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Exploit Disruptive Infrastructure Technology

Disrupt or be disrupted.

  • New technology can hit like a meteor. Not only disruptive to IT, technology provides opportunities for organization-wide advantage.
  • Your role is endangered. If you don’t prepare for the most disruptive technologies, you could be overshadowed. Don’t let the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) set the technological innovation agenda
  • Predicting the future isn’t easy. Most IT leaders fail to realize how quickly technology increases in capability. Even for the tech savvy, predicting which specific technologies will become disruptive is difficult.
  • Communication is difficult when the sky is falling. Even forward-looking IT leaders struggle with convincing others to devote time and resources to monitoring technologies with a formal process.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • Establish the core working group, select a leader, and select a group of visionaries to help brainstorm emerging technologies.
  • Brainstorm about creating a better future, begin brainstorming an initial longlist.
  • Train the group to think like futurists.
  • Evaluate the shortlist.
  • Define your PoC list and schedule.
  • Finalize, present the plan to stakeholders and repeat.

Impact and Result

  • Create a disruptive technology working group.
  • Produce a longlist of disruptive technologies.
  • Evaluate the longlist to produce a shortlist of disruptive technologies.
  • Develop a plan for a proof-of-concept project for each shortlisted technology.

Exploit Disruptive Infrastructure Technology Research & Tools

1. Exploit Disruptive Infrastructure Technology – A guide to help IT leaders make the most of disruptive impacts.

As a CIO, there is a need to move beyond day-to-day technology management with an ever-increasing need to forecast technology impacts. Not just from a technical perspective but to map out the technical understandings aligned to potential business impacts and improvements. Technology transformation and innovation is moving more quickly than ever before and as an innovation champion, the CIO or CTO should have foresight in specific technologies with the understanding of how the company could be disrupted in the near future.

Foresight + Current Technology + Business Understanding = Understanding the Business Disruption.

This should be a repeatable process, not an exception or reactionary response.

2. Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template – A guide to develop the plan for exploiting disruptive technology.

The Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template acts as an implementation plan for developing a long-term strategy for monitoring and implementing disruptive technologies.

3. Disruptive Technology Look to the Past Tool – A tool to keep track of the missed technology disruption from previous opportunities.

The Disruptive Technology Look to the Past Tool will assist you to collect reasonability test notes when evaluating potential disruptive technologies.

4. Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool – A tool to keep track of the research conducted by members of the working group.

The Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool will help you to keep track of the independent research that is conducted by members of the disruptive technology exploitation working group.

5. Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool

The Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool will help you to codify the results of the disruptive technology working group's longlist winnowing process.

6. Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool – A tool to systematize notional evaluations of the value and readiness of potential disruptive technologies.

The Disruptive Technology Value Readiness & SWOT Analysis Tool will assist you to systematize notional evaluations of the value and readiness of potential disruptive technologies.

7. Proof of Concept Template – A handbook to serve as a reference when deciding how to proceed with your proposed solution.

The Proof of Concept Template will guide you through the creation of a minimum-viable proof-of-concept project.

8. Disruptive Technology Executive Presentation Template – A template to help you create a brief progress report presentation summarizing your project and program progress.

The Disruptive Technology Executive Presentation Template will assist you to present an overview of the disruptive technology process, outlining the value to your company.


Analyst Perspective

The key is in anticipation.

“We all encounter unexpected changes and our responses are often determined by how we perceive and understand those changes. We react according to the unexpected occurrence. Business organizations are no different.

When a company faces a major technology disruption in its markets – one that could fundamentally change the business or impact its processes and technology – the way its management perceive and understand the disruption influences how they describe and plan for it. In other words, the way management sets the context of a disruption – the way they frame it – shapes the strategy they adopt. Technology leaders can vastly influence business strategy by adopting a proactive approach to understanding disruptive and innovative technologies by simply adopting a process to review and evaluate technology impacts to the company’s lines of business.”

This is a picture of Troy Cheeseman

Troy Cheeseman
Practice Lead, Infrastructure & Operations Research
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

  • New technology can hit like a meteor. Not only disruptive to IT, technology provides opportunities for organization-wide advantage.
  • Your role is endangered. If you don’t prepare for the most disruptive technologies, you could be overshadowed. Don’t let the chief marketing officer (CMO) set the technological innovation agenda.

Common Obstacles

  • Predicting the future isn’t easy. Most IT leaders fail to realize how quickly technology increases in capability. Even for the tech savvy, predicting which specific technologies will become disruptive is difficult.
  • Communication is difficult when the sky is falling. Even forward-looking IT leaders struggle with convincing others to devote time and resources to monitoring technologies with a formal process.

