It is said like this “Disrupt or be disrupted”. This is a challenge to the existing technology that we use in modern day missions. We need to start critiquing the already sustaining technologies and start looking at disruptive technologies that have potential to successfully drive and enhance technology methods in missions. Disruptive technology in missions is good as it challenges us to explore how some of the things can be changed and/or replaced. We will need to look at technologies such as social media, mobile, analytics and cloud based technologies (SMAC) to provide anytime anywhere predictive and contextual insights. Many a times a new disruptive model kills the existing model or product. And we need to be aware that the new disruptive technology might not be showing immediate results yet but definitely can pick up the momentum at some point in time later.
Let’s look at some of the disruptive technology that changed our way of life. The personal computer (PC) displaced the typewriter and forever changed the way we work and communicate. The Windows OS which was affordable and the user-friendly interface was instrumental in the rapid development of the personal computing industry in the 1990s. Personal computing disrupted the television industry, as well as a great number of other activities. Email transformed the way we communicating, largely displacing letter-writing and disrupting the postal and greeting card industries. Cell phones made it possible for people to call us anywhere and disrupted the telecom industry. The laptop computer and mobile computing made a mobile workforce possible and made it possible for people to connect to corporate networks and collaborate from anywhere. In many organizations, laptops replaced desktops. Smartphones largely replaced cell phones and PDAs and, because of the available apps, also disrupted pocket cameras, MP3 players, calculators and GPS devices, among many other possibilities. For some mobile users, smartphones often replace laptops. Others prefer a tablet. Cloud computing has been a hugely disruptive technology in the business world, displacing many resources that would conventionally have been located in-house or provided as a traditionally hosted service. Social networking has had a major impact on the way we communicate and -- especially for personal use -- disrupting telephone, email, instant messaging and event planning.
If you look at the diagram above you can clearly see how each of these models work as well as managed. Christian ministries should be seriously thinking of migrating from the age old legacy systems and inhouse developed and maintained software systems to the one on the cloud though it has to be researched and intelligently chosen as to which one is the best.How can technology aid in impacting missions at large? Take for example a bunch of techies who wanted to do something to impact the Kingdom work! They started to understand the working of the #hashtags on the social networking sites. They started to search and intercept the tags online where human traffickers were sending #hashtags to locations where they procuring people. By this there were able to divert the messages as well as be able to alert the right people who can avert this operation. HashTags are used by people with a hashtag symbol # before a relevant keyword or phrase (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in twitter or any social media searches. Clicking on a hash tagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets marked with that keyword. This is one of the great ways to use technology to serve and do the kingdom work. There are many such examples where people with specific skills can come and add great value to the digital world.The other examples of using digital media and technology for the advancement of the kingdom is to collaborate and network with various kinds and types of people who can add value to the missions’ world. There are network groups whose purpose is to bring collaboration and network with like-minded people. We have leaders who can cast vision and inspire ideas and thoughts. Then we have specialists who can make that idea or vision into a reality and then we generalists who can actually see the ideas implemented on the ground.
Seth Godin says, "Any useful technology that's successfully adopted by a culture won't be abandoned. Ever. (Except by top-down force). The technology might be replaced by a better alternative, but society doesn't go backwards. After books were accepted, few went back to scrolls. After air conditioning is installed, it's never uninstalled.
As Kevin Kelly has pointed out, technology creates more technology, and this, combined with the ratchet (meaning a situation or process that is perceived to be changing in a series of irreversible steps) has a transformative effect. In a corollary to this, some technologies, once adopted, create their own demand cycles. A little electricity creates a demand for more electricity. A little bandwidth creates a demand for more bandwidth.It’s hard to imagine that discrimination on race will return to apartheid-like levels, that marriage will return to being an exclusionary practice... once a social justice is embraced by a culture, it's rarely abandoned."
Keeping this in mind we need to understand that some technology invention will only give rise to better technologies and that it cannot be replaced but only increase in demand. So we cannot be too worried about disruptions however be cautious about the current technology getting disrupted and we are caught off guard! If we stick to the age old methods and suddenly there is disruptions with newer methods then most of the time we are caught by surprise and tend to heavily lose if we have not expected that impact. If not anticipated or expected and if we have invested much then the impact on that organization is very huge. Therefore we need to be on the lookout and proactive to evaluate and bring those technology models that have greater potential to disrupt the way we do things. Like the phrase “disrupt or be disrupted”. It is imperative that we are constantly critiquing our methods and models especially if we plan to invest a large sum of money for our current or future mission goals. I agree that we need all kinds of methods and use of technology in missions however it is important that we invest in the ‘technology solutions’ team or the R&D team is consistently evaluating the current and future trends that can impact the way we use technology.
If you look at the innovation adoption lifecycle and primarily in adoption of innovative technology in missions you can see that the innovators and early adopters are mostly less than 16%. Then the early majority make up the rest 34%. Then the late majority and the laggards make up the about the remaining 50%. A mesh of blurred technology is upon us today, and we can take advantage of these new opportunities if we can read viable trends early and act in an expedited manner.
- Text to give where using tools such as kindrid donors can give right from their cell phones
- Instagram is one of the most popular social networks for photos and videos. Instagram allows for videos up to 15 seconds, so with a little creativity, you can easily promote your church’s events right on your congregation’s newsfeed.If we look at the secular world the new breed of companies that are the fastest-growing in history. Uber, Instacart, Alibaba, Airbnb, Seamless, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google: These companies are indescribably thin layers that sit on top of vast supply systems (where the costs are) and interface with a huge number of people (where the money is).” What exactly does that look like?· Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles.
When we look at the future big data, mobility, cloud computing and social media will account for greater growth. The combination of these four technologies (SMAC) will lead to a technology revolution, positioning technology as a commodity, like electricity. The cloud will be used for both B2C and B2B business. New business models will come up. IT will become agile — gearing up and becoming scalable in days, rather than weeks and months. The future will be about IT-led, cloud-led data services. Now where does that leave mission organizations and more specifically how we/they do missions? Are we looking at our organizations in the light of these possible disruptions that are happening around us? How much of what we currently do can be possible disrupted? Disruptive technology was feared in the industry long before the term came into being. Successful organizations focus on what is important and critical to the end user, creating and adhering to detailed steps deemed necessary to create real value while eliminating those that do not. Disruptions have happened in the past and will continue to happen even today. We cannot be unduly worried about disruptions but we sensitive to the changes and innovations in the modern times. If we or our innovations team don’t look at things as early adopters then we will be late in adopting or will be left behind. Sometime the disruptions can hit so hard that it can break the very core of what we have started the organziation or even stood for. So let’s not forget the goal that the mission and vision of the organziation does not change however we are constantly evaluating the tools and methods we use to impact.
Vijay Burton serves as the CEO/MD of AFS Technology Services a subsidiary of AFS Vista Inc, a 33 year old US company and a global leader in transportation cost reduction. He founded and set up the company in India about 2 1/2 years back. Vijay has over 16 years of varied experience in software development, building teams, operations, sales, business development and management experience.
