|
|
 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
| |
JUNE 18, 2002 SPECIAL REPORT: EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES Why Innovations Score -- or Stumble For every triumph, other wonders of tomorrow never take off, and Harvard's Clayton Christensen says the difference isn't just luck Today, it seems as though it'll be a stretch to get a standard digital TV in every U.S. household before 2010, much less one that's high definition. Meantime, HDTV sets still cost more than $3,000 -- and one bought today could be obsolete as early as next year. The failed promise of HDTV has as much to do with bureaucratic bungling as with the technology itself. But it's far from an isolated example of a can't-miss innovation that has yet to emerge. Remember cold fusion? It was supposed to deliver a limitless supply of energy from water -- and no, not hydropower. And what about the myriad promises of the e-biz revolution? Have you used any e-cash lately? LEARNING THE RULES. The lesson is obvious: Hot emerging technologies often feature more hype than heft. Which raises the questions: What determines whether a technology will come to market eventually? And will the technologies now on many experts' list of future winners really make the grade? Traditionally, technologists and entrepreneurs have contended that realizing the promise of an emerging technology -- one that may be in products within a couple of years -- is more art than science. But Harvard Business School professor and author Clayton Christensen argues that commercially successful innovation isn't the crap shoot that it's sometimes made out to be. Innovation has rules, he argues, just as guidelines exist for producing quality products or for being a good manager. "Innovation isn't random," Christensen told a packed conference of young innovators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on May 23. "We're at the same place the quality movement was 20 years ago. We need to learn to understand and manage innovation so that we can maximize the chances that a new technology will succeed." FINDING FERTILE GROUND. One of the most important rules of successful innovation is to develop technologies for new markets where industry stalwarts have no status quo to protect -- and no need to steal someone else's customer to succeed. In management-speak, this is called "taking root in disruption." One example Christensen points to is the rise of the personal computer. The original Apple II computer was targeted at kids -- the only customers willing to play around with such a dorky machine. But as PCs improved, parents started paying attention. By listening to these new customers, Apple and rival PC makers were able ultimately to unseat the computing incumbents, who were still focused on mainframes and other large, professional computers. According to Christensen, a company with a new technology has only a 6% chance of success if it tries to make a similar but better product than an incumbent and sell it to the same customers. By contrast, he says, the chances of success for a "disruptive strategy" are 33%. MAJOR MISTAKES. Equally important is the principle that new technologies should disrupt competitors, not customers. Too often, new technologies try to make customers change the way they do things. Instead, Christensen says, innovation should help customers do things they already do more easily, conveniently, and for less money. Take the music business. Before the Internet, when customers bought a Bob Dylan CD, they could do pretty much what they wanted with it. They could listen to it in the car or at home, or make a copy (a tape, back then) for a friend. The rise of Web-based peer-to-peer file-sharing technology à la Napster has made it easier, faster, and cheaper for customers to do what they always did -- and ultimately, that probably will disrupt CD retailers and distributors. The problem is, it has also threatened the status quo that music labels and artists have an interest in protecting -- and have sued to preserve. So in this case, innovation has disrupted the wrong people -- the mortal enemies of trying something new. However, the incumbents are making a similar mistake as they try to make the latest innovations work for them. The Web subscription services created by the music industry -- called PressPlay and MusicNet -- try to dictate more stringently than ever before just where and how the industry's paying customers can listen to music. But their rules are so restrictive as to annoy customers. And the music-buying public in turn largely shuns the Establishment sites in favor of whatever file-sharing service has found a chink in the industry's armor. THINGS TO COME. This special report on emerging technologies examines a handful of innovations that adhere to Christensen's rules for success. For the most part, these are technologies that experts think will be commercially available in two to three years -- though in biotech and medicine we chose advances that will only be in clinical trials within that time frame, since the drugs of two years hence are in trials already. The stories that follow focus on five innovations: Medical devices that use silicon chips and software to make it easier for diabetes patients to live normal lives. Software that uses a unique combination of 3-D graphics and global-positioning technology for everything from finding land mines to helping pilots fly. Fuel cells that will power cell-phone towers before they replace your car's gas tank. Computer screens that may be as easy to roll up and take with you as a sheet of paper. And nanotechnology-based biotech diagnostic tools that might spot cancer in its earliest stages. Whether these technologies will spark a revolution or simply advance evolution a bit is hard to say. One thing is sure, though: Their success or failure will add to the growing body of knowledge about what it takes for a technology to emerge -- and perhaps how to successfully design the next big thing.  By Jane Black in New York Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | JUNE |
 Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of Use | Privacy Policy |
Printer-Friendly Version