Heretofore, I have simply discussed just enough (I am nowhere near thorough analysis of disruptive technologies or the sustainers of music editors and voice changers and inexpensive bandwidth) to facilitate the understanding that technology indeed evolves in waves of disruption.
Ever since getting accustomed to, I have always believed that there truly exist Clay Christensen disruptive technologies (the explanatory first three parts could have been excluded). What is more of my concern is how people embrace disruptive technologies, and how and to what extent these technologies transform the corporate and social world.
Disruptive technologies change the way people go about doing their businesses. Then what happens after the change, and before the next wave of disruption? Napster caused Sony BMG and Universal to revamp their distribution models. But the Napster impact did not stop there; people of non-disruptee industries also learned to make use of file-swapping technologies. Lotus Notes inventor Ray Ozzie's Groove Networks, for example, let users share work instead of only MP3 music like Napster.
Such is how disruptive technologies can be good: it stimulates corporate improvement to lower costs and speed up business cycles by allowing fast and easy exchange of information. Take General Motors’ own version of Napster, eViz, for instance. GM engineers could now share work with their partners beyond the GM firewall. This effectively lowers barriers to working with the automaker, and expands the supply chain. In Nick Andreou’s, vice president in charge of GM Engineering's collaboration strategy, words, "There are service providers everywhere." GM could thus take on more projects, since each costs less due to the company’s high access to the global supply market.
IBM has also established a similar network called e-Workplace, an electronic protocol that manages meetings, synergetic web sites and instant messaging applets. The computer giant saves up to $60 million a year, according to its marketing manager, Gregg Cherbonneau, who wants to expand the sale of these services worldwide.
Well, disruptive technologies are not exactly as they sound; they can be rewarding, very rewarding, if you know how to “tame” them to fit your purposes. However, despite the huge financial incentives of increasing adaptation and utility of new technologies, the transformation of the corporate world does face considerable cultural obstacles. Like previous forms of knowledge management, these "e-collaboration" efforts face some big cultural barriers. Partners and customers control a lot of access to the internal processes of their collaborators. Too much transparency can be uncomfortable.
Indeed, there are immense limitations, beyond cultural, to the disruptive technology-driven transformation of the corporate world. Some lie inherently in the disruptive technologies themselves. As these emerging technologies are new, there might not be sufficient support platform for them to thrive. Consequently, they might go into oblivion before their full potential realized. Just imagine how far VoIP could go without inexpensive broadband connection. The sustainers the like of music editors and networked computers to Napster, voice changers and affordable bandwidth to Skype or Yahoo! Messenger are not always immediately available to feed the growth of disruptive technologies.
In addition, legality also poses barriers to the application of disruptive technologies. Well, this is not a kind of limitation of technology, but of society yet to accommodate its form. The battle against Napster by the Recording Industry Association of America spawned several undesirable proposals to curb the Napster impact, of which one was the VeriSign-like peer identity protocol, a work of the Public Key Infrastructures. It was undesirable because it excluded users who could not or would not participate, removing altogether the freedom Napster brought to Net surfers.
Admittedly, if one looks at the above-mentioned legal limitation, it might be argued that that was necessary against illegal use of intellectual property, and that it was the way Napster was used that made it wrong (not the technology itself). That is cool, as I also acknowledge the fact that men do apply technology in ways not too right. This is especially relevant to disruptive technologies, as they are new, and there are yet any guidelines on proper utility.
Disruptive technologies could truly transform the work of men tremendously. Disruptive technologies also have their own limitations to address, both in and of itself. “Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other,” C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971. With that quote, I would like to end this series on Disruptive Technologies.
About the Author:
Josh Nowell is a Media Morpher writer who specializes in technology research. This article is the second in the 4-part series on Disruptive Technologies of his.
He could be contacted at media@audio4fun.com.
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