Disruptive Technology / Hyper-Competition

Strategic thinking about disruptive technologies

Nick Evans, Bill Ralston and Andrew Broderick

Technology assessment

Potentially disruptive technologies emerging from laboratories around the globe drive many

organizations’ future opportunities and risks. To be successfully adaptive, an organization

must be able to speedily identify which technologies will be significant, to analyze their

potential impacts, and to understand the uncertainties of their commercialization. Making

the uncertainties about the future explicit is the key to understanding the possibilities and

making good choices about where and when to invest.

A method for dealing with the challenge

What organizations need is a systematic way to look at the full range of emerging

technologies, see the commercialization possibilities, understand their uncertainties,

compare the technologies, select the ones to focus on, and continually review new

information and choices. As a case in point, SRIC-BI recently applied its

opportunity-discovery process to a challenging problem facing the US government:

Identify the most important civilian technologies that could be disruptive to US interests up to

2025.[1]

Key features of the process include:

B Assembling a multidisciplinary group of technology and market analysts.

B Using a common language for describing and discussing emerging technologies.

B Using workshops to assimilate and sort through information rapidly, generate innovative

ideas, conduct comparisons, and segregate results.

B Preparing decision-oriented profiles of high-potential technologies.

Exhibit 1 shows a schematic of SRIC-BI’s process applied by a group of its technology

analysts in California and England in a project for the US government.

The process started with the effort to identify all the possibilities for disruptive technologies

that could influence US interests in the next 20 years. A multidisciplinary project team of

experienced technologists used wiki software (from JotSpot) to facilitate the online

development of disruptive-technology ideas and capture notes on those ideas. Analysts

filed technology notes on the wiki covering:

B Basic description. What is the technology, how could it develop, and what would be new

capabilities and benefits?

B Significance. What’s different from today’s equivalent technology, and why could

development be significant?

DOI 10.1108/10878570910926034 VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009, pp. 23-30, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1087-8572 j STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP j PAGE 23

Nick Evans (nevans@

sric-bi.com) is the director

of Explorer in SRI

Consulting Business

Intelligence’s Croydon,

England, office. Bill Ralston

(wralston@sric-bi.com) is a

vice president of consulting

in SRICs Menlo Park,

California office.

Andrew Broderick is a

former senior consultant

with SRIC-BI.

B Disruption. In what aspects of the technology is it possible to anticipate consequences of

the technology’s development that might be disruptive? In which applications? And under

what circumstances?

By using a wiki, SRIC-BI analysts were able to edit and comment collaboratively about each

other’s submissions, maintaining a single up-to-date document.

Next, a workshop including SRIC-BI’s analysts and its client presented the resultant 102

potentially disruptive technology wiki entries individually, with summaries of their

descriptions, significance, and disruptive potential. Analysts selected 20 dominant civilian

technologies and mapped them on a nine-square grid, plotting Impact (on four established

elements of US national power: Geopolitical, Military, Economic, and Cultural) on one axis

against Uncertainty (of absolute knowledge of technology development parameters and

timing) on the other axis. The results of this mapping indicated that the 20 civilian

technologies would have mostly medium to high impact on the four elements of national

power. A further ranking exercise rated each technology’s likely impact on US national power

according to four criteria: survival, vital, major, and peripheral:

B Survival. If the issue resolution is not satisfactory, the nation’s survival will come into

question.

B Vital. If the issue resolution is not satisfactory, the nation will experience a permanent

degradation in one of the elements of national power. Likewise, if the issue resolution is

satisfactory, the result will be a long-term improvement in one of the elements of national

power (that is, an improvement lasting more than ten years.)

B Major. If the issue resolution is not satisfactory, the nation will experience a temporary but

noticeable degradation in one of the elements of national power. Likewise, if the issue

resolution is satisfactory, the result will be a noticeable but temporary improvement in one

Exhibit 1 Process for selection of disruptive technologies

PAGE 24 jSTRATEGY & LEADERSHIPj VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009

of the elements of national power. (Analysts considered ‘‘temporary’’ as generally fewer

than ten years.)

