How to create the future

The present is digital. All forms of analog technology is becoming digital. All digital technology is being created on more mobile platforms. Smart phones are currently the king. Everyone is attempting to create the future. However, no one actually has any idea what the future will be.

If mobile technology has become the norm, as stated in the "Why mobile is the future" article, is time to disrupt it? If businesses don't start to innovate mobile technology will they be left behind? The Harvard article entitled "Disrupting Technologies: Catching the Wave" leads us to assume that if companies don't begin to innovate, those companies will be left behind.

I don't disagree with the fact that eventually the smartphone will be overtaken by a new technology. The main question for me is that if the smartphone surpassed the PC, what will surpass the smartphone?

One would argue that it may be VR. However, VR has been around for the last 50 years! Only now is VR becoming popular. Corporations couldn't have expected the VR boom to happen almost 5 decades after its inception. In fact, in order to "catch the wave" Apple released Quicktime VR in the early 90's. It's safe to say the tool was never used to its maximum capability. I bring up VR because it is a prime example of technology being pushed onto consumers by established corporations for decades, but inevitably it was made popular by "small and hungry organizations" like Oculus.

My argument is that established corporations cannot truly predict the next "disruptive technology." Corporations cannot know for sure what will be successful in the market. They can simply improve the hardware of their current technology. Thus, we have a new iPhone every other quarter. The only other viable option for them to disrupt technology is to eat into their own market. Apple ate into the iPod market with the iPhone. They are currently are eating into music sales with the creation of Apple Music. This is the only way established corporations know how to innovate and disrupt the market. The corporations who fail to do this will get left behind.