Turning Technology Disruptions into Business Opportunities

a big way, Apple has been experimenting with a variety of advanced storage technologies. Recent breakthroughs in advanced oil and gas exploration is making it economical to extract unconventional oil and gas (usually from Shale) and this can vastly improve India’s energy security. We can leverage a creative combination of the disruptive technologies outlined here - it will enable us to redefine our business landscape and move up the value chain. Disruptive Technologies can be Business Opportunities To understand how disruptive technologies can be converted into growth opportunities for our Business, let us look at the disruptions happening in the automotive industry as an example. Bill Ford (Great Grandson of Henry Ford) has made it clear in a recent TED talk that the future growth of his company is not in selling more cars but in connecting the cars – making sure that the cars talk to each other and also to the infrastructure (parking lots, traffic signals, toll booths etc). He cites global grid lock and sustainability as the key drivers that will shape the future automotive industry. A few business leaders have started looking beyond the horizons of today’s business and visualizing what their business is going to be like in the future. Those of us who live in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore can easily relate to the problem of traffic jams and productivity losses that it leads to –hence an important question for an emerging economy like India is, “How can our automotive industry develop an innovative and sustainable solution that addresses global grid lock?” The promise of the electric car, in recent times, is steadily enhanced by the possibilities offered by smart, connected and autonomous (driver-less) vehicles. This has the potential to disrupt the traditional automotive industry.

Elon Musk is translating this disruption into a significant business opportunity. Musk is scaling up his breakthrough in the design and manufacturing of batteries and widening the market – he is expected to deliver thirty-five thousand near-luxury cars this year.

Automotive giants like Daimler and Toyota have bought Tesla power train systems and invested in the company. In fact, Musk’s technology strategy to drive wide acceptance of the electric car is very unconventional and daringly innovative – in June 2014, Tesla announced that it would make its patents widely available to automakers in the interest of speeding up electric car development around the world. What if the electric car is on our roads sooner than predicted – are we ready? Innovation and Intrapreneurship We need to be innovative in leveraging the disruptive technologies to grow our business in the future. Innovative ideas alone are not enough, we need to effectively incubate these ideas in-house and successfully spin-off new businesses – we should be ready to kill our current business before anybody else does. The future of our business is in redefining it by proactively assessing and leveraging the disruptive technologies.

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