# Generating Indicators of Disruptive Innovation Using Big Data
## 2 Modelling Technology Progression
### Theories of Technology Progression  
In assessing 'technology' we need to discuss the scope of this term. Technology covers a scope from specific (e.g., a sports watch) to broad, e.g., the 'internet connected home'. [PERSON] (2009) [5] considers many of the nuances of technology as a concept, but in principle it can be a small isolated application of science or a broad, far-reaching concept. Another common term used in relation to technology is innovation. The two terms technology and innovation-are used relatively interchangeably with innovation being used rather more generally (for example by ranking countries on their level of overall innovation (WIPO, 2021). Originally created by [PERSON] & Christensen (1995) [4], the term disruptive technology is often also referred to as disruptive innovation. Various writers have considered parts of the technology ecosystem including [PERSON] (1997) [9] who develops the concept of disruptive technologies, [PERSON] (2009) [5] who outlines the ecosystem of producers and consumers, and [PERSON] (2011) [6] who discusses the effect of government research on supplying technological advancements. [PERSON] (2009) [5] attempts to frame the technology ecosystem, see Figure 1; this identifies the elements of a technology and the organizational players and interactions which occur, described at a macro level. An important aspect of modern technologies is their connectivity and therefore the level of leverage they achieve ([PERSON] & [PERSON] 2017 [10]). The concept of a platform is a derivative of the general case of a composition of technology described above and one that is particularly relevant to information technology development ([PERSON], 2011 [17]; [PERSON], 2017 [18]). The platform is a collection of base technologies which allow other technologies to grow at an accelerated rate. Smartphones support the display of maps, but the maps are served from a central server to a massive number of users; similarly with speech recognition is performed on central infrastructure rather than on the device. In formal terms then, we potentially should separate'smartphone' from'smartphone platform' ([PERSON], 2013) [19]. In general, we do not talk about the'smartphone platform'. [PERSON] et al. (2019) [16] discusses this issue in more detail. Taking the example of the smartphone from [PERSON] et al. (2019) [16], a whole range of technologies was necessary to allow it to work effectively (see Figure 2). The value of smartphone devices comes from the massive infrastructure in which they exist ([PERSON], 2013) [19]. [PERSON] et al. (2019) [16] postulates that this form of technology development, clustering to form a new composite technology, may be easier to identify as it is evolutionary rather than a completely new technology. Identifying a grouping of technologies early could help in identifying technology trends and likely disruption. The smartphone grew from simply providing a communications device to a capability supporting a range of other applications relatively quickly. Identifying this'move' in applicability could also help identify technology direction and evolution. Thus, a key focus of this paper is how we can potentially measure such effects as soon as possible to aid in decision making. In assessing technology progression there is also a need to identify technology synonyms, or changes. For example, unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV and drone are used interchangeably. However, understanding whether a name change indicates a functional change is also an issue. The evolution from science to technology is potentially of interest, and the barrier is, as with everything at a macro level, relatively blurred. Science institutions have to some extent moved away from purely fundamental research and are now more focused on delivering results and receiving significantly more funding from industry. Industry is also investing in primary research (because of the significant capital value that exists in organizations  
Figure 1: [PERSON]’s concept of the technology eco-system, [PERSON] et al.