Business strategy
Are disruptive technologies
disruptive?
Or are they simply inevitable progress?
The key role of technological change
may be more important than we think,
argues Professor Ray Oakey
S
www.theiet.org/management
ince the onset of the industrial revolution,
improvements in technology have played a
major role in creating economic growth. These
advances have triggered changes in industrial
location, and concentrated the population into
major industrial cities. Moreover, although
these changes have been ‘disruptive’ to those who were
personally impacted, in the medium to long term they have
usually proven to be both welcome and unavoidable.
More recently, there has been a tendency for experts on
technological change to use the term ‘disruptive
technologies’ when referring to the manner in which radical
new technological improvements occur. This term is
intriguing, since, in most other contexts, it would imply that
a previously virtuous regime had been damagingly
interrupted, which is analogous to the flight programme of
an airport being ‘disrupted’ by bad weather.
Terming technological progress ‘disruptive’ may stem
from an understandable dislike of the uncertainty triggered
by sudden unexpected events. However, in most cases where
new technology is concerned, we often have conflicting
desires for both stability and the fruits of rapid technological
progress. For example, we value the benefits of mobile
phones, but complain when others use them in public.
However, resistance to change is often illogical, since,
when ‘disruption’ engenders technological progress, it at
worst revitalises an existing technological status quo
through a better rate and trajectory of advancement of
established technologies, and at best replaces the status quo
with a totally new, and much improved, technological
solution derived from a completely different (possibly new)
area of science (e.g. biomedicine, the Internet).
10
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
Moreover, most of the evidence on technological change
suggests that it is not easy for spurious new technologies to
replace (or disrupt) the existing technological status quo.
The public is discerning, and not easily duped by advertising
claims of new products, as may have been demonstrated by
the relatively slow uptake of 3G mobile phone technologies.
The consumer has a very well developed sense of what
has high and widespread personal utility (e.g. the basic
mobile phone), and technological ‘improvements’ that are,
by comparison, cosmetic. Generally, since disruptive
technologies will only occur if what they offer is
substantially better than what exists, we should not worry
that such phantom technological ‘advances’ will occur.
reasons, and P2 does not occur. Second, due to monopoly (or
virtual monopoly power when large firms act in consort)
there is no impetus for manufacturers to produce P2 to
replace P1, partly due to the inertia caused by past
investment in P1. Significantly, in such circumstances, the
interests of the customer are ignored.
There are two major ways in which this static,
uncompetitive position can be broken to restore a more
normal and healthy position of general technological
change. First, the market can free itself when entrepreneurs,
with no stake in the monopoly status quo, break into the
market with an alternative technological solution to restore
competition and change. Second, governments may restore
the competitive equilibrium, either through anti-monopoly
REASONS FOR DISRUPTION
A useful means of depicting technological progress in an
industrial context is to view technological change in terms
of sequential product lifecycles, in which matured existing
technologies are eventually supplanted by radical new and
more efficient replacements (see fig 1, p12). Significantly,
although the destruction or disruption of one product by
another is often a traumatic event (sometimes causing a
collapse in a complete industrial sector), technological
progress brings major medium to long term benefits to the
consumer in particular, and society in general.
Fig 1 depicts the relationship between two product
lifecycles (i.e. P1 and P2) in terms of efficiency/sales over
time (as only part of a longer evolutionary trend). For P1,
basic research creates the new technology on which the
product is based, while applied research delivers the most
rapid period of efficiency gains as the new technology
involved is honed, and performance and production
problems are eliminated. Subsequently, the development
phase is mainly concerned with the fine-tuning of the
product design and performance, and is largely cosmetic,
since little efficiency gains are achievable at this late stage.
At the point where P1 has reached the development stage
on the top of the curve, a number of possibilities exist. First,
in some cases, further progress is not possible for technical
WHAT CAN GOVERNMENTS DO TO FOSTER
TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS?
1. Be prepared to fund and support speculative R&D;
2. Be aware of actual or virtual technological monopolies;
3.
Nurture the right environments for the formation and growth
of new entrepreneurial high-tech businesses.
legislation (common in Western developed economies), or
through entering into the market as a manufacturer or
customer, to promote the development and production of a
particular technology determined to be of economic,
military or a combined strategic importance to the nation
or group of nations (for example, Airbus Industries).
