Technami: A mega technology trend that fundamentally alters our world

blogger: Richard Monson-Haefel

In the seminal 1995 article, “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave”, and later in the wildly popular book “The Innovators Dilemma” Clayton Christenson explains that certain technologies are extremely disruptive to incumbent technology by either providing more affordable but less able options (low-end disruption) or fulfilling a specific consumer need that is neglected by established technologies (high-end disruption).  Examples abound including the disruptive effects of smaller lower capacity disk drives on traditional larger disk drives, the effect of the automobile and railroads on the horse-and-carriage, and the microcomputer's disruption of mainframes.

Today the term “disruptive” has entered the popular management-lingo and is frequently used incorrectly compared to the definition provided by Christenson, but the idea that one technology somehow displaces or severely modifies an entrenched traditional technology is something that we see all the time. For example, open source, is disruptive to traditional packaged software models.  While there are many examples of disruptive technologies (i.e. automobiles, disk drives, open source, etc.) some displacements have a far greater impact than others.  I call these “technamis” because like a tsunami they can be absolutely devastating far beyond their origin and tend to pass unnoticed until they hit the shores.

There have been few technamis but a couple, in particular, stand out, including the internal combustion engine, the telephone, the computer, and the Internet. Some technami can be said to be disruptive, but the difference between a technology that is disruptive and a technami, is that a technami impacts many types of technologies – some of which are completely unrelated – and continue to cause wide range fundamental change for decades.  In addition, a technami is something that affects everyone in the world over time, while many disruptive technologies have a limited short-term impact.  If the internal combustion engine, the telephone, the computer and the Internet are technamis that have already occurred or, in the case of the Internet, continue to fundamentally change life for everyone. Then what technamis can we expect to fundamentally and broadly change the world in the future? 

Genetic engineering and nanotechnology could be categorized as technami that have not yet hit the mainland. Genetic engineering which is changing everything from the food we eat to way we treat illness, is still in its infancy – an enormous wave so wide that it’s hardly noticed. Nanotechnology is a technami that is still near its epicenter. Nanotechnology has only begun to build into an unstoppable force but it will eventually undo everything with which we are familiar.  That idea of fundamentally changing everything is critical to technami – if a technology merely changes the way a certain kind of business is done than it’s not a technami.