A Strategy for Disruptive Technologies

New technologies create opportunities. They can also destroy your business in the blink of an eye, and leave you without the resources needed to land on your feet. 

Waves of disruptive technologies have been distinguishing features of industrial revolutions, and we can trace typical responses to them by taking a look at the first European industrial revolution. An early knee-jerk reaction was to burn down factories and pass laws that did not admit the importation of new technologies such as, say, mechanical felt-making. The goal was to protect jobs by blocking labor-saving technologies. 

However, establishing walls of tariffs and blocking the implementation of new technologies did not work. English Luddites found that all their efforts did were to strengthen the position of the low-cost offshore competitors, who manufactured felt hats using the new processes in other countries, thereby destroying markets for high-cost felt hats made by hand in England. Banning the import of machine-made felt hats did not work, either. It simply created an underground economy and a black market for smuggled in new, stylish, high-quality, yet inexpensive machine-made felt hats. 

Another approach, which involved confiscating the intellectual property of innovators and declaring it a “public good” and property of the state did not work, either. Nor did imposing high taxes on royalties or profits made from new technologies work to protect against disruptive technologies.  Instead, the innovators simply left to work in more hospitable environments where they were able to receive royalties and to implement their new processes and equipment without a huge penalty.  

Clearly, blocking or attempting to neutralize the impact of new technologies does not work.

So, what can you do if you’re in an organization that is facing potential disruption? In point of fact, all organizations are vulnerable, so it is important to have a strategy in place. 

Here are five steps to take to develop a strategy for disruptive technology, innovations, and processes.

1.  Identify potential areas of disruptive change that will affect your organization’s core business:

a.  new technologies

b.  new processes

c.  new services

d.  new ways of organizing your business

2.  Describe what it is about your core business that is unique and valuable; explain why your customers choose your products and services, and then explain what you might do to disrupt yourself to create a new product that supplants your existing one. (Think like your competitors).  Where is your “extendable core”? 

3.  Identify the group that will hang onto your existing core products and services to the bitter end.  How can you build and enhance their experience? 

4.  Detail the steps and investment required to develop a parallel product that will capture the market that would go to a disruptive product (technology or service). How will you develop both at the same time and keep from cannibalizing your existing market, but at the same time beat your competition (which seeks to capture your market by introducing a disruption) at their own game?

5.  Describe the team you’ll develop to effectively develop the new parallel products, and how they will behave in complementary ways that will cross-market products, without confusing the public or muddying your brand identity/identities.

The goal is not to resist or block change. Nor is it desirable to disavow your entire heritage and legacy line. Instead, strengthen your legacy core while you bring a new line into existence and compete head-to-head with the innovative / disruptive new products or services.

Useful References

Raynor,  M. (2011). The Innovator’s Manifesto: Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth. NY: Random House. 

Wessel, M. and C. M. Christensen (2012). Surviving disruption. Harvard Business Review. December 2012: 56-65.

Interview with Jeff Kissinger, Florida Community College, Jacksonville

Today's interview is with Jeff Kissinger, Director Distance Learning Emergent Design at Florida Community College at Jacksonville. Jeff has been a vital and innovative force at FCCJ, charged with creating mobile learning solutions for military applications and more.


One of Jeff''s passions is music and Garageband. We have interspersed photos of Jeff with his drums and computers throughout the interview.

1. What do you see as the most exciting technology trend (or trends) that will affect elearning in the next two years or so?

Not sure this is a technology, but I feel faculty professional development is going to increasingly become more critical and valued at institutions.

We are beginning to ask so much more of our faculty than ever before. Blackboard, pod-casts, teaching online, developing and integrating instructional media, and even developing full-blown online courses are now creeping into the most traditional of educational contexts.



Tools and trainings need to be focused on faculty, their needs, and be appropriately aligned with instructional outcomes. We need to help develop an environment that allows for faculty to grow and fulfill their aims and dreams, and this must be done in a supported and thoughtful fashion. The ideal outcome will be faculty that undergo transformational learning experiences that are then reflected in their work with students.



So, getting back to the question of technology, we have already seen the simplification and streamlining of technology that just a few years ago required dedicated developers, designers, and videographers to create. The time and resources needed to develop an instructional video clip, animation, or learning object was often difficult or unattainable for many faculty. You-tube, garage-band, Sketchup, Google Docs, Second Life, Garage Games, Captivate, CrazyTalk, Raptivity, and the almost infinite list of other cool tools and technologies now brings us closer to fulfilling our wildest teaching and learning desires.


