“Technology within the long-run is inappropriate”. That is what a customer of mine informed me once I made a presentation to him about a brand new product. I was speaking about the product’s functions and advantages and listed “cutting-edge technology” or something to that impact, as one among them. That is while he made his assertion. I realized later that he became correct, at least inside the context of the way I used “Technology” in my presentation. But I started considering whether he might be right in different contexts as properly.
Many human beings mistakenly believe it’s miles era which drives innovation. Yet from the definitions above, that is genuinely now not the case. It is an opportunity which defines innovation and technology which enables innovation. Think of the traditional “Build a better mousetrap” example taught in most enterprise faculties. You might have the generation to construct a higher mousetrap, however, if you have no mice or the old mousetrap works properly, there is no opportunity after which the technology to construct a better one becomes beside the point. On the alternative hand, in case you are overrun with mice then the opportunity exists to innovate a product the use of your technology.
Another instance, one with which I am in detail acquainted, are consumer electronics startup organizations. I’ve been associated with both people who succeeded and those that failed. Each possessed the unique main part technology. The difference changed into the possibility. Those that failed couldn’t locate the possibility to increase a meaningful innovation the usage of their generation. In fact, to live on, those businesses had to morph typically into something completely one of a kind and in the event that they had been lucky, they might take advantage of derivatives of their unique technology. More frequently than not, the authentic era wound up inside the scrap heap. Technology, as a consequence, is an enabler whose remaining value proposition is to make enhancements to our lives. In order to be relevant, it needs for users to create improvements which are pushed by opportunity.
A innovative technology is one that allows new industries or allows solutions to issues that were formerly now not viable. Semiconductor technology is a great example. Not best did it spawn new industries and merchandise, but it spawned different innovative technology – transistor technology, integrated circuit era, microprocessor generation. All which offer a lot of the goods and offerings we eat nowadays. But is semiconductor generation a competitive benefit? Looking at the number of semiconductor companies that exist today (with new ones forming each day), I’d say not. How approximately microprocessor generation? Again, no. Lots of microprocessor groups obtainable.
How approximately quad middle microprocessor era? Not as many groups, but you’ve got Intel, AMD, ARM, and a number of companies building custom quad-core processors (Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and many others). So once more, now not tons of an aggressive gain. Competition from competing technologies and easy get right of entry to IP mitigates the perceived aggressive advantage of any particular technology. Android vs iOS is a great example of how this works. Both operating structures are derivatives of UNIX. Apple used their technology to introduce iOS and gained an early marketplace benefit. However, Google, making use of their version of Unix (a competing era), caught up pretty speedy. The reasons for this lie not in the underlying era, however in how the products made feasible by way of those techniques were added to market (free vs. Walled garden, etc.) and the differences within the strategic visions of every organization.
Evolutionary technology is one which incrementally builds upon the bottom progressive era. But via it is very natural, the incremental change is less complicated for a competitor to in shape or leapfrog. Take as an example wi-fi mobile phone generation. Company V delivered 4G products prior to Company A and at the same time as it may have had a short-term benefit, as soon as Company A delivered their 4G products, the benefit because of generation disappeared. The patron went returned to choosing Company A or Company V primarily based on charge, service, coverage, anything, but no longer based on era. This era might have been relevant in the short time period, however inside the long term, became irrelevant.
This article changed into written from the possibility of a quit purchaser. From a developer/designer point of view, things get murkier. The in addition one is removed from the era, the less applicable it turns into. To a developer, the technology can appear to be a product. An enabling product, but a product, however, and for this reason, it’s miles relatively relevant. Bose makes use of a proprietary signal processing generation to enable products that meet a hard and fast of market requirements and thus the era and what it permits is applicable to them. Their clients are greater worried about how it sounds, what’s the fee, what’s the first-rate, and many others., and no longer a lot with how it’s far performed, thus the era used is a good deal less applicable to them.
Recently, I became worried about a discussion on Google+ about the brand new Motorola X smartphone. A lot of the people on the one’s posts slammed the cell phone for diverse motives – fee, locked bootloader, and so on. There have been also plenty of knocks on the truth that it did not have a quad-core processor like the S4 or HTC One which were priced further. What they didn’t grasp is that whether the manufacturer used 1, 2, four, or 8 cores, in the long run, makes no difference as long as the cell phone can deliver an aggressive (or even first-class of sophistication) characteristic set, functionality, rate, and user revel in. The iPhone is one of the maxima a success phones ever produced, and but it runs on a twin-core processor. It still promises one of the nice person experiences on the market. The capabilities which are enabled by using the technology are what is applicable to the client, no longer the technology itself.
The relevance of technology consequently, is as an enabler, not as a product characteristic or a competitive gain, or any myriad of other matters – an enabler. Looking at the Android working machine, it’s for an outstanding piece of software program generation, and yet Google offers it away. Why? Because standalone, it does not anything for Google. Giving it away permits other companies to use their knowledge to build services and products which then act as enablers for Google’s products and services. To Google, it’s in which the actual price is.
