Disruptive Technology and the Future of Textiles

Starting about three years ago the term ‘disruptive’ began to be applied to enterprise business applications and while this isn’t entirely inappropriate there are some misapplications of this term.  First of all lets look at the original intent of the term disruptive as applied to technology. This moniker first appeared around the time of the mass availability of broadband and certainly became popular as the internet showed up on our phones. These advancements fostered an incredible wave of innovation and new uses for mobile devices.  Truly a disruptive event!

What about enterprise solutions that run our businesses though?  Is disruption really occurring in this space? Certainly there are some disruptive advancements like AI-based planning logic and mobile oriented business applications. However a concerning trend that we are tracking the use of term ‘disruptive’ as a euphemism of sorts to  cover gaps in business solution coverage or to explain away poorly designed system deployment plans. It’s more and more frequent that end-users are asked by vendors or IT leadership  to ignore their pain and carry on because disruption is….disruptive. The complaint of the business is that at times they don’t have access to information or the baseline capability to fulfill their daily responsibilities.  At Datatex we maintain that their must be a balance between digital disruption and the ability to function at an optimum level.  Starting in July we will run a three part series on Disruptive Technology in the Textile sector that really is making a difference in the agility of companies and not causing heartburn to the good folks in the trenches!