Will your company be next to fail or have you already identified the next disruptive technology?
What do excellent managers do? They develop the
sustaining technologies that improve performance of their products in the ways
that matter to their customers. They listen to customers and investing
aggressively in technologies that give those customers what they say they want.
Disruptive
technologies
However, are distinctly different from sustaining technologies.
Disruptive technologies change the value proposition in a market. When they
first appear, they usually offer lower performance in terms of the attributes that
mainstream customers care about. The book display some good examples on how
disruptive innovations changed industries.
Even though the book The innovator´s Dilemma was published in 1997 it is very relevant
to look into today. We are now looking at some excellent examples on how
disruptive technologies are changing industries. A good example of the brutal
impact of a disruptive technology is what internet shopping has done to traditional
brick and mortar stores. Shopping on the internet has changed how consumers and
retailers do business and have challenged existing structures. Retailers, which
have not grasped the opportunities of the internet, are now facing huge challenges.
We have in Denmark a book retailer “Indeks Retail” which has much
too late seen the disruptive technology coming and the mentioned retailer is
now closing shops in Denmark. Why? Because the management properly thought that
customers will prefer personal service in the shop instead of buying a book on
the internet. As Clayton Christensen mention in his book: They listened to the
customers. However, they were wrong and neglected the new disruptive technology.
You properly have similar examples from your own market.
McKinsey
& Company on Disruptive technologies
McKinsey & Company published in May 2013 a report
on Disruptive technologies: Advances that
will transform life, business, and the global economy. McKinsey &
Company argues in the report that disruptive technologies will have extensive
impact on our economy and the way we do business. The report outlines 12 different
technologies that are disruptive. I will not go through all of them but just
point out the one technology that will have an impact on the industry in which
I work, higher education:
Disruptive
Technology: Automation of knowledge work
Intelligent software systems that can perform
knowledge work tasks involving unstructured commands and subtle judgments.
Knowledge work automation could have important effects
in education, one large service sectors that is under pressure to improve productivity
and quality. Knowledge work automation can augment teacher abilities and
enhance or replace lectures with “adaptive” learning programs dynamic
instruction systems that alter the pace of teaching to match the student’s progress
and suggest additional drills based on student responses. Another area of
potential impact is automated grading. A company called Measurement Incorporated
won a $100,000 prize from the Hewlett Foundation in 2012 for developing
technology that enables a computer to grade student-written responses,
including essays, as well as a skilled human grader can.
The economic impact of such tools in education would
come from improving instructional quality and enabling teachers to provide more
one-on-one attention and coaching. New self-teaching tools could also enable
fundamental changes in scheduling: courses could be tied to subject mastery,
rather than semesters or quarters, allowing students to progress at their own
pace. Smart learning systems will also change education industry. One can attend
an online seminar from Yale and still be in his/her home in Copenhagen.
It leads me to my question: Why do well-managed companies
fail? Some companies fail because they do not take advantage of disruptive technology.
Which company will be the next to fail, could it be your company?