This trend will continue at an ever increasing rate. It will increasingly become more simplified and user friendly and will ultimately put the power into the hands of individual faculty to act on their own creative instructional inspiration.



2. When you think of Web 2.0 and e-learning, what are the top three things that come to mind? Copyright/Fair Use/Teach Act, open learning, faculty-generated media/content

3. What is your favorite new gadget? iPhone with google docs, Vintage 1984 Simmons Electronic Drum Kit [Think Duran Duran or Flock of Seagulls]
http://www.keyboardmuseum.com/pic/s/sim/sds_9kit.gif






4. List three mashups or widgets that you know and love. Slideshare, google docs/sites, Media and Flickr streams into Second Life, Sloodle

Interview with Michael Orey, University of Georgia

Michael Orey, professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia, responded to interview questions on distance learning. Dr. Orey is a pioneer of online education, having developed multimedia learning materials since the 1980s. His insights and core philosophy of online education are valuable for all educators and administrators interested in motivating students and rehumanizing the online learning space.

What is your name, and what is your involvement with e-learning?
My name is Michael Orey and I am a professor in Instructional Technology. I teach online classes and have done so for about 10 years. I also consult with various companies who are engaged in e-learning in various ways.


BTW, the photo I have provided shows me sitting on the Veranda of the Jekyll Island Inn teaching an online class using Wimba’s live classroom. This was during a Distance Learning Administrator conference and I believe that my photo was taken at least 5 times during my class because attendees at the conference loved seeing e-learning in action!

How did you get interested in distance education?
It was a natural progression of using technology for learning. I have been in the field of Instructional Technology since the early 1980’s. I was originally interested in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, but my interests just keep evolving as new and more interesting technology becomes available. I was never interested in distance learning when the technology available was postal mail, but as the web has grown, so has my interest in distance learning.

What is your favorite new trend in distance education?
I have been involved with technology for learning for years and over those years I have come to believe that teaching and learning is a very human endeavor. I think that the trends in distance education I think are the most interesting are the ones where closer connections are made between students and between students and teachers. Some of those are live classrooms like Wimba and some of those are 3-D virtual environments like Second Life, but more tailored to the support of collaboration.

What is your favorite technology?
I am a big Wimba user. I have been using a live classroom for nearly 10 years dating back to an early version of Placeware which is now Microsoft’s NetMeeting. I am beginning to believe that some sort of hybrid between Wimba and Second Life would be the next great App for learning.

What kinds of instructional materials do you use in elearning?
I have or are in the process of writing/editing three wiki-based books in my field. I use these in my online classes and make them freely available for others to use. I also have developed things like quizzes and assignments in WebCT to support learning. I use Impatica for recording lectures with Powerpoint. I use Captivate to do software demonstrations. I use videos to support learning as well and have begun to put these on YouTube so that they are freely available.

How do you use textbooks in e-learning?
I have already answered this to some extent with my wiki books. However, I also teach classes where I have not written the text. In these classes, most frequently, I use a collection of readings. These readings I scan into PDFs and provide within a password protected site like WebCT to the students in my classes.

What are your favorite social networks? How do you view them in e-learning?
I am in LinkedIn and Facebook, but I am not a “native”. I seem to only go to these sites when someone wants me to link to them, so I do.

Do you have a few favorite mashups or web applications that work together in innovative ways? Please describe them.
Other than those I just described, no. As I learn new and interesting technologies, I try to weave them in. I did a podcast for a class once, but I did not have a great deal of success with it, so I abandoned it. I have used a wiki to run a class once, that was pretty successful.

BTW, the books I edit online are:
Emerging Perspectives on Teaching, Learning and Technology
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt
This is the oldest book I have. It has evolved over the years to include video, animations, images, narrated powerpoints and other media to support the content of the book.

World Almanac of Educational Technologies
http://www.waet.uga.edu
This book has as a goal to have a chapter from each country in the world so that we can all learn about how technology is being used everywhere. We only have a handful of chapters so far, but we are still hopeful that others will continue to contribute.

Foundations of Instructional Technology
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/ITFoundations/
This book is due to be ready in the fall of 2008. As such, most of the chapters are still just promises.

BTW, the wiki I used for a class can be found at:
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/mikeorey/
This wiki shows some of the ideas I have about Open Resources and Global Issues.

What is your favorite quote? or, what's a book that caught your eye recently?
Unfortunately, my favorite quote is from my favorite author and not someone in the e-learning world. It is from Kurt Vonnegut:
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

Would you like to hear an interview with Dr. Orey? click here.

Interviewed by Susan.