“The digital world is changing what’s possible. It’s also changing what’s impossible,” says George Westerman, principal research scientist at the MIT-Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy, and co-author, of Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation. “It used to be that things had to be on paper. It used to be that we had to meet in person to get business done. It used to be you could either lock down a process really tightly or allow that process to innovate. Now you can do both. So things that many of us grew up thinking were impossible or impractical are now very possible, and we need to think about what that means for our business.”

Digital change is the backdrop for building a technology vision; a roadmap for your short- and long-term technology needs. So how do you project future technology needs and ensure that your solutions and infrastructure remain aligned with your growth targets? The answer lies in keeping tabs on how technology is evolving and what that can mean for future disruptions in your business.

In general, you can evaluate technology in terms of the impact it can have on:

• your business operations, customer relationships, and plans for expansion, you can learn to optimize that impact
• new opportunities to disrupt your access to markets,
• your ability to compete against bigger and better-established players, and
• your prospects for achieving sustainable profitability and growth.

In a practical sense, the right technology vision should also help you reduce costs, improve margins, and play a quantifiable role in supporting the bottom line.

Learn more about Disruption vs. Evolution and Finding the Right Technology.