What should managers be doing to identify and respond to threats from emerging disruptive technologies? Koff notes that in the early 90s most large corporations had emerging technology groups charged with continuously scanning developments in the market. Business tended to view the work of those organisations as a kind of generalised R&D function. Those groups have been in decline ever since, partly due to dramatic changes in the business landscape and partly because it's getting harder and harder to separate the work of an emerging technology group from that of the general IT department.

Now Koff believes it is time to get someone in the organisation focused on those activities again.

"We believe you really have to continuously scan what is going on to try to stay in touch with [emerging technology]," he says. "We don't believe that like in the old days, you need to have large emerging technology groups to do that. In the early 90s it was very typical that you would have a couple of dozen people [in the group], each of whom had a speciality area that they were kind of following. There's just too much resistance in organisations to do that today.

"However we do believe it's still very important to continuously scan what's happening around these areas and to kick off little pilots and prototypes about what this can mean in your particular industry, and even more to the point, what can this mean in particular for your company," Koff says. "One of the things we do recommend to companies is to continually try to have your technologists or a technology person, or some aspect of your organisation always looking at technology strategy. But they should do that in conjunction with the business planners and business strategists in the other parts of your organisation." vDigital Disruptive TechnologiesCSC expects these emerging trends and underlying technologies to disrupt business as we know itTwo years ago CSC identified 10 emerging technologies that, depending on how companies address them, will mean success or failure in the new millennium.

Dubbing them "digital disruptive technologies", CSC forecast then that they would cause fundamental changes in how corporations operate and force them to re-examine their vision, the competitive landscape and the strategies they have for addressing both. Nothing that has happened since has altered CSC's view.

The 10 technologies and their associated business trends CSC says may disrupt business as we know it today and change the basis of future competition are:

Ubiquitous Bandwidth: as the world becomes increasingly wired, digital services like telecommuting, wireless communications and remote business operations will be available almost everywhere.

Smart Environments and Objects: homes, offices and the everyday objects within them will become networked and will use artificial intelligence capabilities.

Internet-Centred Computing: as the Internet permeates all systems, we will see new products, applications and services.

Knowledge Bases: corporations will come to rely more on their stores of knowledge to make faster decisions that are more informed.

High-Performance Computing: more powerful computers will enable companies to simulate complex business and technical processes and get more tangible benefits from their data.

Digital Money: customised, electronic cash will usher in an age of pay-per-use services and micropayments, fees for products and/or services in sums that are so precise that they include even fractions of cents.

Privacy, Security and Information Survivability: as systems become increasingly internetworked, companies will have to work harder to guarantee that data is private, secure and durable enough to withstand deliberate or unintentional mishaps.

Virtual Reality: virtual environments will enable companies to test computer-generated prototypes in fields as diverse as engineering design, medicine, financial analysis and real estate.

Human-Computer Interaction: communication with computers and computer-aided devices will become effortless with interfaces that depend on natural interactions like speech.

Miniaturisation: advances in nanotechnology will help engineers design smaller machines and microelectromechanical systems that can help run larger machines.

CSC expects many of these technologies will be broadly adopted over the next three-to-five years. To maximise the benefits of these digital disrupters, businesses must consider the implications of all of these technologies in combination, rather than as independent opportunities.

"While each of these trends promises to be disruptive on its own, when interleaved they provide more powerful insight through which organisations can conceive product and service innovation, and boost operational efficiency," Koff says. "Organisations must assess the trends in terms of their own businesses and begin laying the groundwork for future innovations. Otherwise, today's organisations risk the fate of the slide rule - becoming obsolete and, finally, an antique."