Info-Tech’s Approach

  • Identify, resolve, and evaluate. Use an annual process as described in this blueprint: a formal evaluation of new technology that turns analysis into action.
  • Lead the analysis from IT. Establish a team to carry out the annual process as a cure for the causes of “airline magazine syndrome” and to prevent it from happening in the future.
  • Train your team on the patterns of progress, track technology over time in a central database, and read Info-Tech’s analysis of upcoming technology.
  • Create your KPIs. Establish your success indicators to create measurable value when presenting to your executive.
  • Produce a comprehensive proof-of-concept plan that will allow your company to minimize risk and maximize reward when engaging with new technology.

Info-Tech Insight

Proactively monitoring, evaluating, and exploiting disruptive tech isn’t optional.
This will protect your role, IT’s role, and the future of the organization.

A diverse working group maximizes the insight brought to bear.
An IT background is not a prerequisite.

The best technology is only the best when it brings immediate value.
Good technology might not be ready; ready technology might not be good.

Review

We help IT leaders make the most of disruptive impacts.

This research is designed for:

Target Audience: CIO, CTO, Head of Infrastructure

This research will help you:

  • Develop a process for anticipating, analyzing, and exploiting disruptive technology.
  • Communicate the business case for investing in disruptive technology.
  • Categorize emerging technologies to decide what to do with them.
  • Develop a plan for taking action to exploit the technology that will most affect your organization.

Problem statement:

As a CIO, there is a need to move beyond day-to-day technology management with an ever-increasing need to forecast technology impacts. Not just from a technical perspective but to map out the technical understandings aligned to potential business impacts and improvements. Technology transformation and innovation is moving more quickly than ever before and as an innovation champion, the CIO or CTO should have foresight in specific technologies with the understanding of how the company could be disrupted in the near future. Foresight + Current Technology + Business Understanding = Understanding the Business Disruption. This should be a repeatable process, not an exception or reactionary response.

Insight Summary

Establish the core working group, select a leader, and select a group of visionaries to help brainstorm emerging technologies.

The right team matters. A core working group will keep focus through the process and a leader will keep everyone accountable. Visionaries are out-of-the-box thinkers and once they understand how to think like a "futurists," they will drive the longlist and shortlist actions.

Train the group to think like futurists

To keep up with exponential technology growth you need to take a multi-threaded approach.

Brainstorm about creating a better future; begin brainstorming an initial longlist

Establish the longlist. The longlist helps create a holistic view of most technologies that could impact the business. Assigning values and quadrant scoring will shortlist the options and focus your PoC option.

Converge everyone’s longlists

Long to short...that's the short of it. Using SWOT, value readiness, and quadrant mapping review sessions will focus the longlist, creating a shortlist of potential POC candidates to review and consider.

Evaluate the shortlist

There is no such thing as a risk-free endeavor. Use a systematic process to ensure that the risks your organization takes have the potential to produce significant rewards.

Define your PoC list and schedule

Don’t be afraid to fail! Inevitably, some proof-of-concept projects will not benefit the organization. The projects that are successful will more than cover the costs of the failed projects. Roll out small scale and minimize losses.

Finalize, present the plan to stakeholders, and repeat!

Don't forget the C-suite. Effectively communicate and present the working group’s finding with a well-defined and succinct presentation. Start the process again!

This is a screenshot of the Thought map for Exploit disruptive infrastructure Technology.
  1. Identify
    • Establish the core working group and select a leader; select a group of visionaries
    • Train the group to think like futurists
    • Hold your initial meeting
  2. Resolve
    • Create and winnow a longlist
    • Assess and create the shortlist
  3. Evaluate
    • Create process maps
    • Develop proof of concept charter

The Key Is in Anticipation!

Use Info-Tech’s approach for analyzing disruptive technology in your own disruptive tech working group

Phase 1: Identify Phase 2: Resolve Phase 3: Evaluate

Phase Steps

  1. Establish the disruptive technology working group
  2. Think like a futurist (Training)
  3. Hold initial meeting or create an agenda for the meeting
  1. Create and winnow a longlist
  2. Assess shortlist
  1. Create process maps
  2. Develop proof of concept charter

Phase Outcomes

  • Establish a team of subject matter experts that will evaluate new, emerging, and potentially disruptive technologies.
  • Establish a process for including visionaries from outside of the working group who will provide insight and direction.
  • Introduce the core working group members.
  • Gain a better understanding of how technology advances.
  • Brainstorm a list of organizational processes.
  • Brainstorm an initial longlist.
  • Finalized longlist
  • Finalized shortlist
  • Initial analysis of each technology on the shortlist
  • Finalized shortlist
  • Initial analysis of each technology on the shortlist
  • Business process maps before and after disruption
  • Proof of concept charter
  • Key performance indicators
  • Estimation of required resources
  • Executive presentation

