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228 CHAPTER 6 • PRoCEss TECHnology sTRATEgy

up by the robotic arm and crushed against a metal plate, suffering fatal chest injuries.) It is the
introduction of robotic technologies into the customer environment that could give rise to new
areas of reputational risk for companies. For example, in 2016, a robot that was intended to guard
against shoplifters accidentally ran over a 16-month old boy at a shopping centre in Palo Alto,
California – ironically, a town famous for high-tech industries. The 130-kg robot, which looks
like R2-D2 from Star Wars, apparently did not sense that the child had fallen in its path and failed
to stop before they collided. According to the boy’s mother, ‘the robot hit my son’s head and he
fell down – facing down – on the floor, and the robot did not stop and it kept moving forward’.
It is an issue that was causing concern (or discussion) decades ago, before robots existed. The
author, and visionary, Isaac Asimov devised his Three Laws of Robotics to protect humans.

1 Don’t hurt a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to be hurt.
2 A robot must obey the orders a human gives it unless those orders would result in a
human being harmed.
3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as it does not conflict with the first two laws.
The robot makers, Knightscope, said the incident was ‘absolutely horrifying’ and that the com-
pany would apologise directly to the family. It also pointed out that its fleet of similar robots
had covered 25,000 miles on patrol duty and there had never been an incident like this before.
Nevertheless, the Shopping Centre said it would temporarily take the robot out of service.
Other concerns that have been raised by companies fearing legal liability and reputational
risk include domestic devices like robot vacuum cleaners hurting pets or humans. A South
Korean woman was sleeping on the floor when her robot vacuum ‘ate’ her hair. Also some
‘automated’ services that could lead to customers confusing what’s real and what isn’t, resulting
in customers revealing more than they intended. For example, ‘Invisible Boyfriend’, is a service
that, for a monthly fee, sends ‘pretend’ romantic texts and voicemails to your phone – but not
all customers realise it is not fully automated, and that there are human operators involved.

Market vulnerability
Any investment in new technology needs to make an assumption concerning the mar-
ket (and more generable environment) that will exist when the technology is ‘up and
running’. The possibility to which any technology is subject to, therefore, is that of mar-
ket conditions being different from those envisaged when the technology was initially
planned. This type of vulnerability is inherent in every process innovation. Uncertainty
results from the fact that, on the one hand, events in the future do not follow the course
of past events and, on the other, knowing about the future is always incomplete. At its
simplest, this could be that market demand is different, either larger or smaller to such
an extent that the scale of the technology is inappropriate.
Six factors creating the uncertainty that leads to vulnerability in the innovation pro-
cess can be identified. 10
1 Market vulnerability – will the technology, when developed and implemented, meet
the needs (real or perceived) of the market?
2 Regulatory vulnerability – will the technology conflict with any likely ‘constraining
regulations’ related to the environment, health or market behaviour (a significant
factor, for example in financial services)?
3 Social and political vulnerability – will the technology prove acceptable to all the
organisation’s stakeholders? Or will it expose a dysfunctional diversity of interests

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