Google Maps runs on your smartphone, Bing can give you turn-by-turn directions, and for less than $100 you can buy a small appliance that will triangulate with satellites in space and pinpoint your location on the earth within 3 feet. If you told me 20 years ago this would be possible so inexpensively, I’m not sure I would have believed you.
However, all of this amazing technological capability causes disruptions in how we perform common business tasks. Those who can best adapt to use these new found technologies will succeed, while those who continue doing business as usual will eventually fade. For those who say, “that’s the way we always done it, and we are successful,” I would point out that US automakers said the same while Charles Deming’s statistical methods for improving quality where being adopted and transforming the Japanese automakers.
Disruptive technologies, or game changing technologies, are all around us today. Online geospatial services, cell phone text messaging services, Twitter, Facebook, real-time weather services, smartphones are disrupting the previous norms of our society. Businesses that can embrace these technological advancements and find innovative and value-added services to their existing customers will thrive; those who do not will eventually fade.
While every business will encounter their own unique challenges to adapt their business processes, there are two major challenges facing business leaders when looking to adopt emerging technologies.
The first major decision is how to decide which of these game changing (or disruptive) technologies to adopt. With most of these technological changes emerging in the IT field and being an IT professional, I live with my face over the figurative fire hose daily. I am constantly bombarded with new hardware, software, services, methodologies, and toolsets that could potentially transform businesses. Yet sometimes I’ll sit back and scratch my head wondering what problem was trying to be solved with any given new technology. Adoption for the simple sake of adoption usually does not have any financial benefit. In this category, I would put Facebook static Fan Pages for companies. How many buying decisions do you really think are based off of a social sites static content? However, if somehow you created a viral marketing campaign that included Facebook and your marketing message was passed along from person to person through the social network, that would be a success.
The second challenge is how to transform business practices to adopt these disruptive technologies? This is more interesting a question to me because it requires forethought, imagination, and true leadership. To do this, you must have a long term strategy plan which you regularly review and constantly look for ways to evolve your business practices. The changes should be incrementally adopted and your organization should constantly evolve to embrace the new capabilities. I have worked at businesses that ignored strategy and only focused on the day-to-day struggle of keeping up with existing processes. Eventually, this resulted in greater costs, customer impact, and internal turmoil as the business had to renew their entire business model because the competition had found new innovative ways to add more value to the customer and reduce costs incrementally over time with the adoption of new technologies.
As information technology advancements continue to reduce costs, improve productivity, and increase customer value, as a business leader, you must always look to evolve your business processes and strategically adopt disruptive technologies. While in the short-run, it may or may not directly impact your bottom line, it will eventually be the difference between success and failure.