The Hybrid Age

Exponential growth in technology produces many disruptions.  One of these disruptions is the idea that as more technologies come into commercial use, the greater the number of "combinational possibilities" (this is a key term for the 21st century).  Call it "The Hybrid Age" - - where the world starts to look more like the hybrid vehicle on steroids that you are driving next to or maybe own.  The more technologies that exist, the greater the number of combinational possibilities, resulting in ever newer and more complex products that revolutionize industries.  We are seeing it with vehicles - - but also jet engines and semiconductors and is now under way with software and carbon nanotubes, whose combination of strength, elasticity, and thermal-conduction properties could revolutionize everything from bone repair to batteries.  This means that The Hybrid Age and the Law of Disruption will produce a constant environment of blowing apart old business models as they come to market faster than ever.

The word "hybrid" - - the art of combining to produce something new might just be the most important word in the engineering dictionary.