Technology is an enabler
Many individuals mistakenly believe it is technologies which drives innovation. Yet from the definitions above, of which is clearly not necessarily the case. That is opportunity which defines innovation in addition to technology which permits innovation. Think of the particular classic “Build a much better mousetrap” example trained in most business schools.
You might have the technological innovation to build the better mousetrap, nevertheless if you have got no mice or the old mousetrap works well, right now there is no opportunity and then the particular technology to build a better one becomes irrelevant. Alternatively, if you are overrun with mice then the chance exists to pioneer an item using your current technology.
Another instance, one which I am intimately common, are consumer electronics startup companies. I have been related to the two those that been successful and those that failed. Each had unique leading edge technologies. The was opportunity. Those that been unsuccessful could not get the opportunity to develop a meaningful advancement using their technologies.
In fact to survive, these businesses got to morph often into something totally different and if they were lucky these people could take advantage of derivatives associated with their original technology. More often than not, the authentic technology wound up in the discard heap. Technology, thus, is an enabler whose ultimate benefit proposition is in order to make improvements in order to our lives. In order to be relevant, it takes to end up being used to create innovations that usually are driven by possibility.
Technology being a aggressive advantage?
Many companies listing a technology since one of their competitive advantages. Is this valid? In some cases indeed, however in most instances no.
Technology develops along two paths – an evolutionary path and also a revolutionary path.
A new technologies is one which often enables new industrial sectors or enables methods to problems that have been previously not feasible. Semiconductor technology is a good example. Not merely did it spawn new industrial sectors and products, but it spawned additional revolutionary technologies – transistor technology, incorporated circuit technology, processor technology. All which provide many of the services and products we consume today. Yet is semiconductor technologies a competitive edge? Looking at the amount of semiconductor companies which exist today (with new ones forming each day), I’d point out not. How about microprocessor technology? Once again, number Lots associated with microprocessor companies out there.
How regarding quad core processor technology? Not because many companies, however you have Intel, ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, ARM, and the host of businesses building custom quad core processors (Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc). So again, not really much of the aggressive advantage. Competition from competing technologies plus easy access to IP mitigates the perceived competitive benefit of any particular technology. Android compared to iOS is an excellent example of how this particular works. Both systems are derivatives of UNIX.
Apple utilized their technology to be able to introduce iOS plus gained an early on market advantage. On the other hand, Google, utilizing their own variant of Unix (a competing technology), caught up fairly quickly. The causes for this lie not necessarily within the underlying technology, in how the products permitted by those technologies were brought to marketplace (free vs. walled garden, etc. ) and the differences in the tactical visions of each and every organization.
Evolutionary technology is usually one which incrementally builds upon the bottom revolutionary technology. Yet by it’s extremely nature, the incremental change is simpler for a competitor to match or perhaps leapfrog. Take regarding example wireless mobile phone technology.
Company Sixth is v introduced 4G products prior to Organization A and although it may experienced a short expression advantage, as shortly as Company A new introduced their 4-G products, the edge due to technology disappeared. The customer went back to choosing Business A or Business V based on price, service, protection, whatever, but not necessarily based on technological innovation. Thus technology might have been relevant in the particular short term, however in the long expression, became irrelevant.
Within today’s world, technology tend to quickly come to be commoditized, and within any particular technologies lies the seed of its personal death.
Technology’s Importance
This article has been written from the particular prospective of an conclusion customer.sorry, no manipulations with clipboard allowed From a developer/designer standpoint points get murkier. Typically the further one is usually removed from the technology, the fewer relevant it will become. To some developer, the technology can appearance like a product. An enabling product, but a product nonetheless, and therefore it is very relevant.
Bose utilizes a proprietary signal digesting technology to permit products that satisfy a collection of market specifications and therefore the technological innovation and what it enables is pertinent to all of them. Their customers tend to be more concerned with just how this might sound, what’s the price, what’s typically the quality, etc., and not so much with how it is usually achieved, thus the technology used is much less relevant to them.
Recently, I was involved in a discussion on Google+ about the new Motorola X cell phone. A lot of the people on those posts reprehended the phone regarding various reasons – price, locked footwear loader, etc. Presently there were also plenty of knocks on the fact that it failed to possess a quad-core processor such as the S4 or perhaps HTC One which usually were priced in the same way.
What they did not grasp is of which whether the manufacturer applied 1, 2, 4, or 8 cores in the long run makes simply no difference as long as the phone can deliver a competitive (or even best of class) feature set, efficiency, price, and customer experience. The apple iphone is one of the most successful phones ever developed, but it operates over a dual-core processor chip. It still offers one of typically the best user experiences on the marketplace. The features that are enabled with the technological innovation are precisely what are appropriate to the consumer, not the technologies itself.