Disruptive Technologies
“Augmented Reality”
Assignment #: 5
I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this deliverable.
JUNE 30, 2013
Introduction
According to Macmillan buzzword dictionary, Augmented Reality (AR) is a combination
of real and virtual world (2010). As the name suggests the concept augments or adds a layer of
digital information to your surroundings providing you real time information about the object in
front of you. The term “Augmented Reality” was coined by Tom Caudell, a Boeing researcher,
in 1990 (Wikipedia, 2013). The concept however dates back over a century. AR as a technology
is in its research and commercialization phase now and its applications can be easily observed in
fields like advertising, transportation, education, media and communications, etc. AR has been
used in television for a long time now for adding graphical information to the actual transmission
for e.g. weather reports graphics and sports reanimations. More recent applications include use of
smart phone apps like “Layar”, “Google Goggles” and “Google Sky” to retrieve information
about surrounding by looking at them through the camera. Prototypes for wearable AR devices
like “Google Glasses” are available now (Wikipedia, 2013). AR is reshaping the way
information is accessed today and is likely to bring revolutionary changes to our everyday life.
Augmented Reality as a Disruptive Technology
According to Wikipedia, “Disruptive Technology or Disruptive Innovation (DI) is
an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to
disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier
technology” (2013). Clayton Christensen, a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard,
first wrote about Disruptive Innovation in 1993. According to his theory there are certain
characteristics of DI that help in distinguishing it from Sustaining Innovation...