Disruptive Technologies - They rock your world

Don’t you hate disruptions especially when you just settled in on your favourite wooden armchair and snuggled with that frayed woollen cushion, and there is a knock on the door? You get up in a grumpy mood only to find that you have been delivered one of that luxury “Lazy-Boy” leather reclining chairs for your forthcoming birthday. It has an adjustable footrest, a button when pressed, smoothly reclines your chair to the degree you want. You are just flabbergasted but decide to return to your favourite wooden rocker.

Prof. Clayton Christensen coined the phrase, “Disruptive Technology” in 1995 to describe a simple, less expensive but innovative technology that challenges the status quo and eventually overturns it. Think of plastic that replaced wood, metal and glass, digital camera and film, disk storage and flash memory to name a few.

How you respond to disruptive technologies begs an answer. I have friends who still do not use email even though it is cheaper and faster. Bullock carts are still used alongside cars in many part of Asia today. I recently bought an excellent book on farm fencing. It has a colour front and back cover with photos but all the inside pages are scanned pages of handwritten instructions and illustration. Why bother going to a printer for this? The author could have sent me photocopies of his notes.

What technologies have disrupted your lifestyle? Which one have you adopted or are you still in still in the Dark Ages? Would you even tolerate such disruptions?

The greatest disruption Man has ever encountered was not a technology but a person called Jesus Christ. He disrupted Judaism, his sermons shook the foundations of the learned and the simple, his miracles blew peoples minds, his death disappointed his followers, and his resurrection infuriated Satan and revived the despondent disciples.

Disruptions are annoying and challenges your beliefs and the possessions you hold dear. We like things that are stale and familiar. In the wine world, noble rot is sweet! In the pig sty, mud is divine. In rotten flesh, maggots thrive. Disruptive technologies offer something better. Jesus will disrupt your world for the best.

Are you rotting nobly, enjoying the mud bath or wriggling gleefully in the stench?