Fig 1 can be used to illustrate a real-life example of how
government ‘demand-pull’ spending has provoked a muchneeded new technical solution. A major impediment to the
development of early computers was the use of expensive,
bulky and fragile thermionic valves to provide the electronic
switch functions for computers that enabled them to become
progressively smaller and more powerful. If this example is
applied to fig 1, P1 equates to the thermionic valve in
circumstances where the ‘flat’ (small residual progress) ➔
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
11
Business strategy
Are disruptive technologies
disruptive?
Or are they simply inevitable progress?
The key role of technological change
may be more important than we think,
argues Professor Ray Oakey
S
www.theiet.org/management
ince the onset of the industrial revolution,
improvements in technology have played a
major role in creating economic growth. These
advances have triggered changes in industrial
location, and concentrated the population into
major industrial cities. Moreover, although
these changes have been ‘disruptive’ to those who were
personally impacted, in the medium to long term they have
usually proven to be both welcome and unavoidable.
More recently, there has been a tendency for experts on
technological change to use the term ‘disruptive
technologies’ when referring to the manner in which radical
new technological improvements occur. This term is
intriguing, since, in most other contexts, it would imply that
a previously virtuous regime had been damagingly
interrupted, which is analogous to the flight programme of
an airport being ‘disrupted’ by bad weather.
Terming technological progress ‘disruptive’ may stem
from an understandable dislike of the uncertainty triggered
by sudden unexpected events. However, in most cases where
new technology is concerned, we often have conflicting
desires for both stability and the fruits of rapid technological
progress. For example, we value the benefits of mobile
phones, but complain when others use them in public.
However, resistance to change is often illogical, since,
when ‘disruption’ engenders technological progress, it at
worst revitalises an existing technological status quo
through a better rate and trajectory of advancement of
established technologies, and at best replaces the status quo
with a totally new, and much improved, technological
solution derived from a completely different (possibly new)
area of science (e.g. biomedicine, the Internet).
10
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
Moreover, most of the evidence on technological change
suggests that it is not easy for spurious new technologies to
replace (or disrupt) the existing technological status quo.
The public is discerning, and not easily duped by advertising
claims of new products, as may have been demonstrated by
the relatively slow uptake of 3G mobile phone technologies.
The consumer has a very well developed sense of what
has high and widespread personal utility (e.g. the basic
mobile phone), and technological ‘improvements’ that are,
by comparison, cosmetic. Generally, since disruptive
technologies will only occur if what they offer is
substantially better than what exists, we should not worry
that such phantom technological ‘advances’ will occur.
reasons, and P2 does not occur. Second, due to monopoly (or
virtual monopoly power when large firms act in consort)
there is no impetus for manufacturers to produce P2 to
replace P1, partly due to the inertia caused by past
investment in P1. Significantly, in such circumstances, the
interests of the customer are ignored.
There are two major ways in which this static,
uncompetitive position can be broken to restore a more
normal and healthy position of general technological
change. First, the market can free itself when entrepreneurs,
with no stake in the monopoly status quo, break into the
market with an alternative technological solution to restore
competition and change. Second, governments may restore
the competitive equilibrium, either through anti-monopoly
REASONS FOR DISRUPTION
A useful means of depicting technological progress in an
industrial context is to view technological change in terms
of sequential product lifecycles, in which matured existing
technologies are eventually supplanted by radical new and
more efficient replacements (see fig 1, p12). Significantly,
although the destruction or disruption of one product by
another is often a traumatic event (sometimes causing a
collapse in a complete industrial sector), technological
progress brings major medium to long term benefits to the
consumer in particular, and society in general.
Fig 1 depicts the relationship between two product
lifecycles (i.e. P1 and P2) in terms of efficiency/sales over
time (as only part of a longer evolutionary trend). For P1,
basic research creates the new technology on which the
product is based, while applied research delivers the most
rapid period of efficiency gains as the new technology
involved is honed, and performance and production
problems are eliminated. Subsequently, the development
phase is mainly concerned with the fine-tuning of the
product design and performance, and is largely cosmetic,
since little efficiency gains are achievable at this late stage.
At the point where P1 has reached the development stage
on the top of the curve, a number of possibilities exist. First,
in some cases, further progress is not possible for technical
WHAT CAN GOVERNMENTS DO TO FOSTER
TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS?
