New technologies emerge in a far shorter time span than ever before in the history of mankind. While many of these technologies are incremental improvements over what is already available, others completely break from the pattern and redefine entire industries, change our mode of thinking about something, or just introduce new concepts to our knowledge bank.

In his 1997 best-selling book, "The Innovator’s Dilemma," Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen segregates new technology into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining technology relies on incremental improvements to an already established technology, while Disruptive technology is new, and unexpectedly displaces an established technology. By its very nature, disruptive technologies lack refinement, often have performance problems because these are new, appeal to a rather limited audience, and may not yet have a proven practical application.

Creativity and Innovation are topics that many of you may have come across in literature, business seminars, and in working through tough problems every other day. Some attribute creativity to designers and artists, others regard innovation as the sole preserve of inventors and engineers. These are certainly not new concepts. And yet, very few people actually realize the importance these concepts have in the age we are living in.

Over the past few years, the Web has evolved from a storehouse of data to a ‘global repository of knowledge’ for individuals, organizations, governments, and every social community for that matter. It has become a pervasive support system for people in their daily routine. How many of us can live without email today? Or Blogs? Or Community Forums?

A fundamental transition that characterizes web today is from a uni-directional information flow, where the publishers of content controlled the web (as in the traditional world), to a more federated structure where user-generated content gives a platform its value. The ‘power’ has moved from the publishers to the users.