A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives, a curated forum for enterprise technology leaders, nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the CIOApplications Editorial Board.

Marsh McLennan

How is Disruptive Technology Changing the Business Landscape?

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 Survey1. 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 brings the Personal Computer and the Internet that usher their 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 to 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 book3, with the rapid growth of Customer Networks and the Platform Business Models the systems 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 study2, 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 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 design, build, test and deploy 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:

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

‘I will define the disruptive technology concept as something that fundamentally changes the way an industry or a market operates

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 a quarterly Program Increments and to molecular Continuous Improvements release model shaped by the qualitative and quantitative data.

The endorsement of a lean - agile approach of 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% percentage that points to the number of digital initiatives that fail4!

By taking into account subjective (qualitative), objective (analytics) and short feedback cycle, not only the transformation will 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 as an exponential degree of the continuous change that businesses today need to adapt to.

The articles from these contributors are based on their personal expertise and viewpoints, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their employers or affiliated organizations.