Makers, transformers or shapers?

What is disruptive technology?

‘Disruptive technology’ promises something bigger then incremental upgrades – something that challenges the technical and commercial status quo. It creates new market dynamics, and introduces opportunity and threat in equal measures.

Consumer and business markets have grown accustomed to anticipating the ‘next thing’, whether it’s a smartphone upgrade or migration to cloud applications. However, there’s more pressure on businesses to envision and realise ‘extreme evolutions’ and being disruptive is now seen as a virtue and a quality that even larger enterprises need to foster from within.

The levels of transformation and impact are best viewed through the lens of the ‘3 Degrees of Disruption’.

What does disrupt mean to marketers?

For a marketer, ‘disruptive’ could sound scary. When sustaining technologies are being displaced by the unfamiliar, that’s when opportunity and threat can co-exist.

Disruptive technologies don’t just displace sustaining technologies, they can also unsettle or displace customer, partner and channel relationships and even business models.

We explore this further in the video and infographic, content on the ‘3 Degrees of Disruption’, but take a look at our Map of Disruption and you’ll see plenty of examples of technology disruptions that combined with other factors to offer ‘disruptive innovation’ and create new challenges for technology marketers.

Explore infographic