Standards and Disruptive Technology

Posted by Andy_Updegrove on Jan 5, 2007 5:26 AM EDT
ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog; By Andy Updegrove
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A story at InformationWeek called Five Disruptive Technologies to Watch in 2007 couldn't help but catch my eye on New Years Day. The reason is that all five technologies, and the strategies of the vendors that are promoting them, rely upon standards – in most cases, fundamentally. That's no surprise, because disruption by definition is painful, and no one in the supply chain (including end users) likes pain. Providing a convincing argument why the resulting pleasure will more than offset the pain is therefore imperative.

One type of pain that vendors and end users particularly dislike is the risk inherent in buying into a new technology or service model. For a vendor, that means investing in lots of R&D, set up and marketing in a new product that may not sell. For an end user, it means buying into a new product or service that may prove to be poorly supported with (at best) little competition or choice provided, and (at worst) ultimate abandonment and the need to switch again. One of the best ways to mitigate against this type of risk for both sides of the sales equation is to create standards that everyone agrees to adopt, ensuring that there are many stakeholders that have a vested interest in seeing the disruptive model succeed. These five "disruptive technologies" provide an excellent example of that strategy in action.

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