Hungry for change

Disruptive technology will only gain followers if the disruption is in a beneficial way

An UberEats driver in Dubai. Courtesy of UberEats

The essential appeal of any form of disruptive technology is if it improves on the way things are usually done. One example is Uber. Until the taxi app hit legal problems in Abu Dhabi, it had gained a loyal following because it used the GPS capabilities of smartphones to show a driver exactly where you are, saving people from having to stand on a street corner vainly waving at passing taxis.

Uber's latest foray has been into food delivery, dubbed UberEats, in Dubai. Unfortunately, as we reported yesterday, teething problems meant that our writer, in her role as an anonymous customer, had to wait two hours and 43 minutes between ordering her salad and it arriving. We'd guess that the main reason people are tempted to use UberEats is to eliminate the haphazard delivery they often experience with their favourite restaurant's own motorcycle delivery service. So we have to ask: how this can be deemed to be disruptive technology when the only disruption is to our expectations of better service?