1. Be prepared to fund and support speculative R&D;
2. Be aware of actual or virtual technological monopolies;
3.
Nurture the right environments for the formation and growth
of new entrepreneurial high-tech businesses.
legislation (common in Western developed economies), or
through entering into the market as a manufacturer or
customer, to promote the development and production of a
particular technology determined to be of economic,
military or a combined strategic importance to the nation
or group of nations (for example, Airbus Industries).
Fig 1 can be used to illustrate a real-life example of how
government ‘demand-pull’ spending has provoked a muchneeded new technical solution. A major impediment to the
development of early computers was the use of expensive,
bulky and fragile thermionic valves to provide the electronic
switch functions for computers that enabled them to become
progressively smaller and more powerful. If this example is
applied to fig 1, P1 equates to the thermionic valve in
circumstances where the ‘flat’ (small residual progress) ➔
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
11
[SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY]
Business strategy
‘‘
Although changes have been ‘disruptive’ to those who were personally impacted, in the
medium to long term they have usually proven to be both welcome and unavoidable
Fig 2 – (From left to right) The replacement of old valve technology,
as shown in this example of a Marconi transmitter valve type M.T.6
(a), by the new transistor in the early 1950s (b – photo from early
1960s) afforded an immediate jump in efficiency and created a
new product development curve to create improvements on the
original design (c – photo from late 1990s) which is still being
refined. Surface mount technology is the norm today.
THE KEY ROLE OF THE ENTREPRENEUR
www.theiet.org/management
Significantly, a major mechanism for change provided by the
free market system is that of entrepreneurial action. In
circumstances where technological progress on the part of
large firms has been arrested by a tactical unwillingness on
their part to adopt and/or develop existing basic scientific
discoveries (or invent totally new technical solutions),
entrepreneurs, who have no inertia causing interest in the
status quo, often destroy existing technological paradigms
and clear the way for a new period of rapid technological
change-led growth. Indeed, these individuals are often
disenchanted ‘spin off ’ entrepreneurs from existing large
firms, or academic entrepreneurs from universities.
The false uncompetitive technical and/or managerial
regime of the status quo maintained by large firms operating
alone or in consort is often exposed by the simplicity of the
technical change that is used by emergent entrepreneurs to
destroy such current dominant technological paradigms, and
capture a large market share in long-established areas of
product or service-based industry.
For example, UK entrepreneur James Dyson revolutionised the vacuum cleaner industry after many years of
sectoral stability by inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner.
12
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
Similarly, Peter Wood launched Direct Line Insurance in
1985, which grew to dominate the UK insurance sector by
using well established telesales techniques to sell insurance
by telephone, an approach that proved highly popular with
customers, while delivering operating efficiencies to the
insurance provider. In many ways, the simple nature of
these inventions and/or management innovations, that
could have been easily introduced by existing large industry
leader firms, indicate how complacent many dominant
firms in a sector of industry or commerce can become.
SECTOR INVASION
In other instances, entrepreneurs seek to exploit a new
technology by invading sectors where a new and disruptive
technology did not previously exist. Recent high technology
examples of this tendency are the destruction of traditional
photography (camera and print developing technologies) by
digital camera and printing technology, while the Internet
has impacted on many areas of business, such as postal
deliveries, high street shopping and the purchase and
downloading of music.
Although the penetration rates of many of these new
Internet-based technologies have been slowed by the equally
slow early-adoption rates of related enabling technologies
(for example, desktop computers and broadband Internet
connections), their eventual importance cannot be doubted.
Significantly, many of the firms leading this broadly-based
new technology revolution are entrepreneurial new
enterprises beginning from modest resource bases. These
Development
Applied
Basic
Efficiency/Sales
development stage of the product development curve was
reached by about 1950. An inability to further develop the
thermionic valve led to intense demand-pull to produce a
better alternative.
The replacement of the old valve technology with the
new P2 transistor in the very early 1950s, as figs 1 and 2
depict, afforded an immediate jump in efficiency. This was
then further increased by the fact that this new solution was
only the beginning of a new product development curve,
where gains for a given input of research and development
(R&D) investment throughout the applied phase of product
development would be rapid during this steep part of the
development curve.
