What Will Be Disruptive in 2013?

In 1995 Harvard Business Review published "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave"
by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen.  This article addressed one of the most consistent patterns in business, i.e. the inability to stay at the top of their industry when tecnologies or markets change.  Ultimately, these authors posit, the problem is that they stay too close to their customers.  The result of this closeness is that investments are strongly influenced by existing customers.  The technology they could have invested in was not wanted by their customers - until their customers wanted it, and then it was too late.  The technologies that enter through emerging markets are ignored, because existing customers don't want it, and the emerging markets are too small to address.  The technology in the emerging markets are also often not as good as what currently exist, but the rate of improvement is often faster than that of existing technology. 

"For example, although personal computers did not meet the requirements of mainstream minicomputer users in the early 1980s, the computing power of the desktop machines improved at a much faster rate than minicomputer users’ demands for computing power did. As a result, personal computers caught up with the computing needs of many of the customers of Wang, Prime, Nixdorf, Data General, and Digital Equipment. Today they are performance-competitive with minicomputers in many applications. For the minicomputer makers, keeping close to mainstream customers and ignoring what were initially low-performance desktop technologies used by seemingly insignificant customers in emerging markets was a rational decision—but one that proved disastrous."

 The Harvard Business Review Blog published on January 10, 2013: "Disruptive Trends to Watch in 2013"

"The pattern that simple, convenient, low-priced solutions would grow from humble beginnings to create and transform industries had not yet been identified."

But, that excuse no longer applies.  Many have built on the work of Clayton Christensen and have identified the critical phases of disruptive technology:

1. Conception. When a disruptive idea is first born, typically far away from the market's mainstream. In these early days, there typically are a range of companies experimenting with a new model, fighting to figure out a sustainable business model.
2. Coming of age. When at least one of the would-be disruptors crosses from the fringes to more mainstream applications.
3. Crossing over. When the disruptor becomes the mainstream. Sometimes this shift results in the whole-sale replacement of the previous market leader; sometimes it creates a completely parallel market (which typically ends up being larger than the previous market due to the democratizing power of disruption).

The article goes on to identify those technology in 2012 that have proven disruptive and predict four technology that will be disruptive in 2013:

1. 3-D printing
2. The Internet of Things
3. New healthcare business models
4. Low-cost, online, competency-based learning universities     

These are all worth watching and have been suggested by others a potential disruptive technologies of the near future.  What do you think?  Will these be disruptive?