Disruptive And Sustaining Innovations In Technology And Business

Disruptive and Sustaining Innovations

Question:

Describe about the Sustaining vs Disruptive Technologies?

A disruptive technology is such a technology which helps in creating value network and new markets and eventually disrupts a value network and an existing market displacing the earlier technology. The term disruptive technology is used in technology and business literature to describe innovations that improve a service and a product in an unexpected manner.

In contrast to disruptive innovation, sustaining innovation does not create new markets or value network but innovates existing ones with better value and proposition, giving the firms room for competition against their existing innovations. Sustaining innovations may be continuous or discontinuous (→, 2013).

Innovation can be divided into two forms i.e. disruptive and sustaining innovations. Good companies are aware of the innovations that they are going through, but unfortunately, their business structure does not allow them to pursue those because they are not profitable and secondly it might take away the resources which are accumulated for sustaining innovations. Therefore disruptive innovations are costly and complicated to apply in organizations. Apple has provided an excellent example of how to apply disruptive innovation (Whatis.techtarget.com, 2015). The launching of I Pod, by apple had breathtaking attraction over customers and record breaking profits for apple. But in reality, before apple two more companies have already launched the same idea and were doing well in the market. But what made apple different from them was that apple has developed an excellent business model that integrated software and hardware service. In his book, “The innovator’s Dilemma”, M.Christensen has said that large companies are designed to work upon sustaining innovation. They are comfortable in knowing old markets, staying intimate with their customers, and having mechanisms for sustaining technologies. But, on the other hand, they have trouble capitalizing cost savings, potential efficiencies or new marketing opportunities formed by low –margin disruptive technologies (Antiessays.com, 2015).

The rise of internet has aroused the question across many industries whether it is a disruptive technology or a sustaining technology. The internet seems to have some of the characteristics of disruptive technology in the banking industry as it has created a major new growth in the banking industry. While others see the internet as just another sustaining technology in banking, providing a more convenient distribution channel.eg. ATM.

The internet has opened a new dimension of vast opportunities to the entrepreneurs. With the coming of the internet, business has become more connected and open to the consumers. Internet has provided business with a new way of communication, such as, emails and instant messaging therefore improving the ability of businesses to communicate with associates, employees and customers. Today, business entrepreneurs can stay in touch with instant messaging, emails and face to face chats over internet (Bartels, 2015). Anyone can access the internet and big decisions are taken within seconds. Social networking sites such as facebook and twitter provides another easy way to connect colleagues. Not only has that internet allowed far reaching collaboration. The internet has made possible geographically dispersed team to meet from anywhere in the world virtually through the medium of email, cloud computing, video conferencing, Skype etc. social networking business sites such as LinkedIn, have made possible businesses to communicate with each other in an easier manner. The result is huge productivity and a wider blend of abilities, talents and viewpoints.

The Rise of the Internet

Collaborative intelligence characterizes distributed systems and multi agent where each human, agent or machine is positioned in such a way to contribute to a problem solving network. Collaboration is to work with others in completing a task and to share achieved goals. Crowd sourcing is the process of obtaining needed ideas, services and content by taking contributions from a group of people like an online community rather than from suppliers or traditional employees (Vectone.com, 2015). The collective intelligence is needed to solve many of the future challenges. Crowdsourcing refers to the use of internet to gather value from the contribution of many people. The term crowd sourcing has been pioneered by Jeff Howe to refer to new ways of problem solving. Open collaboration systems, such as Wikipedia always need a group of volunteers to remain relevant. Only open systems are effective in collaboration as all closed systems will fail over time. For knowledge sharing only open systems are effective (Laudon & Traver, 2002).

The disadvantages of web 1.0 gave way to the formation of web 2.0. The pros and cons of web 2.0 are as follows:

Pros:

• Customer engagement
• Rss readers can receive latest updates and contents
• Everyone can post comments and views
• Search engine optimization and social media marketing
• Through social networking, friends and contacts are increased.
• Online promotions of products, businesses and services

Cons:

• Hackers and forgeries commit crimes
• Information is overloaded. many information is posted by viewers which contributes to confusions and the content is also not reliable
• Too many spammers and fake id’s
• Freedom to post comments encourage competitors and rivals post negative comments about companies

Tools used in web 2.0

The most widely used tools in web 2.0 are wikis, blogs, podcasts, prediction markets, information tagging and social networks (Editorsweblog.org, 2015).

