Is disruptive technology driving innovation or causing chaos?

The only constant is change and today this has never rung truer. We are in an age of change where disruptive technologies are not only changing lives, but transforming markets. Two critical elements become important – that your company is not being made obsolete and that rather than seeing chaos, businesses see the opportunity.

We are in an era of engagement and those technologies that enable collaboration, communication and connection also provide a platform that allows businesses to create. However many businesses are still beholden to traditional models driven by silos and hierarchies and as a result, are finding it difficult to truly capitalise on disruptive technology and the potential innovation that can be reaped from open collaboration and a culture of engagement.

However, there are those businesses that have realised the potential of disruptive technology and ‘organised chaos’. In fact, according to Forrester, many organisations are making a fundamental bet on social business and collaboration to drive worker effectiveness (not only knowledge workers) as a competitive differentiator – stating that the next generation of market-leading organisations will digitise their enterprise model with new capabilities enabled by social technologies.

Business as we know it has changed and continues to change, just more rapidly. While business has always been about providing a service or product that a customer wants – today it’s about enabling them to consume it through their desired platform(s) – anytime, anywhere. In order to make this possible, business needs to truly listen to their customers, their wants and their needs and ultimately create not just a destination, but a portal for engagement with the brand.

The role of mobile and technology even in Africa cannot be denied as it opens up enormous opportunities not only for increased productivity – but for broader engagement, collaboration and communication across all levels of the business not just externally, but internally as well.

As businesses open up they need to be focused on not only creating communication channels for customers and external parties, but also internally for their staff. In many respects, social media has created a culture of collaboration. People share information freely which often translates to a similar mindset in the workplace. This means that projects, in theory, should be able to get done faster as more people are working on the problem. Additionally, it helps organisations retain knowledge, drum up corporate spirit, get new employees up to speed, collaborate on business-purpose projects, foster innovation and improve customer service by creating highly engaged communities.

Businesses need to adapt. It’s as simple as that. They need to challenge paradigms and test hypothesis – looking to everyday challenges and experience and asking the question – how can this be improved or how can we make it better? Technology has been a catalyst in driving new behaviour and interconnectedness and has led to an awakening that helps us realise change is possible and that we can make it happen. Therefore, instead of viewing social networks and disruptive technology as a bad thing, organisations should harness the spirit of collaboration and ‘out of the box’ thinking and apply it into their own environment to truly reap the benefits.