Disruptive Technologies and Their Impact on Military Strategy

Introduction to Disruptive Technologies

Disruptive technologies are innovations that aid in creating new markets, eventually going on to disturb or even dismantle existing value networks and markets, and to displace older technologies. Clayton M. Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, coined this term, which is now used frequently in technology and business literature to describe innovations that bring about improvements to any service or product in ways not expected by the market (Lucas, 2012). Christensen first used the term in his best-seller The Innovator's Dilemma (published in 1997), wherein he classified new technologies into two groups: disruptive and sustaining. The former category refers to novel, inadequately refined technology, typically associated with performance issues, known only to certain groups, and normally lacking any proven practical use. The latter category includes familiar technologies undergoing successive improvements.

Disruption may also be viewed from another angle — as something that radically destroys or changes an established structure or way of doing things. Disruptive technologies are capable of altering our lifestyles, the world economy, what society means by work, and the business arena. This paper discusses such technologies and their potential benefits to our world (Christiansen, 1997; Fonseca, 2014).

Characteristics of Disruptive Technologies

Disruptive technologies normally exhibit fast-paced capability modification with respect to performance or price, relative to existing approaches and substitutes, or they experience breakthroughs that drive discontinuous improvements in capability or quicker rates of change. For instance, gene-sequencing technologies are progressing at a quicker pace than computer processing and might soon make low-cost desktop sequencing devices possible. Substantial breakthroughs have been witnessed in sophisticated materials technology, from the initial artificial graphene production in 2004 — graphene being a nanomaterial with exceptional properties including conductivity and strength — to IBM Corporation's development in 2011 of the world's first integrated circuit made of graphene (Manyika et al., 2013; Lin et al., 2011).

To be economically disruptive, technologies need to have a wide reach: they must touch sectors and organizations, and impact (or lead to the development of) a broad range of services, machines, or products. For instance, mobile Internet is capable of affecting the everyday lives of five billion individuals, providing them with tools for becoming potential entrepreneurs or innovators; consequently, mobile Internet has become one of the world's most influential technologies. Further, the Internet of Things (IoT) can connect and embed intelligence into several billion devices and objects worldwide, impacting billions of individuals' safety, productivity, and health (Manyika et al., 2013).

Economically disruptive technologies should be capable of creating a large economic impact. There should be significant value in the balance — for example, potential profit-pool disruption, GDP additions, and potential obsolescence of capital investments. Advanced robotics, for instance, is capable of affecting labor costs amounting to $6.3 trillion across the globe. Cloud technology can increase productivity by $3 trillion in global business IT spending, while also enabling the development of novel online services and products for millions of businesses and billions of customers (Manyika et al., 2013).

Important technologies are capable of radically altering the existing state of affairs. They can change how people live and work, elicit fresh opportunities or alter business surplus, and become drivers of progress or shift countries' comparative advantage. Next-generation genomics can transform the way healthcare professionals diagnose and treat diseases like cancer, potentially extending patients' lives. Advanced energy storage devices can transform when, how, and where energy is used. Advanced gas and oil exploration and extraction can drive economic progress while shifting value across regions and energy markets (Lin et al., 2011).

Current Disruptive Technologies

Within a short period, Internet-enabled mobile devices have transitioned from luxury items that few could afford to an integral part of everyday life for over one billion tablet and smartphone owners. In the United States, approximately 40% of social networking site usage and 30% of Internet browsing is done using mobile devices. Wireless web usage was anticipated to surpass wired usage by 2015. A flood of mobile apps and ubiquitous connectivity has enabled users to find novel ways of interacting with, knowing, and viewing the world around them. Mobile internet technology is rapidly evolving, with novel formats and intuitive interfaces such as wearable devices. Mobile internet can be employed for numerous purposes across public sector organizations and enterprises, facilitating improved efficiency of service delivery and creating opportunities for increasing workforce productivity. It can also help bring web connectivity to several billion individuals in developing countries (Fonseca, 2014; Manyika et al., 2013).

Advancements in machine learning, artificial intelligence, voice recognition, and other natural interfaces are making the automation of numerous knowledge work tasks — long considered impractical or impossible for machines — increasingly feasible. For example, some computers are capable of answering unstructured queries presented in ordinary language, aiding customers or workers who lack specialized training to retrieve information independently. This affords an opportunity to change the organization and performance of knowledge work. Complex analytics tools may be used to augment highly capable employees' capabilities, and with increasing automation of knowledge work, total automation of certain types of jobs is also possible (Fonseca, 2014; Manyika et al., 2013).

IoT — the embedding of actuators and sensors in physical objects such as machines to make them part of the connected universe — is spreading swiftly. From monitoring product flow through factories to measuring crop moisture and tracking water flow through utility pipes, IoT assists public sector institutions and enterprises in managing assets, creating novel business models, and optimizing their performance. With the feature of remote monitoring, IoT shows great potential for improving the health of chronically ill individuals and tackling the main driver of mounting healthcare expenditures (Fonseca, 2014; Manyika et al., 2013).

Until recently, only product designers, hobbyists, and select manufacturers applied 3D printing. However, the performance of additive manufacturing machines is improving, material and printer prices are dropping rapidly, and the range of usable materials is expanding — all of which point to the potential for rapid adoption of 3D printing by consumers and industrial buyers alike. Using 3D printing, ideas can move directly from 3D design files to finished products or parts, potentially bypassing several conventional production steps. Notably, 3D printing allows on-demand manufacturing, which carries significant implications for spare-parts stocking and supply chains, thereby eliminating significant costs for producers. 3D printing is also capable of reducing manufacturing waste and creating objects that could not be made, or were difficult to make, using conventional methods. Scientists have progressed as far as bioprinting organs, using inkjet printing to layer stem cells together with a supporting frame (Fonseca, 2014; Manyika et al., 2013).

Risky, dirty, or physically difficult jobs — such as spray painting and welding — have been performed by industrial robots for several decades. These robots have traditionally been bulky, inflexible, and costly, fenced off and bolted to factory floors for worker protection. Nowadays, however, robots are more advanced, having acquired dexterity, intelligence, and enhanced senses owing to accelerating advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, machine vision, actuators, and inter-machine communication. Workers can more easily communicate with and program these robots, which are also more adaptable and compact, enabling their safe deployment alongside human workers. Such advancements could make robotic substitution for manual labor in the manufacturing, maintenance, and cleaning sectors more practical. Moreover, this technology is capable of giving rise to novel kinds of robotic prosthetics, exoskeleton braces, and surgical robots, which can aid individuals with limited mobility in functioning more normally and can help extend and improve many lives (Fonseca, 2014; Manyika et al., 2013).