Foursquare, the social networking geotagging game has collaborated with wall street journal as a geolocation check in. It’s extraordinarily fascinating old media meets new web media coverage. By definition, old media is the publisher that delivers magazines, newspapers in a package while new media is publishing something online such as publishing a video in YouTube; blogging which stays online in a digitalized package. New media is growing fast in the market causing old media to lose major stocks in the market. Most of the software’s uses the concept of geo location to identify users and profile them to gain the competitive advantages. Applications like face book, foursquare, and gowalla have been famous for a few years Geolocation technologies allow organizations to use the World Wide Web as a distribution channel to identify the customers. After shaking hands with foursquare, wall street journal has won the war for New York City against The New York Times as now it has a technological advantage. They are using foursquare to maximize their market penetration (Eaton & Eaton, 2010). The WSJ has created 3 badges including the urban adventurer badge, a banker badge and a lunch box badge which will be given to readers who will read WSJ. The badges moreover represent the increasing number of partnerships occurring between social networking sites and publications. Thus it can be seen that this partnership has been an added advantage on the part of wsj. Social networking sites have become a new tool for e marketing. The e business tolls that have been used in this partnership are subscription, advertising, transaction fee, affiliate and sales.

Web 2.0 contains more features than web 1.0.It includes web sites created by users, social networking sites, tagging, self publishing platforms and social bookmarking. It is cost effective, flexible, mobile, contains up to date information, it can be continuously used. It ties to a global community; readers can implement creativity in posting and developing content. Web 1.0 was a kind of read only where you can only read the internet pages. But web 2.0 is a read and write application where users communicate with the internet example, my space and facebook. The challenges with web 2.0 are that too many information is posted online by readers and it creates confusion. The freedom of posting comments make the competitors and rivals post unviable comments online and forgeries and hacking are committed on a large basis.

Web 3.0 is the future of internet technology. It provides broader search for information through easier interfaces (Searchcio.techtarget.com, 2015). The inventor of www, Tim burners-lee calls it “semantic web”. Web 3.0 creates a collection of databases which connects on demand. Thus it is more revolutionized and has better prospects than web 2.0

Conclusion:

Thus it can be seen that, that social networking sites are the new media that is gaining revenue in the market. Web 2.0 is better than web 1.0 and the future of technology is web 3.0 and it can be seen that both disruptive and sustaining technology is necessary for organizations.

References:

→, V. (2013). Sustaining vs Disruptive Technologies. Startup Iceland. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from https://startupiceland.com/2013/02/22/sustaining-vs-disruptive-technologies/

Antiessays.com,. (2015). Foursquare Geography – Essay by Blf99999. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from https://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/Foursquare-Geography-521619.html

Bartels, A. (2015). The difference  between e-business and e-commerce. Computerworld. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from https://www.computerworld.com/article/2588708/e-commerce/the-difference–between-e-business-and-e-commerce.html

Eaton, K., & Eaton, K. (2010). Wall Street Journal and Foursquare: Geolocating City Newsrag Mashup From Heaven. Fast Company. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from https://www.fastcompany.com/1627992/wall-street-journal-and-foursquare-geolocating-city-newsrag-mashup-heaven

Editorsweblog.org,. (2015). In the battle for New York City, the WSJ uses Foursquare to its advantage  – Editors Weblog. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from https://www.editorsweblog.org/2010/04/27/in-the-battle-for-new-york-city-the-wsj-uses-foursquare-to-its-advantage

Laudon, K., & Traver, C. (2002). E-commerce. Boston: Addison Wesley.

Searchcio.techtarget.com,. (2015). What is e-business (electronic business)? – Definition from WhatIs.com. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/e-business

Vectone.com, T. (2015). The Impact of E-Promotion and Social Networking on E-Business: Case Study of Vectone.com. Academia.edu. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from https://www.academia.edu/3746477/The_Impact_of_E-Promotion_and_Social_Networking_on_E-Business_Case_Study_of_Vectone.com

Whatis.techtarget.com,. (2015). What is disruptive technology? – Definition from WhatIs.com. Retrieved 18 February 2015, from