B Peripheral. If the issue resolution is not satisfactory, the nation will experience a minor but

annoying degradation in one of the elements of national power. Likewise, if the issue

resolution is satisfactory, the result will be a perceptible but small improvement in one of

the elements of national power.

Using these criteria analysts selected six civilian technologies that would likely be most

disruptive to US interests:

B Biofuels and Bio-Based Chemicals.

B Biogerontechnology.

B Clean Coal.

B Energy-Storage Materials.

B Service Robotics.

B The Internet of Things

Finally, SRIC-BI developed profiles for each technology containing both information and

judgments about what is happening today and what could happen. These included

alternative future scenarios describing how the technology development may unfold, with

implications, potential opportunities, and potential threats. The following is an abridged

version of one of those profiles: biogerontechnology. It captures the powerful potential of

successfully integrating scientific and technological developments in the next 15 years to

extend human life spans and make the later years much healthier.

Biogerontechnology: a potentially disruptive technology

Biogerontechnology offers the means to accomplish control of and improvement in the

human condition and promises improvements in life span. The advancement of the science

and technology underlying the biological aging process has the potential not only to extend

the average natural life-span forecasts, but also simultaneously to postpone many of the

costly and disabling conditions that humans experience in later life, thereby creating a

longevity dividend that will be economic, social, and medical in nature.

The disruptive potential comes in the form of new treatments and shifts in the cost, allocation,

and use of health-care resources. Nations will be challenged as a result of changing

demographic structures of aging yet healthy citizens and the concomitant need to formulate

new national economic and social policies.

The technology

Biogerontechnology is the concept of applying the science related to the study of the cellular

and molecular basis of disease and aging to the development of new technological means

for treating diseases and disabilities associated with old age. The revolutionary disruptive

potential of biogerontechnology is not likely to come from one field alone but most likely from

technological synergies through convergence and knowledge creation from the intersection

between fields that inform and drive each other (Exhibit 2).

‘‘ SRIC-BI recently applied its opportunity-discovery process to a challenging problem facing the US government: identify the most important civilian technologies that could be disruptive to US interests up to 2025. ’’

VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009 jSTRATEGY & LEADERSHIPj PAGE 25

Researchers tend to break theories of biological aging into two categories of theories:

B Programmed theories, which suggest that the biology of organisms follows a

programmed development plan, including programmed longevity and endocrine and

immunological theories.

B Error theories, which highlight the role that environmental assaults – including biological

wear and tear, crosslinking proteins, free radicals, and somatic DNA damage – play in the

aging process.

Issues determining the development of biogerontechnology

From a research perspective, the field of biogerontechnology has a broad base of

stakeholders committed to advancing biomedical research to improve health during aging:

B Public-policy interest groups will seek to influence legislation controlling regulation of and

access to biogerontechnology.

B Environmentalists, for example, might question the societal value of biogerontechnology

relative to that of other population and sustainability challenges and the earth’s capacity

for sustaining a growing population through longevity gains.

B Bioethicists will openly debate where biomedical inquiry stops and ethics begin in terms

of the means and goals of biogerontechnology.

B Social advocates might be motivated to raise public consciousness of issues that deal

with the impacts of biogerontechnology on attitudes and values about spirituality,

evolution, and voluntary life termination.

B Policy makers would seek to understand how demographics will be affected, what

changes in reproductive choices might emerge, and the effects on birth rates.

Exhibit 2 Technology roadmap: biogerontechnology

PAGE 26 jSTRATEGY & LEADERSHIPj VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009

B Regulators might deal with ethical science, protecting the public from the scams that

claim antiaging benefits.

B Economists would seek to understand the impact on health-care spending, the impact of

health and longevity on gross national product growth, and the added economic cost

from people’s living healthier and longer lives.

B Industry marketers would seek to understand how behaviors of older consumers differ

from those of younger consumers in terms of media preferences, leisure activities,

transport, and entertainment and the impact of health and longevity trends on productivity

and innovation.

Exhibit 3 illustrates some key areas of uncertainty to monitor in order to understand better

their impact on biogerontechnology.

Potential impacts of biogerontechnology on US national power

Geopolitical: Biogerontechnology will influence policy-making and business decisions

related to international finance and macroeconomics, which will lead to changes in global

investment cycles as well as investment flows and economic ties between nations. Because

health-care spending accounts for 16 percent of GDP in the United States (closer to 9

percent in other OECD countries), the opportunity to reduce that share of spending through

biogerontechnology will allow the US government to transfer resources to other areas of the

economy and prioritize capital investments that could change the course of national

economic development. The same goes for many other countries. An aging and healthy

Exhibit 3 Biogerontechnology: issues and uncertainties

VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009 jSTRATEGY & LEADERSHIPj PAGE 27

population in the United States that remains economically productive could contribute

toward national economic output and productivity.

Economic: If breakthroughs that biogerontechnology enabled were to extend life span and

compress morbidity, they could postpone the costly life stage of frailty and disability that is

so common among today’s aging populations and minimize its duration before death. This

development, together with a delay in the age at which people may enter age-entitlement

and public health-care programs, would create significant economic savings for the US

system. The organization, practice, financing, and delivery of health care could change

dramatically in the United States as well as many other industrialized countries.

Military: Some technologies inherent in the extension of life span and health span – primarily

those active in delaying the onset of biological aging – could find important applications in a

military context, thus leading to knowledge retention among older personnel as they seek to

delay retirement from service. The opportunity to prevent the onset of certain debilitating

diseases could lead to significant savings for the military’s health system, which would allow

deployment of resources to other strategic areas that are more likely to supplement the

military might of the United States.

Cultural: Biogerontechnology could also lead to intergenerational conflicts and lead to social

unrest as it disrupts investment and employment cycles and affects economic values

associated with labor and other capital. New cultural norms may develop because of

changing psychology and behaviors among older people, which could also lead to dramatic

lifestyle changes. Lifestyle behaviors may also lead to the emergence of new health profiles

for populations and disease threats and health risks may change as unexpected behaviors

that result from biogerontechnology emerge.

Future scenarios and potential impacts

The key uncertainties in the biogerontechnology field tend to fall along two major axes:

B The science-and-technology-commercialization continuum

B The formulation of global-policy and funding-support levels.

The key uncertainty along the science-and-technology-commercialization continuum is the

extent to which advances in scientific knowledge and technical capabilities occur (and the

degree of the resulting technical risks and knowledge gaps). The global policy and funding

environment will be strongly influenced by the degree and rate of progress in scientific and

technical capability but will also be tempered by the level of public interest and support for

longevity science.On the basis of the two axes of uncertainty in Exhibit 4, four distinct

scenarios seem plausible: one that is unruly and negative (‘‘Rebel Science’’); one that is

conservative, offering some breakthroughs but falling short of the full potential of the

technology (‘‘Animal Magic’’); and two that have strong levels of public support but with

varying degrees of scientific and technology capabilities (‘‘Dorian Gray’’ and ‘‘Forever

Young’’).

Scenario 1: Animal Magic. Animal Magic ushers in the promise of biogerontechnology but

only in research involving animal models. Scientists are in disagreement about the exact

mechanisms for how to reproduce these research results in humans. Despite this

disagreement and the fact no reproducibility of the animal research results has occurred in

Exhibit 4 Biogerontechnology: future scenarios

Science and technology commercialization continuum Weak links and risks New science world

Global policy and funding Limited scientific and technical rationale

Rebel Science Animal Magic

Strong support and public demand Dorian Gray Forever Young

Source: SRI Consulting Business Intelligence

PAGE 28 jSTRATEGY & LEADERSHIPj VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009

any human studies, researchers remain convinced that the critical breakthrough in humans

is near. Policy makers and the public are growing increasingly skeptical the longer the

impasse continues. Other fields of biomedical research that seek to affect aging and the

decline in health have achieved many more breakthroughs in clinical potential and gain

greater attention and interest from the public and policy makers.

Scenario 2: Dorian Gray. In Dorian Gray, all is good on the public face of science but less so

within the research field because of limited progress in advancing biogerontechnology. Both

the public and policy makers want to believe in a dream and urge scientists to forge ahead.

But scientists feel pressured to take risks and make unorthodox decisions in their research,

which leads to some risky research and unexpected outcomes. The US and other

governments continue to pour significant amounts of funding into research but have little to

show for it. Yet a sense of optimism in the future remains. Governments support and the

public pursues interim strategies, such as caloric restriction to slow down aging, while

awaiting breakthroughs in biogerontechnology.

