Disruptive Technologies, Impact and interplay
The technologies were (in order of least impact to most):
- Renewable energy
- Advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery
- Advanced materials
- 3D printing
- Energy storage
- Next-generation genomics
- Autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles
- Advanced robotics
- Cloud
- Internet of Things
- Automation of knowledge work
- Mobile Internet
This approach by the Atlantic may be a novel way to look at technologies but not all that accurate or effective from a strategic perspective, especially since I doubt that was the intent of the McKinsey article.
I was also a bit surprised by some of the technologies left out of the McKinsey report. Technologies like User Interface Advances were not really mentioned, and the interplay between technologies was just touched on.
The best example of interplay magnifying impact is the intersection of the mobile internet, the internet of things and automation of knowledge work. Where these intersect, the role of employees change – human augmented automation. An approach that takes advantage of the fact that people are not fungible, as opposed to how many business may look at employees.
A visioning document based on the interplay of technologies is likely worth its own report -- aiding IT leaders in thinking about enabling their business in whole new ways. In any case, the McKinsey report is worth the read.
Dallas FIRST FRC Regional Competition this weekend
This weekend is the FRC competition at the Irving convention center – it’s free to watch.
Earlier this year I mentioned that the FIRST Robotics Competition released their contest problem for 2013 and I judged the FRC competition in Lubbock. I’ll see if I can get some pictures today, since this is the only one I took yesterday worth sharing.
I had a chance to talk with the teams from Brazil, Mexico and a number of states across the US yesterday, as well as an HP sponsored team from the Houston area.
Once again this year they will be streaming the event live, if you can’t make it to Irving. You can also see some of the previous year’s competitions in the video archive.