Four key challenges make it essential for you to become a champion for exploiting disruptive technology

  1. New technology can hit like a meteor. It doesn’t only disrupt IT; technology provides opportunities for organization-wide advantage.
  2. Your role is endangered. If you don’t prepare for the most disruptive technologies, you could be overshadowed. Don’t let the CMO rule technological innovation.
  3. Predicting the future isn’t easy. Most IT leaders fail to realize how quickly technology increases in capability. Even for the tech savvy, predicting which specific technologies will become disruptive is difficult.
  4. Communication is difficult when the sky is falling. Even forward-looking IT leaders struggle with convincing others to devote time and resources to monitoring emerging technologies with a formal process.

“Look, you have never had this amount of opportunity for innovation. Don’t forget to capitalize on it. If you do not capitalize on it, you will go the way of the dinosaur.”
– Dave Evans, Co-Founder and CTO, Stringify

Technology can hit like a meteor

“ By 2025:

  • 38.6 billion smart devices will be collecting, analyzing, and sharing data.
  • The web hosting services market is to reach $77.8 billion in 2025.
  • 70% of all tech spending is expected to go for cloud solutions.
  • There are 1.35 million tech startups.
  • Global AI market is expected to reach $89.8 billion.”

– Nick Gabov

IT Disruption

Technology disrupts IT by:

  • Affecting the infrastructure and applications that IT needs to use internally.
  • Affecting the technology of end users that IT needs to support and deploy, especially for technologies with a consumer focus.
  • Allowing IT to run more efficiently and to increase the efficiency of other business units.
  • Example: The rise of the smartphone required many organizations to rethink endpoint devices.

Business Disruption

Technology disrupts the business by:

  • Affecting the viability of the business.
  • Affecting the business’ standing in relation to competitors that better deal with disruptive technology.
  • Affecting efficiency and business strategy. IT should have a role in technology-related business decisions.
  • Example: BlackBerry failed to anticipate the rise of the apps ecosystem. The company struggled as it was unable to react with competitive products.

Senior IT leaders are expected to predict disruptions to IT and the business, while tending to today’s needs

You are expected to be both a firefighter and a forecaster

  • Anticipating upcoming disruptions is part of your job, and you will be blamed if you fail to anticipate future business disruptions because you are focusing on the present.
  • However, keeping IT running smoothly is also part of your job, and you will be blamed if today’s IT environment breaks down because you are focusing on the future.

You’re caught between the present and the future

  • You don’t have a process that anticipates future disruptions but runs alongside and integrates with operations in the present.
  • You can’t do it alone. Tending to both the present and the future will require a team that can help you keep the process running.

Info-Tech Insight

Be prepared when disruptions start coming down, even though it isn’t easy. Use this research to reduce the effort to a simple process that can be performed alongside everyday firefighting.

Make disruptive tech analysis and exploitation part of your innovation agenda

A scatter plot graph is depicted, plotting IT Innovative Leadership (X axis), and Satisfaction with IT(Y axis). IT innovative leadership explains 75% of variation in satisfaction with IT

Organizations without high satisfaction with IT innovation leadership are only 20% likely to be highly satisfied with IT

“You rarely see a real-world correlation of .86!”
– Mike Battista, Staff Scientist, Cambridge Brain Sciences, PhD in Measurement

There is a clear relationship between satisfaction with IT and the IT department’s innovation leadership.

Prevent “airline magazine syndrome” by proactively analyzing disruptive technologies

“The last thing the CIO needs is an executive saying ‘I don’t what it is or what it does…but I want two of them!”
– Tim Lalonde

Airline magazine syndrome happens to IT leaders caught between the business and IT. It usually occurs in this manner:

  1. While on a flight, a senior executive reads about an emerging technology that has exciting implications for the business in an airline magazine.
  2. The executive returns and approaches IT, demanding that action be taken to address the disruptive technology – and that it should have been (ideally) completed already.

Without a Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan:

“I don’t know”

With a Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan:

“Here in IT, we have already considered that technology and decided it was overhyped. Let me show you our analysis and invite you to join our working group.”

OR

“We have already considered that technology and have started testing it. Let me show you our testing lab and invite you to join our working group.”

Info-Tech Insight

Airline magazine syndrome is a symptom of a wider problem: poor CEO-CIO alignment. Solve this problem with improved communication and documentation. Info-Tech’s disruptive tech iterative process will make airline magazine syndrome a thing of the past!

