruptive technology replaces all of functions and becomes so inexpensive or simple that it is largely forgotten.
For example, in most firms printing an original copy and then sending it to a copy center to produce additional copies, has been replaced by simply printing multiple copies.
In corporations, the primary disruptive technologies that have been driving new outsourcing, especially Business Process Outsourcing or BPO. Key technologies have been: computers, telecommunications and cloud services. By the late 1980s, many workers preformed their functions on computers, creating the foundation for future outsourcing. The drop in the cost of telecommunications made it feasible to cost effectively move a large quantity of work offshore. Once most firms used some form of computer and telecommunications based outsourcing, it was only a small step to the next outsourcing migration, Clould Services. Cloud Services take many forms, but are shared services (server rooms, storage, hosting sites, CRMs, email, schedule management, streaming media, virtual office software, etc.) that offer more features and far greater economies of scale than earlier dedicated or small scale shared services.
A disruptive technology is often a collection of technologies and might be better called a disruptive product. Sometimes the disruptive technology fails, and is then further refined. For example, the typical desktop computer (a stationary box with memory, a cpu, memory, and hard drive and other equipment) was replaced by the laptop, but was not quite a disruptive technology. It allowed greater freedom, but largely worked the same way. This was followed by the netbook, a very small laptop, but with a weak processor and limited memory. Some netbooks sold well, but once again were used in similar ways and might be thought of as "junior laptops." Eventually, this led to the Tablet, which combined: a smaller and lighter design than the netbook; a touch screen; the "apps" model that sells software for as little as $. 99; longer battery life and mobile connectivity options. Tablets have changed the computer market, and developed new markets, but are still in their ascendancy; it will be years before the full impact of the Tablet is known.
New disruptive technologies, such as mobile technology and robots, are expected to create greater disruptions than ever before, but predictions as to which technology will dominate or when the next technology takes hold have been notoriously inaccurate. Almost always, disruptive technology can only be identified in hindsight. Only after the new technology becomes the disruptive technology, do we understand its importance.
A disruptive technology is a significant innovation, discovery or technology that creates new markets and displaces a previous technology or manual process. The history of human progress is largely a catalog of disruptive technologies. The invention of the wheel was a disruptive technology that allowed more goods to be carried with less effort. Likewise, the plow massively increased the amount of food that a community could produce.
In today's, technology-rich environment, there are many areas of opportunities for disruptive technologies. Outsourcing (and in sourcing) is in itself a disruptive process, that is driven and tightly linked to disruptive technologies. In the 1980s, a new generation of copier technology made it possible to move printing functions into the corporation, placing corporate copy centers and walk-up copiers in every large firm. The addition of color copiers and a sophisticated range of scanners and printers vastly increased the range of products that could be produced internally, making copy centers more difficult to manage, leading to a new wave of outsourcing.
Rather than a linear process where work moves from the client to the outsource in ever greater quantities, disruptive technology is better described as a cycle, where work moves back and forth between the client and the outsourcer as new disruptive technologies are introduced. In some of these cycles, a disruptive technology replaces all of functions and becomes so inexpensive or simple that it is largely forgotten.
For example, in most firms printing an original copy and then sending it to a copy center to produce additional copies, has been replaced by simply printing multiple copies.
In corporations, the primary disruptive technologies that have been driving new outsourcing, especially Business Process Outsourcing or BPO. Key technologies have been: computers, telecommunications and cloud services. By the late 1980s, many workers preformed their functions on computers, creating the foundation for future outsourcing. The drop in the cost of telecommunications made it feasible to cost effectively move a large quantity of work offshore. Once most firms used some form of computer and telecommunications based outsourcing, it was only a small step to the next outsourcing migration, Clould Services. Cloud Services take many forms, but are shared services (server rooms, storage, hosting sites, CRMs, email, schedule management, streaming media, virtual office software, etc.) that offer more features and far greater economies of scale than earlier dedicated or small scale shared services.
A disruptive technology is often a collection of technologies and might be better called a disruptive product. Sometimes the disruptive technology fails, and is then further refined. For example, the typical desktop computer (a stationary box with memory, a cpu, memory, and hard drive and other equipment) was replaced by the laptop, but was not quite a disruptive technology. It allowed greater freedom, but largely worked the same way. This was followed by the netbook, a very small laptop, but with a weak processor and limited memory. Some netbooks sold well, but once again were used in similar ways and might be thought of as "junior laptops." Eventually, this led to the Tablet, which combined: a smaller and lighter design than the netbook; a touch screen; the "apps" model that sells software for as little as $. 99; longer battery life and mobile connectivity options. Tablets have changed the computer market, and developed new markets, but are still in their ascendancy; it will be years before the full impact of the Tablet is known.
New disruptive technologies, such as mobile technology and robots, are expected to create greater disruptions than ever before, but predictions as to which technology will dominate or when the next technology takes hold have been notoriously inaccurate. Almost always, disruptive technology can only be identified in hindsight. Only after the new technology becomes the disruptive technology, do we understand its importance.
