When Will Innovation Disrupt Your Life?

by | Jan 24, 2013 | 17 comments

How will market and technology changes impact you and your ability to earn a living?
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And, what will you do about it?
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This is more of a question for you to ponder than me giving you an answer. But like all things, you first have to know you have a problem before you can solve it. So let me state it for you.
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Something out there is killing your job today. It may be new technology that will make the need for your skills obsolete. Or is it a change in the market and the cost of getting your work done?
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You want to look away now, don’t you? No one wants to face up to the fact that their income stream might be in jeopardy. But disruptive innovations are impacting you today – even if you do look away.
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Source: Mashable.com

What are Disruptive Innovations?
Changes in technology, products, or markets that disrupt people and industry. Or to say it simpler, they put people out of work and companies in downward spirals.
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For example, the Amazon Kindle has changed those in the publishing world. iTunes has impacted those in music industry.
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When I am speaking to groups about innovation, people always tell me afterwards that they constantly work to keep up with new things. But are they missing it? What I usually hear is that we keep up with the micro changes in technology, but not the macro changes.
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Disruptive Innovations Come in Three Flavors
  1. Technology changes – These are the ones we see most often. These are things like upgrades to systems or new systems. Examples are things like smart phones. New technologies have pushed the old standard Blackberry in the dirt. The fact is, we often see these coming and someone on top of the game is ready. But these technology changes are often smaller changes – therefore I call them micro changes.
  2. Process changes – These are more subtle and often confused with technology changes. For example, consider the Kindle. It was not so much the new technology. After all, we could already format documents and read them. Instead it was Amazon’s push to develop a new process to deliver the documents that caused the change. I distinguish this from technology because we all knew we could read PDFs and other documents on devices, yet many of us thought that we would never really want to read books that way. It was the easy delivery process mixed with the pricing strategy that changed the game.
  3. Market changes – By market I mean the collective buying opinions of the people. This is where true disruptive innovation happens, and we rarely see it coming. These are the macro changes. They can happen with what looks to be no warning. And while we are out there keeping up with the new technologies in our field, we may not realize our field has changed due he market forces.
For example, imagine years ago you were a typewriter repair expert. You were well trained and kept up with the technology of typewriters – gearing mechanisms, etc. You had seen the technology changes of those toys made by those little companies called Microsoft and Apple and you had seen some process changes related to printing/copy machines. But you never saw it coming that suddenly your market space and your entire skill set was going away. It was not the technology or the process; it was that the market slowly began to adapt and then without warning it was over.
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We try to keep up with changes – but it is a hard thing to do. True changes rarely happen in the large companies, they instead happen on the fringes. Crazy ideas and toys that you and I say we do not have the time to mess with because we are busy. That is where the fringes live.
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Are you like me? A few years ago I was deleting requests to be part of LINKEDIN. I did not have time for that. And what about Facebook and Twitter? Many have still not accepted Twitter as a force to be reckoned with.
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Question: This all leads to a key question I was asked the other day. “How do we keep up with and become aware when we are busy doing our jobs?” How do you do it?

About the Author

Dale Callahan

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17 Comments

  1. Allen Olasunkami

    Sources of innovation – where do you see them coming from
    – The PAPER Tablet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clX9O_hq2Yw)
    – Flexible OLED (Youm by Samsung) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3a9WrfzZOM)

    Though these technologies are not fully developed, I believe in the near future their integration into our everyday life will have a huge impact on how we interact with each other as well as our devises.

    What will life in 2023 look like? Work, personal, etc think of the changes from 2003 to now?
    – Sharing a video or slideshow with the family can happen by simply placing the devise mobile in close proximity to another tablet or television screen and the main display changes.
    – How we read the news, or emails can become more natural. E.g, by bending the corner of the pad for flipping through pages quicker as opposed to using scroll bar.
    – Advertising billboards can be placed on any kind of surface and would be more dynamic as opposed of flat and boring.
    – Another application can be with clothing. Integrating it into fabric and have your emails, text messages, weather alerts and walking directions displayed on the inner sleeve of your Jacket.
    – Having phone calls with others and displaying message attachments or a video feed of them by placing your hand on another proximity sensing screen.
    – A major impact of this technology will be in the manufacturing process for our Televisions, computer monitors, Mobile phones and any devise that uses a display. This could adversely affect the workforce involved in the manufacturing process of display devices.
    – This will also significantly reduce the demand for the raw materials used in these displays; hopefully resulting in a smaller carbon footprint

  2. Allen Olasunkami

    Sources of innovation – where do you see them coming from
    – The PAPER Tablet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clX9O_hq2Yw)
    – Flexible OLED (Youm by Samsung) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3a9WrfzZOM)

    Though these technologies are not fully developed, I believe in the near future their integration into our everyday life will have a huge impact on how we interact with each other as well as our devises.

    What will life in 2023 look like? Work, personal, etc think of the changes from 2003 to now?
    – Sharing a video or slideshow with the family can happen by simply placing the devise mobile in close proximity to another tablet or television screen and the main display changes.
    – How we read the news, or emails can become more natural. E.g, by bending the corner of the pad for flipping through pages quicker as opposed to using scroll bar.
    – Advertising billboards can be placed on any kind of surface and would be more dynamic as opposed of flat and boring.
    – Another application can be with clothing. Integrating it into fabric and have your emails, text messages, weather alerts and walking directions displayed on the inner sleeve of your Jacket.
    – Having phone calls with others and displaying message attachments or a video feed of them by placing your hand on another proximity sensing screen.
    – A major impact of this technology will be in the manufacturing process for our Televisions, computer monitors, Mobile phones and any devise that uses a display. This could adversely affect the workforce involved in the manufacturing process of display devices.
    – This will also significantly reduce the demand for the raw materials used in these displays; hopefully resulting in a smaller carbon footprint

  3. Tiffany Dache

    SOURCES OF INNOVATION

    – I currently work in the steel industry and my company produces thousands of tons of steel each day. Every hour a particular product of steel has to be manually cut, dipped in acid, and tested for correct measurements, thickness, and overall quality. Well today I began to wonder what if there was some kind of automatic machine/device that cuts the steel and checks the quality of it. I imagined that this machine would have each customer’s requirements for the product they ordered and this would let the machine know what to look for as far as quality and accurateness. I decided to come home and research this and I found a little something.
    http://news.lap-laser.com/news/single/innovation-for-the-steel-industry-contactless-straightness-measurement-for-rod-steel-and-pipes/

    WHAT WILL LIFE IN 2023 LOOK LIKE?

    – Virtual doctor visits
    – Computerized sports referees
    – There will be no mailmen
    – Sensor in cars that will indicate the extent of injuries immediately after a crash. The sensor will automatically report the information to the EMT.

  4. Tiffany Dache

    SOURCES OF INNOVATION

    – I currently work in the steel industry and my company produces thousands of tons of steel each day. Every hour a particular product of steel has to be manually cut, dipped in acid, and tested for correct measurements, thickness, and overall quality. Well today I began to wonder what if there was some kind of automatic machine/device that cuts the steel and checks the quality of it. I imagined that this machine would have each customer’s requirements for the product they ordered and this would let the machine know what to look for as far as quality and accurateness. I decided to come home and research this and I found a little something.
    http://news.lap-laser.com/news/single/innovation-for-the-steel-industry-contactless-straightness-measurement-for-rod-steel-and-pipes/

    WHAT WILL LIFE IN 2023 LOOK LIKE?

    – Virtual doctor visits
    – Computerized sports referees
    – There will be no mailmen
    – Sensor in cars that will indicate the extent of injuries immediately after a crash. The sensor will automatically report the information to the EMT.

  5. Rohan Moitra

    Being
    in the IT industry for the past 7-8 years I am familiar with the term “Disruptive
    Innovation”. I knew it was always there
    but never realized that it is a major force to reckon with till the iPhone came
    out. Till that point Nokia was the
    market leader in mobile phones and look at them now. What happened why did the
    iPhone became so popular. Was it the app eco-system that it brought with it or
    the design and gesture control it had or maybe its simple design and ease of
    using it? Touch phones were present in the market when the iPhone came out but
    the combination of features that I mentioned earlier is what I believe made it
    so successful. From the pool of gadgets that come out each year or the
    different technologies and innovation that happen each year how do we know what
    will ultimately be disruptive to the current market? I think I know the
    direction in which we should move in order to tackle this problem some of them we have already discussed in the IEM course.

  6. Dale Callahan

    Got it Tiffany. Thanks

  7. Brandon Orum

    From reading your post the importance of innovation to our future has been reinforced. We now know that is vital to pay attention to everything around us because eventually it will change. Knowing how to looks at things from an innovator’s point of view prepares us for those technological and cultural changes that will occur. Not only does this knowledge prepare us but also gives us a chance to be the innovators and capitalize on change. Once you learn how to capitalize and profit on change success will always follow.

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