English | EN The difference between technology and organizations
Jan 21, 2015
The evolution that innovators have to deal with is not about new challengers capturing the market, but also in the rate of disruption. Disruptive innovations are now occurring much more rapidly due to digital acceleration, its intimate relationship with business models and customer experience. Smartphones, cloud computing, social media, the Internet of Things and (Big Data) analytics are developing much faster than organizations can keep up with. This situation is called Martec’s Law, named after the weblog of marketing technologist Scott Brinker.
The exponential growth of technology is directly derived from Moore’s Law, which predicts that the capacity of computers doubles every eighteen months if costs remain constant. In contrast, organizations change slowly. A group of researchers named this growth curve “Eroom’s Law” in an article in the Nature journal. It is Moore’s Law, spelled backwards. The article analyzes the cause of the diminishing successes of R&D in the pharmaceutical industry. Management fixation turns out to be the most significant reason for the fact that new breakthroughs take so long to be realized.
Organizations in times of exponential acceleration
It may be an explanation of why organizations lag behind their rivals — because they place too much faith in the old repertoire. No matter the industry, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices.
Cutting-edge technological development today is an exponential, digital and combinatorial process. This poses the question how to design to disrupt.
Technological acceleration forces companies to constantly adjust their competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is changing from a static fact to a liquid understanding. Design-to-last is evolving into design-for-change. You may not be too late, but you may very well be too slow. Innovation must become the most important process within a company
Design to Disrupt
Find out more in the new VINT report that deals with everything that business leaders need to know about disruption and explores how to design to disrupt. Readers can expect the following insights:
- An overview of all relevant disruption theory and insights accompanied with speaking examples of accelerated innovation
- A set of design principles that is imperative to effectuate disruptive innovation
- Considerations for business leaders to bring innovation to the centre of their organizations
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