Disruptive Technologies and Applications: Innovation in the Tech Sector

Disruption is part of the natural evolution of technology.

Disruptive technologies or services are generally innovative or ground breaking.  It sounds negative but is in fact positive and great for those new in a market.

Disruption is happening everywhere. We don’t always think of things as being disruptive because they’ve led to good changes. When you look back at the PC, email, mobiles and then the iPhone, they were all disruptive. The PC was disruptive but it also created new opportunities for new players. Look how eBay and Amazon have revolutionised online and home delivery shopping.

However, it can hurt traditional vendors, those who are wedded to their traditional business models. For them, disruptive tech or services quite often mean cannibalising existing revenues and forcing their teams to sell differently. These older players often find themselves in catch up mode such as Nokia and Blackberry.

The big disruptions today in both business and our personal lives are cloud computing and social media.  Social media with chat and enterprise chat services like Slack, are becoming hugely disruptive in the workplace, taking the place of email.

These disruptive technologies or services ultimately improve our work and personal lives and deliver the potential for new business models. For example, in the past to get hold of technology required payment in full and up front. With cloud computing, we have different business models that allow you to pay for things over time.  Technology that was traditionally too expensive and only accessible to large companies, such as Call Recording or Big Data and Analytics, is now accessible to smaller businesses.

And if your business happens to be a disruptor, it may open you up to competition outside your traditional market.  With the cloud and social media, traditional competitors may no longer be your competitors; and the competition may now come from an international disrupter who can effectively access your customers and start selling similar services.

Ultimately, disruptive technologies and services allow new business models from new innovative providers who can deliver more choice and a more competitive, open market.

Common attributes for a successful disruptor include:

• Innovation:  common amongst disruptive companies.
• Change:  they always ask, ‘why do we have to do things the same?’
• Open:  always looking for new delivery and commercial models – and often waiting for the technology to catch up to deliver something new and exciting.
• Adoption:  it changes the way people work and socialise.