Page 211 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

C A L C ULATING THE FUTURE

customers in an emerging market, it’s necessary to take a few
people out of that culture, allow them to assess the change,
and reward them based on their ability to exploit it. In my sim-
plistic synopsis, this subunit of the company will grow with the
use of the disruptive technology and teach the parent organi-
zation, when the time comes, how to cope. Companies that do

this, or some variation of it, such as acquiring a technology
leader that’s at the heart of the change, may easily adapt to dis-
ruptive change. Then again, they may not. Think of Digital
Equipment Corp. inventing the brilliant AltaVista search en-
gine as a showcase for its Alpha servers, followed by the com-
pany’s demise not long after, and it’s hard to be optimistic.
How is cloud computing a disruptive change? The cloud

certainly matches up with Christensen’s criterion of a low-cost
alternative that is seized upon by emerging markets, but main-
tained at arms length by established companies. It’s often not
immediately clear what is supposed to be done with disruptive
technologies, since they don’t seem to serve powerful existing
buyers, another apt descriptor of the cloud.
Yet new uses emerge out of nowhere. For example, Face-
book social networking is familiar enough and is even being
used by large enterprises to encourage networks among their

employees. But since June 2009, 63 million people have started
using FarmVille, a Facebook application where they grow dig-
ital crops and manage virtual fields in a system that rewards
them for good methods and punishes them for neglect. If
there is a hidden desire to grow food and husband resources
in our society, then FarmVille may be one of the few expres-
sions of it. Facebook has had to expand its cloud data centers

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