PACE OF TECHNOLOGY

THE PACE OF TECHNOLOGY CHANGE IS INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY

Most companies understand the need to respond and adapt to the evolving use of technology by their customers and other key stakeholders. What they do not realize is how little time they have to address these changes. Technology adoption typically occurs in an S-curve, with exponential growth of technology adoption from ‘early adopters’. Not only is the diffusion of individual technologies exponential, but the rate of diffusion is accelerating, and with each new technology release, the ‘early adopters’ and ‘early majority’ move further to the left. It took more than 70 years for telephones to reach 50% household penetration, compared with 28 years for radio, and 10 for internet access. Following this trend, the rate of technology adoption should continue to accelerate so that each new technology outpaces the adoption of its predecessor, and the future will see adoption rates measured in weeks and days rather than years. Google+, the new social media tool from Google took only 16 days to reach 10 million users, compared with 780 days for Twitter and 852 days for Facebook. It took 10 years for the internet to become a basic and essential part of daily life. The future will happen much faster than that.

The rapidly advancing price/performance capability of computing, storage, and bandwidth is contributing to an adoption rate for the digital infrastructure that is two to five times faster than previous infrastructures, such as electricity and telephone networks. By 2020 there will be 50bn internet enabled devices. Those 50bn devices will become interconnected into a web of the ‘internet of things’ and could include fridges that can replenish themselves by ordering from the supermarket, and other devices associated with the ‘intelligent home’. In amongst the new devices will also be disruptive technologies such as Electronic Paper which can be folded and carried in a pocket, and may drastically change the future of printing and other industries.

The proliferation of digital channels, platforms and devices has produced a generation who are born ‘plugged-in’. This new generation already plays a major role in accelerating the emergence of a new, digital world, and their impact is impossible to ignore. New generations expectations are being formed by the technologies they surround themselves with. They adapt their lifestyles to each new technological invention and they won’t accept that the brands they interact with or employers they work for don’t do the same.

In conclusion:  New generations already constitutes a new category of consumers, citizens and employees who are digitally, globally and constantly connected. They are networked, collaborative and highly social. It is also new generations who are inventing the disruptive business models that challenge the status quo of existing organizations, as Mark Zuckerberg did with the invention of Facebook. In this way they are determining the way digital communication technologies are being used, and are initiating social behaviors that are transmitted to other generations.

By: ULAYA SIJALI A. (BAPRM 42681)