Moreover, the further miniaturisation of silicon-based
electronic products, unlike many defence-induced technologies, found widespread use in terms of civil applications
and, as noted above, has led to efficiency gains in many
existing forms of production (e.g. robots in the motor vehicle
industry). However, the key point here is that the disruption
caused by P2 (the transistor) delivered efficiency gains that
could not have been achieved by the further refinement of
P1 (the thermionic valve).
P2
Development
Jump
P1
Applied
Basic
Time
Fig 1: Illustration of intense demand-pull that created a better
alternative product, P2. The development curves of two products,
P1 and P2, are shown.
firms have grown large at a very fast rate on the basis of
specialist technological skills that disrupt established high
technology sectors by challenging their leading firms in
circumstances where the implications of the approach of
these new entrepreneurs were not well understood by their
complacent larger counterparts (such as Google, eBay, Cisco
Systems).
Clearly, existing large firms who have suffered in this
conflict with new firm entrepreneurs have not willingly
surrendered lucrative areas of business to new entrants. It
has previously been mentioned that both complacency and
a desire to preserve monopolistic or oligopolistic profits
derived from well-established and heavily invested in
technology, contribute to a failure of large firms to efficiently
keep pace with progress in their own and relevant related
areas of technology.
However, the process of choosing the correct path for
investment in R&D by large firms is inherently difficult and
risky, particularly in modern, technologically complex, and
rapidly changing circumstances. Moreover, it is a characteristic of many of the most radical technological revolutions
that they often emerge on the boundary between technological disciplines. Here, many small firms have an advantage,
since the core large firms of these overlapping sectors tend
to technologically dominate only their respective distinct
‘centre grounds’. Indeed, as noted above, many of the most
damaging technological revolutions emerge from totally
different technological areas to that of the large firm
impacted by such change. This implies that the affected large
firm often could not have avoided the damage involved by
such penetration through traditional intra-sectoral R&D,
since such research would have not been directed at the
correct peripheral area of related science.
GOVERNMENTAL INFLUENCE
Technological progress, by its very nature, is famously
difficult to foster or predict, either in terms of the pace or
direction of change. However, governments may beneficially
influence the climate for technological change in three
general ways, to create the best conditions for progress.
First, in circumstances where technological progress has
been stalled by a genuine technical problem that is
inhibiting scientific progress and human welfare (for
example, in medicine, a cure for cancer or HIV), governments should, through proactive invention and innovation,
adopt ‘push’ behaviour, and be prepared to fund and support
speculative basic R&D in public institutions and large firms.
In cases where the risks to the private sector are
prohibitively high for the development of blue sky solutions,
and where progress is desirable on humanitarian grounds,
national and international resources should be deployed to
ensure, in keeping with the basic premise of this paper, that
beneficial technical progress is not arrested. In this context,
the recent tendency of many Western governments to
transfer public sector research funding in universities from
basic to applied work can be seen as unwise, and ‘shorttermist’ in nature.
Second, governments should be alert to the problems of
actual or virtual technological monopolies. Market
domination, often monitored by anti-trust government
bodies, is only a downstream ramification of technological
dominance, in which producers, who gain an early control
of a powerful and pervasive technology, may seek to
monopolise technological market areas by dictating the pace
and direction of technological change to their own and not
their customer’s best interests.
Computer software has been a recent area of concern in
this context (e.g. internet search engines). Any large firm
that attempts, either working alone or with partners, to
arrest technological change at either national or
international levels or to dictate its pace or direction against
the public interest, should be strongly penalised by
governments. Nationalistic tendencies, which often emerge
to protect major transgressor ‘flagship’ national producers
in the short-term, will lead to a poorer overall world
technological performance in the longer run.
’’
THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT
Third, the industrial development arms of governments in
developed economies should ensure that highly conducive
environments exist for the formation and growth of
entrepreneurial new high technology businesses. Although
small in resource terms, it is now well established through
many research studies that these new small firms regularly
produce new, ‘paradigm destroying’ technological improvements that large firms are often reluctant to contemplate or
introduce. The provision of necessary logistical support,
including management training, premises, and marketing
support are all relevant to the success of this type of firm.
However, the most significant resource is patient and
reasonably-priced capital, mainly because capital has the
unique property of transformability into any of the other
resources necessary for inventive success.
