Acceleration3 - Part 2
We are all just now entering a new technology-driven change curve that will create more personal and organizational change than you have seen since 1990. Unlike the past 15 years, this change curve is much steeper and will cause far more disruption and opportunity.
Last month I introduced you to three digital accelerators that are driving this new change curve: computer processing power, bandwidth, and storage.
Processing Power
Let’s take the three accelerators one at a time. “Moore’s Law” states that computer processing power doubles every 18 months. It has been that way since the mid-1970s (when the rate slowed somewhat) and, thanks to constant innovation, it shows no convincing evidence of abating again for at least another decade or more.
Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, first made this observation in 1965, and his name has been attached to it ever since. What’s driving PC growth? Moore’s Law. What’s driving the computer-like functions of cell phones? Moore’s Law. The ever-increasing ability of a car to diagnose its own impending repair problems? Photo-realistic computer gaming? Moore’s Law.
Storage
The second digital trend accelerator is storage. The capacity to store digital data is doubling every 12 months, even faster than computer processing power.
Have you seen an Apple computer television ad lately? No? That’s because the 1-Pod, basically a smart music storage device, is their newest cash cow driving profits and, as a major benefit, increasing Apple computer sales.
Bandwidth
Finally, there’s bandwidth. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A dial-up modem can send 56 kilobytes in 1 second. In contrast, many offices, as well as homes, have a broadband connection clocked at 1.54 megabytes a second.
Screamingly fast bandwidth, which is doubling every 9 months, is primarily being generated by advances in fiber-optic technology, and implementation of new wireless broadband technology.
Sweeping Change
The relentless doubling of processing power, storage, and bandwidth form the epicenter of sweeping large-scale innovations that will transform how we live, work and play for the next two decades. Does that mean that the recent buzz about nanotechnology, biotech, robotics and the like has been a lot of hype? Not at all! Those are destined to be extremely potent change agents, and their development will be accelerated by decades, thanks to the concentrated force of processing power, storage, and bandwidth.
Transformation
A statistical model showing the doubling of the number 1 every year would display data points on a curve that rises gradually for the first 5 years, turns sharply steeper at 10 years out, then quickly blasts off toward a 90-degree ascent and goes straight up and off the chart. In the case of processing power alone, this exponential growth rate has been occurring for 40 years. For example, to go from a 5-megahertz chip to a 500-megahertz chip took 20 years; however, the jump from 500 megahertz to 1 gigahertz (1000 million hertz) took place in only 8 months, and that was several years ago. The pace is astounding. The other two technologies have been at it for a couple of decades and are racking up even hotter numbers. For example, companies such as Motorola and Cisco have recently crated methods for increasing broadband speed between 400% and 1,600%.
What the resulting vertical lines on the chart tell us is that transformation is about to replace change as the business headache du jour.
Disruptive change is only disruptive if you didn’t know about it ahead of time. Now that you know the forces that will drive the change curve higher, it is imperative that you take advantage of the opportunities for creating new products and services that are coming our way.
Daniel Burrus, one of the world's leading technology forecasters, business strategists, and author of six books
Copyright 2005 Author retains copyright. All Rights Reserved.
