Technological Disruptions in the Service Sector

Disruptive Technology

Technological innovation has been associated with productive growth and sustainable development (Jones et al., 2018). In 1995, Christensen and Bower formally introduced the disruptive-innovation model in their article ‘Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave’, and since then, the model has been extended to business proposals and technological advancements. Disruptive technologies include extensive changes resulting from specific automation and robotics technologies (Hynes & Elwell, 2016). They create novel market and technological trends (Abernathy & Utterback, 1978). These technologies are usually inferior to existing ones, but specific improvements make them highly appealing to customers, resulting in disrupted markets. These disruptive technologies interact with each other and with diverse demographic and social factors, amplifying each other’s impact on market paradigms (Jones et al., 2018).

Technological disruption has three characteristics: generating new values and challenging the existing status quo, displaying innovative traits that produce radical transformations and having relative effects. Scholars debate whether disruptive technologies result in new opportunities or job losses and unemployment (Jones et al., 2018). It largely impacts employment status such that Manyika et al. (2013) predicted that by 2025, around 140 million workers may experience high job insecurity because of growing artificial intelligence technologies. Further, the impact of disruptive technologies is felt unequally across the workforce (Bennett et al., 2004). Over time, the concept of disruptive technology has widened to include disruptive services and business innovation (Jones et al., 2018).