Finally, to conclude on the impact of disruptive technologies on industrial growth, it must be resolved that, since
technological change is generally inevitable and desirable
under conditions of free market competition, from the
viewpoint of technological disruption within economies, it
is stasis that is disruptive, and not change, as stasis arrests
an otherwise virtuous free market competitive process of
beneficial improvement and change. ■
Ray Oakey is Professor of Business
Development at Manchester Business
School. [email protected]
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
13
[SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY]
Business strategy
‘‘
Although changes have been ‘disruptive’ to those who were personally impacted, in the
medium to long term they have usually proven to be both welcome and unavoidable
Fig 2 – (From left to right) The replacement of old valve technology,
as shown in this example of a Marconi transmitter valve type M.T.6
(a), by the new transistor in the early 1950s (b – photo from early
1960s) afforded an immediate jump in efficiency and created a
new product development curve to create improvements on the
original design (c – photo from late 1990s) which is still being
refined. Surface mount technology is the norm today.
THE KEY ROLE OF THE ENTREPRENEUR
www.theiet.org/management
Significantly, a major mechanism for change provided by the
free market system is that of entrepreneurial action. In
circumstances where technological progress on the part of
large firms has been arrested by a tactical unwillingness on
their part to adopt and/or develop existing basic scientific
discoveries (or invent totally new technical solutions),
entrepreneurs, who have no inertia causing interest in the
status quo, often destroy existing technological paradigms
and clear the way for a new period of rapid technological
change-led growth. Indeed, these individuals are often
disenchanted ‘spin off ’ entrepreneurs from existing large
firms, or academic entrepreneurs from universities.
The false uncompetitive technical and/or managerial
regime of the status quo maintained by large firms operating
alone or in consort is often exposed by the simplicity of the
technical change that is used by emergent entrepreneurs to
destroy such current dominant technological paradigms, and
capture a large market share in long-established areas of
product or service-based industry.
For example, UK entrepreneur James Dyson revolutionised the vacuum cleaner industry after many years of
sectoral stability by inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner.
12
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
Similarly, Peter Wood launched Direct Line Insurance in
1985, which grew to dominate the UK insurance sector by
using well established telesales techniques to sell insurance
by telephone, an approach that proved highly popular with
customers, while delivering operating efficiencies to the
insurance provider. In many ways, the simple nature of
these inventions and/or management innovations, that
could have been easily introduced by existing large industry
leader firms, indicate how complacent many dominant
firms in a sector of industry or commerce can become.
SECTOR INVASION
In other instances, entrepreneurs seek to exploit a new
technology by invading sectors where a new and disruptive
technology did not previously exist. Recent high technology
examples of this tendency are the destruction of traditional
photography (camera and print developing technologies) by
digital camera and printing technology, while the Internet
has impacted on many areas of business, such as postal
deliveries, high street shopping and the purchase and
downloading of music.
Although the penetration rates of many of these new
Internet-based technologies have been slowed by the equally
slow early-adoption rates of related enabling technologies
(for example, desktop computers and broadband Internet
connections), their eventual importance cannot be doubted.
Significantly, many of the firms leading this broadly-based
new technology revolution are entrepreneurial new
enterprises beginning from modest resource bases. These
Development
Applied
Basic
Efficiency/Sales
development stage of the product development curve was
reached by about 1950. An inability to further develop the
thermionic valve led to intense demand-pull to produce a
better alternative.
The replacement of the old valve technology with the
new P2 transistor in the very early 1950s, as figs 1 and 2
depict, afforded an immediate jump in efficiency. This was
then further increased by the fact that this new solution was
only the beginning of a new product development curve,
where gains for a given input of research and development
(R&D) investment throughout the applied phase of product
development would be rapid during this steep part of the
development curve.
Moreover, the further miniaturisation of silicon-based
electronic products, unlike many defence-induced technologies, found widespread use in terms of civil applications
and, as noted above, has led to efficiency gains in many
existing forms of production (e.g. robots in the motor vehicle
industry). However, the key point here is that the disruption
caused by P2 (the transistor) delivered efficiency gains that
could not have been achieved by the further refinement of
P1 (the thermionic valve).
