How to Deploy Disruptive Technology with Minimal Disruption

Disruptive technologies are emerging at a rapid pace heralding a new era of how we do business today. Recognizing their potential, organizations have been increasingly investing in emerging technologies such as blockchain, cloud technologies and AI to support internal operations (e.g. increasing process efficiencies, innovation and value generation) and to also enhance customer experiences.

However, as organizations venture into adopting new disruptive technologies, it is important to be aware that disruptive technologies can often act as a double-edged sword. While they can lead to significant competitive advantage and differentiation, they also present risks during and after adoption. The key to mitigating risks and ensuring minimal disruption is to balance both a slow & fast approach to adoption.

The slow process is all about establishing a solid strategic foundation. This requires establishing the need for the technology and understanding value generation to your business model. At the start of your journey:

1. Build a comprehensive use case that assesses what problems your organization wants to solve. Most organizations that take a technology-first approach often fail. Accordingly, it is critical to identify the root cause of the problems your organization is facing today.

2. Define a long-term roadmap that ties disruptive technology to your business strategy. Ensure your strategy has established timing, milestones, and metrics to track its progress.

3. Establish a systematic approach to understanding risks, dependencies, and outcomes. Identify what existing resources are impacted by the new technology, evaluate risks, and identify potential or alternative scenarios and futures with the technology. Additionally, consistently monitor news coverage of disruptive tech to identify branding or technical risks.

4. Determine value drivers. Map the value chains impacted by the disruptive technology to capture the activities or capabilities affected by the technology.

Finally, with a strong foundation of your business use case and the backing of executive management, implement your solution fast through an agile approach. An agile approach is key to successful deployment as it enables rapid, iterative, and constant testing.

Who should be involved in the planning process?

The most significant factor in the successful deployment of any disruptive technology is the buy-in from executive-level support. It is also important to involve those who will be responsible for the implementation of the technology early in the process. Without this – your project will face significant barriers to adoption and success.

What are the potential pitfalls?

It is difficult to consider all risks of a disruptive technology because a great deal is often unknown. Different technologies pose varying levels of risk to different areas of your operation. Some categories for pitfalls/risks include technical, cost, timing, people (workforce/customers), financial etc.

However, remember that risk is a natural product of innovation and disruption. Ensure your organization has a systematic approach to identify potential pitfalls and establish a slow/fast approach to adoption.

What's the best thing to do if the deployment goes wrong in some major way?

It is critical to pre-build a well-vetted back-out plan that is continuously validated until it becomes stable and supported. If something does go wrong during deployment:

1. Rollback and roll in your backup plan

2. Communicate quickly and effectively

3. Establish the root cause

4. Learn from your experiences.