How is 'Disruptive Technology' Changing the Business Landscape?

Ciprian Porutiu, Vice President, Operations & Delivery, Change Management, Digital Transformation, Marsh McLennan

There are so many buzzwords that occupy the headlines of today’s business publications and C-suite executive minds. Among those, unsurprisingly, ‘disruptive technology’ has been revealed as the top 2023 priority for CEOs surveyed by McKinsey in their CEO Excellence Survey. The term is used (and abused) to convey many messages and emotions, but for simplification, I will define the disruptive technology concept as something that fundamentally changes the way an industry or a market operates. Think of the steam engine in the First Industrial Revolution or the assembly line in the second revolution; the third industrial revolution brought the personal computer and the internet that ushered its way to the fourth industrial revolution that today sees artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and genome editing out of the SF literature and into everyday life.

There are threats to incumbents that fail to keep up with the change, as well as opportunities for new players to leverage the wave of innovation to succeed. In both cases, disruptive technologies are usually the subject of a ‘digital transformation’ that is applied to the inside of the organizations as well as in relation to customers and partners external to the organizations. As masterfully explained by Prof. David L. Rogers in his book, with the rapid growth of ‘Customer Networks and the Platform Business Models, ‘ the system’s complexity compounds the disruption from one corner of the eco-system across the platform and networks, generating an avalanche of change. According to a Harvard Business Review study, traditional change management processes are no longer sufficient for the rapid and pervasive pace of digital transformation. Methods that have informed specific domains, such as Agile delivery and lean in software development, elimination of waste, and just in time production in the automotive industry, need to be applied to change management, adoption, and sustainability.

Change management cannot be designed in silo and as an expertise angle applied to research, development, and go-to-market strategies. It needs to be organically intertwined with the multifunctional teams involved in designing, building, testing, and deploying the products, as well as with the end users, partner organizations, and regulatory context. The change management practice needs a leap in quality and sophistication via:

I will Define the Disruptive Technology Concept as Something that Fundamentally Changes the Way an Industry or a Market Operates

1. Continuous refinement of qualitative assessments: mood, perception, and market trends

2. Objective quantitative data use: user behaviors analytics, application observability metrics, and support efforts analysis

3. A shorter feedback/build cycle: evolution from waterfall yearly projects to quarterly Program Increments and to molecular Continuous Improvements release model shaped by the qualitative and quantitative data.

The endorsement of a lean-agile approach to introducing change can have multiple positive effects that will drive the success of large organizations’ digital transformations and lead to a shrinkage of the depressing 70 percent percentage that points to the number of digital initiatives that fail!

By taking into account subjective (qualitative), objective (analytics), and short feedback cycles, not only will the transformation better respond to initial and evolving (understanding of) requirements, but it’ll set the change on a sustainability path. The organization and its constellation of partners, including the customer networks, will be able to absorb the change and become more resilient and flexible with the next wave of change. Actually, the next disruption is already here, shaped by an exponential degree of continuous change that businesses today need to adapt to.