Disruptive Technologies - An evolution

A year back a blog on Disruptive Technologies was published on the TechScribes blog that I infrequently contribute to.

Over the past year, the concept of Disruptive Technologies has hardened a lot. A very good sign of the concept gaining momentum and feasibility is that analysts have tracking this as a separate technology market segment. Even the finance sector came with up funds that primarily invest in companies that develop disruptive technologies.

In September this year, InformationWeek and Credit Suisse First Boston launched the Disruptive Technology Portfolio to track the emergence of companies that are driven by innovative and radical ideas. A look at the performance of this portfolio ever since shows that it has outperformed the broader indices consistently and outrightly. This is surprising since the value of such companies is difficult to estimate. A great 'concept' might never materialize into a marketable product, and even the leading edge product might not translate into shareholder value.

What is also surprising is the list of Disruptive Technologies companies in the Disruptive Technology Portfolio. Apart from the expected biggies like Novell, Red Hat, Google, Texas Instruments and Apple who are known to drive innovation in the market, the list also includes Indian offshore outsourcing firms like Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant.

Quite an achievement!