Scenario 3: Rebel Science. In Rebel Science, biogerontechnology fails to realize its full

potential. Scientists, however, remain confident that the critical breakthroughs that will push

biogerontechnology to the next level are near. The global policy and funding environment

remains unconvinced and is cool to heed calls from scientists for further funding. Scientists

seek to compensate for the lack of public funding by soliciting wealthy individuals and

technology philanthropists. But desperation and a lack of accountability and formal

oversight force researchers into some unorthodox situations. The US government introduces

tough legislation governing research activities, which drives much of the ongoing research

underground or offshore. The biomedical industry sees little incentive to invest heavily in the

field because of the growing restrictions. Experimentation on humans is unregulated and

fails to follow standard ethical guidelines, and clinical applications that emerge often go

unreported. Consequently, researchers do not share knowledge and this slows advances in

the field.

Scenario 4: Forever Young. In Forever Young, the breakthroughs that scientists envisioned

for treating aging as a medical condition have come to pass. The US academic

biomedical-research community benefits greatly from the research and innovation, and the

resulting technology transfer to the private sector results in considerable entrepreneurial

activity that drives a new era of technology-led economic activity to boost national economic

growth. Governments talk of the longevity dividend that will stem from the clinical

applications. The implications of advances in biogerontechnology will extend beyond

medicine and health care. The benefits of healthier and more active life spans will allow

people to remain in the labor force and work longer and enjoy more active lifestyles. As a

result, consumer spending and savings patterns adjust to reflect changing lifestyle interests.

Actuaries would need to make ongoing upward adjustments to reflect expanding life spans.

The implications of longevity risk would start to feed into policy making and business

decisions as finance and economic strategies adjust accordingly. Government and private

pensions would need to guarantee sufficient resources to manage the costs of extended life

spans; retirement assets would see a more gradual drawing down as aging investors live

longer. A sense of optimism, hope, and possibility in many global societies permeates

beyond the field of biogerontechnology and feeds into other areas of the economy and

society.

‘‘ SRIC-BI developed . . . alternative future scenarios describing how the technology development may unfold, with implications, potential opportunities, and potential threats. ’’

VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009 jSTRATEGY & LEADERSHIPj PAGE 29

Signposts to monitor

Knowing which scenario best mirrors reality at any one time depends on having good

information and making intelligent assessments. It’s also important to identify various

signposts that would indicate the direction and pace with which any field of uncertainty is

advancing. Key variables that, if positive, would indicate environments that are supportive

toward biogerontechnology development include:

B Scientific evidence that both confirms and disconfirms the current aging theories.

B Global public research funding levels and trends for biogerontechnology research.

B The establishment of non-US centers of biogerontechnology research excellence.

B Successful early models for scientific research and technology commercialization

B The size and nature of biogerontechnology investments worldwide.

B Position statements about the ethics and practices of biogerontechnology research.

B Consistency in regulatory frameworks governing research and commercialization.

B The influence of scientific research and applications on public opinion.

Timeline

Acceptance of the feasibility and potential for the malleability of aging is growing in basic

research. The current status of knowledge and capabilities in the field suggests, however,

that basic and applied research activities are likely to attract the majority of resources

dedicated to biogerontechnology through 2025 and beyond. The use of biogerontechnology

in pharmaceutical research activities is also likely to occur throughout the time period, but

the degree to which the science has application in pharmaceutical research activities will

depend greatly on the level, pace, and direction of basic research funding and the insights

and breakthroughs in basic research. Product-development applications of the science will

probably initially target the treatment of specific conditions. Drugs that specifically target

antiaging could start to enter clinical development within the next 15 years; the first products

will not reach the market for at least 25 years.

Note

1. A report on the six potentially disruptive technologies SRIC-BI identified and a set of scenarios for

each is available on a US government web site, www.dni.gov/nic/confreports_disruptive_tech.html

Corresponding author

Nick Evans can be contacted at: nevans@sric-bi.com

PAGE 30 jSTRATEGY & LEADERSHIPj VOL. 37 NO. 1 2009

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