Leadership, Real Estate and Disruptive Technology

Within the high technology industries, two school of thoughts have emerged. First, are historical technologists who advocate organizational competitive advantage is simulated from past inventions and innovations from that set the industrial benchmark? Second, are futuristic technologists who proffer that organizations should adapt to nonlinear and disruptive technology to advance the technological industrial standard. Within this train of thought are technologists who posit using technological situational happenstances (known as TSH) for innovative technologies. Technologists using TSH are frontiers in creating, innovating and transforming the industrial sector. TSH encompasses all nonlinear spheres of technology (Christensen, Verlinden & Westerman, 2002; Hirooka, 2003). For contemporary learners nonlinear refers to the ability of industrial leaders and technologists to infuse smart analytic sensors reporting technologies effectively to the point of disrupting the existing systems and triggering new changes. Therefore, TSH is an enabler or a conduit in facilitating and deploying informational materials vertically or horizontally within and outside organizations for competitive advantages. TSH also permeates leadership styles and hierarchies within organizations.

Stakeholders use TSH cognitively and effectively to assess the brutal reality of leadership styles, within technology innovative industries, and within situations in organizations. Stakeholders use TSH to understand the complexities and dynamics ensconced in various leadership styles that affect the global village. Based on the first school of thought, organizations should extrapolate from the existing historical technological antecedents by adding values, innovations and inventions for sustainable competitiveness and comparative advantage (Homik, Johnson & Wu, 2007; Porter, 1990). Explicitly, the first school of thought advocates that leaders use hybrid forms of traditional methodology of non-technological orientations and adaptations of innovative technologies for competitive and comparative advantages.

In furtherance, technologists in the first school of thought posit that without past technological experiences infused and inculcated in the new products, services, or systems, an organization could be at a competitive disadvantage. Traditional methods relates to the historical bricks and mortars that are the physical operable businesses. New innovative technologies should take into considerations the traditional bricks and mortars of the business antecedents to project the future. The traditional methods of operating business frequently excluded the high innovative technologies. The physical presence of the organization, the method of operation and the front and back offices are interlinked with the operations of the business and chain of commands that fall under the brick and mortar (Afuah & Tucci, 2003).

The second school of thought, however, are the futuristic technologists who postulate that organizations should adapt to nonlinear and disruptive technology for competitive advantages. Disruptive technologies included the leader’s capability to use Smart Technology (Henceforth known as ST) to disrupt the existing systems. Then what are smart technologies? Smart technologies include smart boards, mapping of software, self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technologies embedded in TSH. Unambiguously, scholars categorized of having these global mindsets of reasoning posit that technological innovations’ triggered from new changes in organizations use TSH for sustainable competitiveness and comparable advantages (Christensen, Anthony & Roth, 2004; Hart & Christensen, 2002; Yitts, 2006). Technologists with this global mindset of reasoning, innovation, adaptation and challenges triggered from the new technological peripheral tools contradict the application and infusion of historical technological trends for competitive advantages. Additionally, the same technological experts profferred that new inventions such as cloud computing or planetary computing can be introduced in the marketplace and people will adapt to the new inventions without any historical trends attached to the products or services. To elaborate and clarify, the new inventions will have no apparent lineage to any historic technological invention ever produced in the market. Technologists imbibed with this global mindset are frontiers, inventors and innovators into repositioning strategically new industrial products or services within the global terrain. Subsequently, leaders in organizations are cognizant of this development and are now deploying new technologies to reposition strategically new products and services globally (Harper & Becker, 2004; Ritorto, 2010).

Internally, organizational strategic leaders deploy new technologies without any apparent historical trends anchored on how informational materials were originally filtered down to tactical managers or subordinates. Subordinates’ adaptation and ability to cognitively and effectively use the new informational tools for sustainable competitive advantages become pivotal. Leader’s capacity of sustaining present technological system becomes core to adapting to the new challenges advocated in the prism of these new technologists (Porter, 1990, Aluya & Garraway, 2010). The advantages and disadvantages to these lines of thoughts are explored in later chapters.

How these two school of thoughts collide or converge are analyzed, amalgamated, synthesized and triangulated. Analyses of the two school of thoughts are based on leadership styles that inculcate TSH, information management, information technology and innovative technologies within the industrial platform. Case studies from Hewlett-Packard, UPS, Nokia, AOL Time Warner, and Yahoo are used to illustrate and explicate this phenomenon. Within the context of understanding how behaviors affect leadership styles, epistemological belief is imperatively dissected. The epistemological (externalistic & internalistic belief) orientation of organizations using information technology also gives companies sustainable competitive advantages. For instance, in the late 21st century, the ability to use human capital in adapting to nonlinear technologies and the use of TSH will result in the survivability and longevity of any business entity (See Vignette 1 in the book). Conflicts generated from the leadership styles, theories that explain the differences and commonalities of epistemological beliefs, and the pedagogy (continuous learning) of organizations using technology for sustainable competitive advantages are explored (Homik, et al., 2007).

Epistemological belief however, conflicts with technologists who relied on historical trends to avoid cognitive dissonance generated from new technologies and other technologists who contradict this position (Yukl, Chavez, & Seifert, 2005). Other technologists use new inventive technology generated from situational happenstances for competitive advantages. In the late 21st century, leaders in organizations will not be avoiding cognitive dissonance resulting from adapting new inventions or from innovations in new technologies. Despite risks associated with changes triggered from the use of TSH, leaders are deploying these technologies for comparative and sustainable advantages presently. In organizations, these technologies affect different types of leadership styles. Internally, within organizations, how leaders deploy these informational materials and tools will be discussed. The first chapter examines how TSH enhances and contributes to effective leadership styles and how it helps to expeditiously terminate ineffective leaders.