An unforgettable moment was the realization that 20 pound gargantuan phonebooks were a thing of the past. They would be made extinct by the prevalence of the Internet. The introduction of that convenience was a major disruption to the White Pages/Yellow Pages Phonebook industry! What other business technology disruptions does the future hold for businesses? For your business!? Do you know the 5 business technology disruptions currently at work? If not, you may be caught off guard!
- The next big business technological advance. This falls into the category of expecting the unexpected. The Internet of Things is a way of thinking that has been percolating in large minds for the past 20 years. . Those alert to the implications of this potential major undertaking will be less disrupted when it begins to enter the mainstream of life. And it has already entered in many significant ways. (Read Reliable Tech News article)Wharton business school tells us that the more data that is collected about the shopper’s preferential journey regarding the products he purchases, the places where he transacts the purchase, the means by which he pays and the means by which he takes possession, describe behavioral changes showing the Internet of Things to be a much more powerful concept than just knowing a person’s contact information – their virtual business card. The power of this kind of identification represents disruption to the way we think and behave essentially. The Internet of Things will be an ongoing disruption on the technological scene.
- The next big business technology wave. Technology is always taking an existing idea and changing its shape by recognizing a better way to do it. These “waves of the future” must be anticipated so that the disruption is planned and not devastating. You may think it unfair that you should be expected to know something that hasn’t yet happened. But the disrupter is not the actual event or thing. The disrupter is the reality that technology is constantly changing, and that as it changes, it disrupts.Vivek Wadhwa, in a great article at WashingtonPost.com, said, “Large companies need to disrupt themselves or be disrupted.” The anticipation of the event by projecting the path of change that favors the financial goals of the company, minimizes disruption.Note how Amazon.com, a technology company, disrupted bookstores – and how few of the disrupted responded well. There’s also Apple that shook up the music industry. GPS devices are antiques because mapping apps on cellphones have displaced them. The technology industry is increasingly disrupting itself. Fifteen years ago, Salesforce.com shook up the enterprise software industry by offering “software as a service.” It allowed software to be purchased on an as-needed and per-user basis rather than as an expensive monolithic product. 15 years later Microsoft feels the disruption enough to begin offering Office 365 in the cloud!
- The next big business technological failure should have been anticipated by Adobe. Instead, Adobe, on May 14 found its cloud software servers shut down – a great disruption to Adobe’s credibility and to its many loyal customers. After forcing its creative software customers to use the most current version only on the cloud, the epic 24 hour failure from poorly maintenanced database servers kept a huge work force across multiple companies from doing their work. How significant a disruption is that?!One would hope that there is a silver lining to this disruption in that a critical lesson has been learned. Surely, there must be a backup to even the simplest resource, shouldn’t there be? No turning back at all? One user Tweeted – Thanks for showing the world that the cloud sucks. This is why I won’t use cloud services. Unreliable, epic fail. Thanks for the laugh. Another Tweet – I think it’s time for Adobe to stop trying to ram their “creative cloud” down their loyal customers throats.
- The next big business technology hybrid. So-called “phablets” (hybrid of a phone and a tablet) now account for more than a third of the smartphone market after sales more than quadrupled in Q1. According to Canalys, sales of smartphones with 5” and larger screens mushroomed 369 percent year on year in the three months to March 31. Granted, it is difficult to know which technology will be mated to which. But the disruption of having a phone that cannot check email or take pictures is not imaginary. Nor is the inconvenience of lugging around an 8 pound 15” screen laptop. This disruption is more an issue of timing, because it is the consumer that drives what technologies are brought together. When the consumer wants to take calls, read email, send Instant Messages, check Social Media, take pictures, view videos and movies, and review work documents all on the same device, the phablet is born. The disruption? Not having the device that does it all because you recently purchased a less replete piece of technology.
- The next big business technology disappearance. That age-old question, “Why do we do it this way?” when answered, “This is how we’ve always done it,” can only be changed by the motto – Work smarter, not harder. Faxing was first patented in 1843. The filing cabinet in 1892. Why hold on to the two oldest technologies in the office? Why not let them disappear? There is a fear of transformation and newness which represents change.Wikipedia tells us that Alexander Bain invented the facsimile machine in the 19th century. It has served business well for the past 170 years, although there are some who say hanging onto this “retro-1800s business practice can cost your company money.”What is the downside of faxing and filing? Why are we fearful of letting go of the tangible copy? The downside of faxing is the time it takes through multiple steps that are removed from more current technology and the dependence upon older technology that widens the gap between what has been available and what will be available. I have hundreds of photographs that sit because it is too time consuming and costly to transfer them into digital format. They are unused and unseen because hidden away in boxes. My digital photos are instantly available in a folder.Filing in physical cabinets holds advantage only to those who have never considered back-up and disaster recovery techniques. A physical document destroyed is gone. But a digital document can be redundantly stored on-site and off-site and restored quickly. Another consideration is the ease of finding documents by digital search at your desk as opposed to physical search in a dark warehouse.
