The Future of Technology Management and the Business Environment: Lessons on Innovation, Disruption, and Strategy Execution

1. Technological Disruptions

Technological changes, according to Schumpeter, are like a series of explosions with innovations concentrating in specific sectors, or leading-edge industries that provide the momentum for future prosperity replacing each other in a regular, periodic way. Leading sectors propel economies forward; without them, economic growth would not be possible. According to Schumpeter, the process of technological transformation should be called “creative destruction,”¹ given that a set of superior technologies supplants inferior technologies and becomes dominant at their expense. The lagging sectors fall behind, and their time passes, while the new set of technologies surge ahead and, according to Schumpeter, spur economic renewal ...