So I finished my first class today.Or, finished the class project that is. It went really well and it’s such a delight to be done with it. The project was on UAV (Unmanned Areal Vehicle) in the US army and how they’re being used for target acquisition. We got some good data from the U.S Army (on of our project members is a U.S Army Captain and helicopter pilot) and could relate all this data together to analyze whether the technology is disruptive or not.
If you’re curious about disruptive technologies, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology which describes Christensens model. We were lucky enough to meet Clayton Christensen for this class, who usually keeps his business “up river” or at Harvard. Our advisor and instructior, professor James Utterback, also wrote a book about the subject and has a somewhat different definition of disruptive technologies.
Basically a disruptive technology is a good way for a new entrant company to enter a market to disrupt existing companies. They do it with technology that’s not economically feasible for the incumbent to copy the entrant. This also leads to their doom.
The military market is a bit different since it’s regulated according to government need.But it’s clear that the UAV, with lower cost, lower or no risk to human personnel, and using the UAV in a way no technology is currently being used, but at the same time taking over for some existing technology, the UAV is disruptive and is here to stay.
This lead me to thinking: for a country like Norway, with little manpower but rich on assets, UAV’s, AUV(underwater) and robotic landbased technologies would be the perfect match! If we instead of buying 48 new expensive manned fighter planes rather go for 150 UAV’s, load them with AA and AG weapons, we would, initially get more worth of our money.
My group consisted of Rune, a commander in the Norwegian Navy; Roger, development manager with Konsberg Aerospace and Defence; Charles, Aviation Engineer and Phd with Sikorsky; and finally Kristina, Captain in the US Army and a Helicopter pilot. The project was Kristinas idea based on her experiences flying Blakhawk heliopter in Iraq for 13 months. This was truly a great project group and we got plenty of positive feedback from our instructor.
Here I am under the presentation:
