David Rowe’s Risk Management Blog

Beaumont Vance is the incoming editor of Risk Management Reports at http://www.riskcenter.com/.  He took the occasion of assuming this role to write an interesting essay on risk management as a disruptive technology (http://www.riskcenter.com/story.php?id=14372)  As background he cites a comparison of the evolution of the telegraph and the internet.  From this experience he distills six typical stages of a disruptive technology:

1. Praise the new technology, but insist that it is of no broad, practical use.
2. Ridicule it.
3. Pedantically argue about meaningless, minor aspects of the technology.
4. Decide that the technology has a future and argue violently for the dominance of their own version.
5. Adopt the standard set by whomever won the battle in step 4.
6. Take the whole thing for granted and completely forget that any of steps 1-5 ever happened.

Vance argues that risk management, the origin of which he dates from the mid-20^th century, is firmly in stage four.  He says: “The trend is clear. Using the internet as an analogy, I think we are about 1992 in the world of risk management. I can’t think of any better news for those of us in the profession. We are riding an incredible, global wave.”

So what do you think?  Are we on the verge of a virtual explosion in the impact of risk management?  Is it reasonable to compare the potential impact of risk management to that of the internet?