Technology innovation is the engine that powers economic and social progress. Yet most so-called “innovations” in our industry are marginal tweaks: faster processors, prettier dashboards, or marginally improved apps. These may look attractive in a press release, but they rarely transform how systems are built, deployed, and used. In practice, true technology innovation must deliver at least ten times the value compared to what came before. Anything less is absorbed into the noise.
Incremental vs. Disruptive in Technology
Harvard Business Review described disruption as innovation that expands access and affordability. In technology terms, this is about democratizing once exclusive capabilities. For example, cloud computing brought hyperscale resources to every developer; open-source software removed licensing barriers; and AI-as-a-service is now reshaping what startups and enterprises alike can build.
Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma made clear that incumbents rarely recognize disruptive threats until it is too late. They cling to sustaining innovations—better chips, incremental features—while missing the bigger wave. Eric Ries in The Lean Startup reminds us that continuous experimentation is essential in building technologies that solve real problems, not theoretical ones. Klaus Schwab in The Fourth Industrial Revolution goes further, showing how convergence across AI, IoT, and connectivity creates new paradigms. These lessons apply directly to networking, edge computing, and connectivity platforms today.
Alan Coleman, CEO of Sweeper, a no-code customer experience and support platform designed for service providers and enterprises, recently told me:
“You’ve got to be 10 times better than the incumbent. If you’re only slightly better, customers will live with what they have rather than deal with the organizational change.”
This is particularly true in networking and connectivity, where enterprises have sunk investments in legacy platforms. As I often see, more than 80% of decision-makers say, “we already have a solution.” But those “solutions” are usually patchworks of siloed systems that fail to deliver a seamless customer experience.
Overcoming Organizational and Technical Friction
What makes technology innovation so hard to adopt is not just technical complexity but also organizational fear. Coleman has observed that harmonizing disparate platforms is often resisted internally:
“When you start to harmonize in a single platform, there’s as much organizational change as technological change. And organizational change is arguably more painful.”
In the context of edge networking, the complexity is multiplied by heterogeneous devices, legacy hardware, and proprietary silos. As Magnus Johansson, CEO at WiBUZ, which provides a single pane of glass for managed service providers to manage their WiFi networks more efficiently, explains,
The managed Wi-Fi Service Provider industry (MwSP) and the edge ecosystem, in general, need its 'Android moment'—a transformative shift that breaks the cycle of complexity, rising costs, and vendor lock-in.
It claims its vendor-agnostic, API-first overlay OS reduces months of integration to weeks, delivering 10X faster integrations compared to traditional WLAN vendor platforms.
Yes, most of these MSPs continue to invest significant resources in patching their internal solutions, oblivious to existing innovations and too afraid to disrupt their own established status quo.
Fear, Risk, and the Role of 10× Value
Indeed, in B2B technology markets, risk aversion is stronger than curiosity. As I often tell clients, decision-makers fear making the wrong technology bet more than they fear missing out on the right one. The burden of proof lies with the innovator. Coleman phrased it well:
“The hurdle for being better can’t just be marginal… I’ll live with what I have rather than risk political capital.”
Here again, the 10× value is the threshold that makes technology adoption inevitable.
Eric Ries’s Lean Startup provides the discipline to prove that value through rapid validation, while Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship reminds us that innovation is a systematic process, not serendipity.
Nicolas Fortineau, CMO at Sweepr, also emphasized how disruptive solutions must go beyond feature checklists and instead unify disparate systems into a coherent experience:
“Operators don’t need another silo. What they need is a platform that can unify the complexity and deliver a clear value proposition”
Conclusion: Technology Innovation’s 10× Imperative
Disruptive technology innovation is about more than clever features—it is about architectures, ecosystems, and openness that redefine the rules of the game. Christensen warned us that incumbents ignore disruption until it is too late. Schwab emphasized that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be won by those who manage systems, not individual products.
The lesson across all these perspectives is that technology that is only slightly better gets absorbed into the noise of existing systems. But technology that delivers 10× the value—through openness, interoperability, and radical efficiency—becomes impossible to ignore. As Coleman put it:
“Either you build something that’s really, really compelling, or you break your product into discrete elements that get you a hook in. But you can’t expect adoption if you’re only slightly better.”
The future of the intelligent edge, of AI-powered networking, and of every emerging platform will belong to those who build technologies that are not marginally better, but ten times better—and that is what makes them truly disruptive.
About maravedis
Maravedis is an independent research and analysis firm focusing on managed connectivity in MDUs, hospitality, etc, and the convergence of WiFi with 5G/6G. We provide syndicated reports, custom research, consulting, and bespoke marketing services. No one ever got fired for buying our services.