P2
Development
Jump
P1
Applied
Basic
Time
Fig 1: Illustration of intense demand-pull that created a better
alternative product, P2. The development curves of two products,
P1 and P2, are shown.
firms have grown large at a very fast rate on the basis of
specialist technological skills that disrupt established high
technology sectors by challenging their leading firms in
circumstances where the implications of the approach of
these new entrepreneurs were not well understood by their
complacent larger counterparts (such as Google, eBay, Cisco
Systems).
Clearly, existing large firms who have suffered in this
conflict with new firm entrepreneurs have not willingly
surrendered lucrative areas of business to new entrants. It
has previously been mentioned that both complacency and
a desire to preserve monopolistic or oligopolistic profits
derived from well-established and heavily invested in
technology, contribute to a failure of large firms to efficiently
keep pace with progress in their own and relevant related
areas of technology.
However, the process of choosing the correct path for
investment in R&D by large firms is inherently difficult and
risky, particularly in modern, technologically complex, and
rapidly changing circumstances. Moreover, it is a characteristic of many of the most radical technological revolutions
that they often emerge on the boundary between technological disciplines. Here, many small firms have an advantage,
since the core large firms of these overlapping sectors tend
to technologically dominate only their respective distinct
‘centre grounds’. Indeed, as noted above, many of the most
damaging technological revolutions emerge from totally
different technological areas to that of the large firm
impacted by such change. This implies that the affected large
firm often could not have avoided the damage involved by
such penetration through traditional intra-sectoral R&D,
since such research would have not been directed at the
correct peripheral area of related science.
GOVERNMENTAL INFLUENCE
Technological progress, by its very nature, is famously
difficult to foster or predict, either in terms of the pace or
direction of change. However, governments may beneficially
influence the climate for technological change in three
general ways, to create the best conditions for progress.
First, in circumstances where technological progress has
been stalled by a genuine technical problem that is
inhibiting scientific progress and human welfare (for
example, in medicine, a cure for cancer or HIV), governments should, through proactive invention and innovation,
adopt ‘push’ behaviour, and be prepared to fund and support
speculative basic R&D in public institutions and large firms.
In cases where the risks to the private sector are
prohibitively high for the development of blue sky solutions,
and where progress is desirable on humanitarian grounds,
national and international resources should be deployed to
ensure, in keeping with the basic premise of this paper, that
beneficial technical progress is not arrested. In this context,
the recent tendency of many Western governments to
transfer public sector research funding in universities from
basic to applied work can be seen as unwise, and ‘shorttermist’ in nature.
Second, governments should be alert to the problems of
actual or virtual technological monopolies. Market
domination, often monitored by anti-trust government
bodies, is only a downstream ramification of technological
dominance, in which producers, who gain an early control
of a powerful and pervasive technology, may seek to
monopolise technological market areas by dictating the pace
and direction of technological change to their own and not
their customer’s best interests.
Computer software has been a recent area of concern in
this context (e.g. internet search engines). Any large firm
that attempts, either working alone or with partners, to
arrest technological change at either national or
international levels or to dictate its pace or direction against
the public interest, should be strongly penalised by
governments. Nationalistic tendencies, which often emerge
to protect major transgressor ‘flagship’ national producers
in the short-term, will lead to a poorer overall world
technological performance in the longer run.
’’
THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT
Third, the industrial development arms of governments in
developed economies should ensure that highly conducive
environments exist for the formation and growth of
entrepreneurial new high technology businesses. Although
small in resource terms, it is now well established through
many research studies that these new small firms regularly
produce new, ‘paradigm destroying’ technological improvements that large firms are often reluctant to contemplate or
introduce. The provision of necessary logistical support,
including management training, premises, and marketing
support are all relevant to the success of this type of firm.
However, the most significant resource is patient and
reasonably-priced capital, mainly because capital has the
unique property of transformability into any of the other
resources necessary for inventive success.
Finally, to conclude on the impact of disruptive technologies on industrial growth, it must be resolved that, since
technological change is generally inevitable and desirable
under conditions of free market competition, from the
viewpoint of technological disruption within economies, it
is stasis that is disruptive, and not change, as stasis arrests
an otherwise virtuous free market competitive process of
beneficial improvement and change. ■
Ray Oakey is Professor of Business
Development at Manchester Business
School. [email protected]
IET Engineering Management | April/May 2007
13