Emerging Technologies, Innovations & Trends, Part 1
We started roughly 11 weeks ago with the topic of digital disruptions due to the fast pace of innovation and technology adoption. As we slowly are coming to the end up the semester, the last topic for discussion is Emerging Technologies, Innovations & Trends. Innovations bring about change, which in turn brings about disruption. We have gone full-circle and are back at the beginning…
We talked about the Fast Pace of Technology Adoption, the meaning of Disruptive Technology, and discussed How People Adopt Technology Innovations, but we haven’t really focused on the actual nature of the innovations and trends we are currently facing.
To explore some of those innovations and trends in depth, lets review some of the material of author Brian Solis, a well-known author on the subject of Digital Disruptions. On his website, Solis refers to himself as a “digital analyst, anthropologist and futurist.” In his own words:
I study disruptive technology, specifically innovative technology that gains so much momentum that it disrupts markets and ultimately businesses. In the past several years, disruptive technology has become so pervasive that I’ve had to further focus my work on studying only disruptive technologies that are impacting customer and employee behavior, expectations and values and affecting customer and employee experiences. I can hardly keep up with today let alone consider the potential disruption that looms ahead in every sector imaginable including new areas that will emerge and displace laggard perspectives, models and processes.
Starting back in 2009, Solis started creating the below graphic which he calls the “Wheel of Disruption.” Every few years he would update it to add new trends or technologies. The below image is his 2015 version. The main intent of the graphic is to show the “Golden Triangle” of real-time, mobile and social, surrounded by the cloud, which as Solis says is “inspiring incredible innovation and thus producing new and disruptive apps, tools and services.”
Image Source: Brian Solis
In Part 2, We will look in more detail and some of the predictions that Solis has made regarding upcoming technology and trends.