Are You Riding the (Technology) Waves, or Getting Smashed?

• 6 Ds of Disruption follow an exponential curve.
• 6 Ds of disruption model applies to technology developments since the advent of digital computing technology.
• Technological development has been advancing on an exponential curve a lot further back, even into pre-history.

Peter Diamandis, co-founder of the Singularity University, X Prize founder and entrepreneur, is credited with defining the 6 Ds of Disruption. This explains the disruptive, exponential, path possible for any product, technology, business or venture once one or more aspects of a product, technology, business or venture are digitised in some way. Read Peter Diamandis’ article for a more detailed explanation.

“The Six Ds are a chain reaction of technological progression, a road map of rapid development that always leads to enormous upheaval and opportunity.”

–Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Bold

This article is not about digital disruption alone. Rather it is about technological development and disruption in general. It is my view that, possibly, all technological development, even since pre-historic times, has been following and will continue to follow an exponential path. Further, I believe, all significant technological development has caused or triggered varying levels of disruption, even since pre-historic times.

I will provide a quick review of the 6Ds of Digital Disruption and then relate this to the path of non-digital technological technology development.

(Source: A New Proposal: Measuring Social Impact in an Exponential World)

The 6 Ds of Digital Disruption are:

Digitisation

Moore’s law expresses an empirical relationship regarding the rate at which processing power of computer chips doubles. This doubling of processing power means that bigger and bigger problems get solved faster and faster once they are digitised.

The more aspects of a product, technology, business, or venture are digitised the faster that product, technology, business, or venture can progress.

Deceptive

Every exponential curve has an inflection point. Progress before an inflection point is very slow. Observers, who do not understand or do not recognise exponential curves, may discredit pre-inflection progress because it appears to be so slow. It is easy to be deceived by this slow progress.

3D printing is a good example as it started becoming popular in the general public around 2009. The concept was first imagined in the 1970s and the first experimental 3D printers were built in the early to mid-1980s.

Disruption

Once the progress passes the inflection point it accelerates rapidly. This why more and more things seem to come out of nowhere and accelerate past other things that have not been taking advantage of the exponential opportunities in digitisation.

Two powerful examples are Kodak and digital photography, and how Netflix killed Blockbuster.

Now we get into some really interesting Ds …

Demonetisation

Technological advances become cheaper to achieve and cheaper to implement and deliver. The resulting products and / or services come to market at ever lower prices, sometimes even for free. Products and services that have not exploited the digital opportunities as well or at all cannot compete on price. Consider that an Apple Watch has comparable processing power to the first Cray supercomputer.

Dematerialisation

Things start to disappear as discrete things. When you buy a smart phone, you get multiple very capable cameras, movie cameras, a GPS device, a sound recorder, a music player and more. When last did you buy or even see any one of these as a separate device?

Democratisation

As demonetisation and dematerialisation gather momentum technology becomes available to more and more people at lower and lower price points. To illustrate this, arbitrarily pick a lower income country, e.g., Bangladesh, and ask how people there had cameras twenty years ago. Now roughly one in three people in Bangladesh have smartphones and thus cameras.

Exponential Technology Development

It is my view that technology overall has been on an exponential development curve since pre-history. Although the curve may have some anomalies in it, I believe the exponential progression could be demonstrated if someone made the effort to collate enough data points. Here are some vastly simplified threads that tend to illustrate this.

The Progression of Mediums of Communication

A few highlights on the exponential visual communication progression curve include cave painting around 40,000 BC, hieroglyphics around 3,000 BC, the first book – The Epic of Gilgamesh in 2100 BC, Greek text around 700 BC, paper invented in China in 105 AD, the Diamond Sutra was the first printed book in 868 AD, Gutenberg printing press in 1440. The progress continued and continues accelerating to the amazing plethora of technologies we currently experience and that are constantly emerging.

(Source: From Cave to Code: Visual Language Through the Years)

The Progression of Medicine

This simplified description follows the path of Western medicine for illustrative purposes and does not intend to diminish other threads of medical development elsewhere.

Illustrative milestones include primitive herbal medicine in the Stone Age, medical school at Cnidos, Greece around 700 BC, Hippocrates is credited as the originator of rational medicine around 420 BC, Marcos Terentius Varro proposes a germ theory of disease around 120 BC (This was ignored.), around 150+ AD Aelius Galenus formulated a system of clinical medicine that ruled until the beginning of the modern era.

Jumping forward St Bartholomew’s Hospital founded in 1123 AD, Mondino de Luzzi carries out systematic human dissections, Miguel Serveto describes the circulation of blood through the lungs (He is burned at the stake for heresy.), Louis Pasteur establishes germ theory of disease and Joseph Lister develops antiseptic surgery around 1870, 1967 Christiaan Barnard performs the first heart transplant.

The pace and volume of medical advancement continue to accelerate to where it considered that the first person to live to 200 has already been born.

The Progression of Transport

Horses are domesticated and the wheel is invented around 3,500 BC, the first record of a wheelbarrow is in 408 BC in Greece, the compass is invented in China in 1044 AD and Mercator’s map of the known world is published in 1569. The mid to late 1700s are a frenzy with the invention of the submarine, parachute, and hot air balloon. The first half of the 19th century saw significant advances in rail transport and the first electric powered vehicles. Jump to the Wright brothers in 1903 and on to the progressively rapid growth in transport with the Apollo moon landings along the way.

Why Does Any of This Matter?

Firstly, we have to accept that everything we think we know about anything could be superseded by new knowledge at any time.

Secondly, we have to accept that the rate at which current knowledge is being superseded by new knowledge is continually increasing.

Putting these together means we need to apply the best knowledge we have currently available to us as quickly and effectively as possible while keeping a sharp lookout for advancements that we can take advantage of. Critically, we must be prepared to let go of knowledge that has been superseded. If not, we lock ourselves into a point in time and technological progression that will be reduced to entries in some history book.

Every product, every technology, every business, and every venture have a life cycle. Empirically, durations of these life cycles are rapidly decreasing.

Average Company Lifespan on S&P 500 Index (Source: ResearchGate)

Threat or Opportunity

Some see this as threatening and try to fight the new developments to extend the life of their products, businesses, or ventures. I do not know of any of these rear-guard fights that have overcome the new developments and survived.

I believe the essential perspective is to make the most of the best knowledge we currently have, while continually scanning for emerging knowledge and / or technology and evaluating this for opportunities that can be leveraged. We have to be continually evolving ourselves, our products, our services and our businesses. The closer we position these to the front of the advancing technology waves the more opportunity there is to ride the waves and reap the benefits.

To extend the wave analogy, surfers know the best rides are often the scariest waves to catch.