Subject: [codec] Disruptive Technology?

From: "Christian Hoene" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:49:12 +0200

Hi all,

this discussion reminds me on the concept of "Disruptive Technology" as
introduced by Clayton M. Christensen in 1995. Did you read his book? The
Wikipedia article gives a short introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

"A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is an innovation that
improves a product or service in ways that the market does not expect,
typically by being lower priced or designed for a different set of
consumers. ... Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the
leaders of an existing market, because they are competition coming from an
unexpected direction. A disruptive technology can come to dominate an
existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older
technology could not fill (as cheaper, lower capacity but smaller-sized
flash memory is doing for personal data storage in the 2000s) or by
successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally
displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has largely
replaced film photography)."
"as Christensen points out and studies have shown, it is often entirely
rational for incumbent companies to ignore disruptive innovations, since
they compare so badly with existing technologies or products, and the
deceptively small market available for a disruptive innovation is often very
small compared to the market for the established technology."
"Even if a disruptive innovation is recognized, existing businesses are
often reluctant to take advantage of it, since it would involve competing
with their existing (and more profitable) technological approach.
Christensen recommends that existing firms watch for these innovations,
invest in small firms that might adopt these innovations, and continue to
push technological demands in their core market so that performance stays
above what disruptive technologies can achieve."

It is clear that this discussion is not about businesses, firms or products
but on standards and SDOs. However, there are many parallels: Jean-Marcs
approach on codec design can be seen as disruptive technology. The working
procedures of ITU/3GPP are the traditional technological approach.

If this discussion is really about a new disruptive technology, it makes
perfectly sense to start a new group in a new organizational structure.
Because disruptive technologies cannot be developed in the existing
organizations--to many resistances--but only in newly formed.

With best regards,

 Christian 

--------------------------------------------------------
Dr.-Ing. Christian Hoene
Computer Networks and Internet, University of Tübingen
Sand 13, 72076 Tübingen, Germany, Phone +49 7071 2970532
http://net.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/~hoene

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From: Henry Sinnreich <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:23:20 -0700

Christian,

Thanks for sharing this valuable insight.
It comes at the right time, when apparently the discussions here seem all about how the voice codec incumbents can keep the newcomers out.

My strict personal (IETF contributor hat) 2 cents,

Henry

On 6/24/09 9:49 AM, "Christian Hoene" <[email-masked]> wrote:

Hi all,

With best regards,

 Christian

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From: stephen botzko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:48:40 -0400

I don't think this is fair characterization of the discussion.  No one is
attempting to exclude anyone, the discussion is centered on whether an IETF
codec working group is necessary or useful.

Regards
Stephen Botzko
Polycom

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Henry Sinnreich <[email-masked]>wrote:

> It comes at the right time, when apparently the discussions here seem all
> about how the voice codec incumbents can keep the newcomers out.
>
> http://net.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/~hoene<http://net.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/%7Ehoene>
>
>
>