IT leaders who do not keep up with disruptive technology will find their roles diminished

“Today’s CIO dominion is in a decaying orbit with CIOs in existential threat mode.”
– Ken Magee

Protect your role within IT

  • IT is threatened by disruptive technology:
    • Trends like cloud services, increased automation, and consumerization reduce the need for IT to be involved in every aspect of deploying and using technology.
    • In the long term, machines will replace even intellectually demanding IT jobs, such as infrastructure admin and high-level planning.
  • Protect your role in IT by:
    • Anticipating new technology that will disrupt the IT department and your place within it.
    • Defining new IT roles and responsibilities that accurately reflect the reality of technology today.
    • Having a process for the above that does not diminish your ability to keep up with everyday operations that remain a priority today.

Protect your role against other departments

  • Your role in the business is threatened by disruptive technology:
    • The trends that make IT less involved with technology allow other executives – such as the CMO – to make IT investments.
    • As the CMO gains the power and data necessary to embrace new trends, the CIO and IT managers have less pull.
  • Protect your role in the business by:
    • Being the individual to consult about new technology. It isn’t just a power play; IT leaders should be the ones who know technology thoroughly.
    • Becoming an indispensable part of the entire business’ innovation strategy through proposing and executing a process for exploiting disruptive technology.

IT leaders who do keep up have an opportunity to solidify their roles as experts and aggregators

“The IT department plays a critical role in [innovation]. What they can do is identify a technology that potentially might introduce improvements to the organization, whether it be through efficiency, or through additional services to constituents.”
– Michael Maguire, Management Consultant

The contemporary CIO is a conductor, ensuring that IT works in harmony with the rest of the business.

The new CIO is a conductor, not a musician. The CIO is taking on the role of a business engineer, working with other executives to enable business innovation.

The new CIO is an expert and an aggregator. Conductor CIOs increasingly need to keep up on the latest technologies. They will rely on experts in each area and provide strategic synthesis to decide if, and how, developments are relevant in order to tune their IT infrastructure.

The pace of technological advances makes progress difficult to predict

“An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”
– Ray Kurzweil

Technology advances exponentially. Rather than improving by the same amount of capability each year, it multiplies in capability each year.

Think like a futurist to anticipate technology before it goes mainstream.

Exponential growth happens much faster than linear growth, especially when it hits the knee of the curve. Even those who acknowledge exponential growth underestimate how capabilities can improve.

To predict new advances, turn innovation into a process

“We spend 70 percent of our time on core search and ads. We spend 20 percent on adjacent businesses, ones related to the core businesses in some interesting way. Examples of that would be Google News, Google Earth, and Google Local. And then 10 percent of our time should be on things that are truly new.”
– Eric Schmidt, Google

  • Don’t get caught in the trap of refining your core processes to the exclusion of innovation. You should always be looking for new processes to improve, new technology to pilot, and where possible, new businesses to get into.
  • Devote about 10% of your time and resources to exploring new technology: the potential rewards are huge.

You and your team need to analyze technology every year to predict where it’s going.

A bar graph is shown which depicts the proportion of technology use from 2018-2022. the included devices are: Tablets; PCs; TVs; Non-smartphones; Smartphones; M2M
  • Foundational technologies, such as computing power, storage, and networks, are improving exponentially.
  • Disruptive technologies are specific manifestations of foundational advancements. Advancements of greater magnitude give rise to more manifestations; therefore, there will be more disruptive technologies every year.
  • There is a lot of noise to cut through. Remember Google Glasses? As technology becomes ubiquitous and consumerization reigns, everybody is a technology expert. How do you decide which technologies to focus on?

Protect IT and the business from disruption by implementing a simple, repeatable disruptive technology exploitation process

“One of the most consistent patterns in business is the failure of leading companies to stay at the top of their industries when technologies or markets change […] Managers must beware of ignoring new technologies that can’t initially meet the needs of their mainstream customers.”
– Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen

Challenge

Solution

New technology can hit like a meteor, but it doesn’t have to leave a crater:

Use the annual process described in this blueprint to create a formal evaluation of new technology that turns analysis into action.

Predicting the future isn’t easy, but it can be done:

Lead the analysis from the office of the CIO. Establish a team to carry out the annual process as a cure for airline magazine syndrome.

Your role is endangered, but you can survive:

Train your team on the patterns of progress, track technology over time in a central database, and read Info-Tech’s analysis of upcoming technology.

Communication is difficult when the sky is falling, so have a simple way to get the message across:

Track metrics that communicate your progress, and summarize the results in a single, easy-to-read exploitation plan.

Info-Tech Insight

Use Info-Tech’s tools and templates, along with this storyboard, to walk you through creating and executing an exploitation process in six steps.

Create measurable value by using Info-Tech’s process for evaluating the disruptive potential of technology

This image contains a bar graph with the following Title: Which are the primary benefits you've either realized or expect to realize by deploying hyperconverged infrastructure in the near term.

No business process is perfect.

  • Use Info-Tech’s Proof of Concept Template to create a disruptive technology proof of concept implementation plan.
  • Harness your company’s internal wisdom to systematically vet new technology. Engage only in calculated risk and maximize potential benefit.

Info-Tech Insight

Inevitably, some proof of concept projects will not benefit the organization. The projects that are successful will more than cover the costs of the failed projects. Roll out small scale and minimize losses.

Establish your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators allow for rigorous analysis, which generates insight into utilization by platform and consumption by business activity.

  • Brainstorm metrics that indicate when process improvement is actually taking place.
  • Have members of the group pitch KPIs; the facilitator should record each suggestion on a whiteboard.
  • Make sure to have everyone justify the inclusion of each metric: how does it relate to the improvement that the proof of concept project is intended to drive? How does it relate to the overall goals of the business?
  • Include a list of KPIs, along with a description and a target (ensuring that it aligns with SMART metrics).
Key Performance Indicator Description Target Result

Number of Longlist technologies

Establish a range of Longlist technologies to evaluate 10-15
Number of Shortlist technologies Establish a range of Shortlist technologies to evaluate 5-10
number of "look to the past" likes/dislikes Minimum number of testing characteristics 6
Number of POCs Total number of POCs Approved 3-5

Communicate your plan with the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template

Use the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template to summarize everything that the group does. Update the report continuously and use it to show others what is happening in the world of disruptive technology.

Section Title Description
1 Rationale and Summary of Exploitation Plan A summary of the current efforts that exist for exploring disruptive technology. A summary of the process for exploiting disruptive technology, the resources required, the team members, meeting schedules, and executive approval.
2 Longlist of Potentially Disruptive Technologies A summary of the longlist of identified disruptive technologies that could affect the organization, shortened to six or less that have the largest potential impact based on Info-Tech’s Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool.
3 Analysis of Shortlist Individually analyze each technology placed on the shortlist using Info-Tech’s Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool.
4 Proof of Concept Plan Use the results from Section 3 to establish a plan for moving forward with the technologies on the shortlist. Determine the tasks required to implement the technologies and decide who will complete them and when.
5 Hand-off Pass the project along to identified stakeholders with significant interest in its success. Continue to track metrics and prepare to repeat the disruptive technology exploitation process annually.

Disrupt or be disrupted.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 10 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Identify
  • Call 1: Explore the need for a disruptive technology working group.
  • Call 2: Review the team name, participants, and timeline.
  • Call 3: Review the agenda for the initial meeting.
  • Call 4: Assess the results of the initial meeting.

Guided Implementation 2: Resolve
  • Call 1: Review how you’re brainstorming and sources of information.
  • Call 2: Review the final longlist and begin narrowing it down.
  • Call 3: Review the final shortlist and assessment.

Guided Implementation 3: Evaluate
  • Call 1: Review the next steps.
  • Call 2: Review the progress of your team.
  • Call 3: Review the communication plan.

Authors

Troy Cheeseman

Jeremy Roberts

Ken Weston

John Annand

Contributors

  • Mark Hubbard, Senior Vice President, FirstOnSite
  • Tim Lalonde, Vice President, Mid-Range
  • Nitin Babel, Co-Founder, Niki.ai
  • Erik Bjerklund, Manager of Technical Services, Corix
  • Lindsay Boyajian, Chief Marketing Officer, Augment
  • Vern Brownell, CEO, D-Wave
  • Brenda Cooper, CIO of City of Kirkland, Futurist, and Science Fiction Novelist
  • Dave Evans, Co-founder/CTO, Stringify and Former Chief Futurist for Cisco
  • David Ferrucci, Former Principal Investigator for IBM’s Watson Project
  • Chris Green, Enterprise Architect, Boston Private
  • Andrew Kope, Head of Data Analytics, Big Blue Bubble
  • Jason Hong, Associate Professor, School of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Hanan Luftiyya, Professor, Chair of Computer Science, Western University, Canada
  • Michael Maguire, Management Consultant
  • Jon Mavor, Co-Founder and CTO, Envelop VR
  • Dan Pitt, President, Palo Alto Innovation Advisors
  • Courtney Smith, Co-Founder, Executive Creative Director, PureMatter
  • Emmanuel Tsekleves, Senior Lecturer in Design Interactions, University of Lancaster
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