Technology is definitely an enabler
Many individuals mistakenly still find it technology which drives innovation. Yet from the definitions above, that is obviously not the case. It's opportunity which defines innovation and technology which enables innovation. Think of the classic "Build a much better mousetrap" example taught in many business schools. You might have the technology to create a much better mousetrap, but if you have no mice or the old mousetrap is useful, there is no opportunity and then a technology to create a much better one becomes irrelevant. On the other hand, if you should be overrun with mice then a opportunity exists to innovate a product using your technology.
Another example, one with which I'm intimately familiar, are electronic devices startup companies. I've been associated with both those who succeeded and those who failed. Each possessed unique leading edge technologies. The difference was opportunity. Those who failed couldn't find the chance to produce a meaningful innovation utilizing their technology. Actually to survive, these companies had to morph oftentimes into something completely different and if these were lucky they may make the most of derivatives of the original technology. http://yourtechcrunch.com/ More frequently than not, the first technology wound up in the scrap heap. Technology, thus, is definitely an enabler whose ultimate value proposition is to produce improvements to the lives. To be able to be relevant, it must be properly used to generate innovations which are driven by opportunity.
Technology as a competitive advantage?
Many companies list a technology together of the competitive advantages. Is this valid? In some cases yes, but Generally no.
Technology develops along two paths - an evolutionary path and a revolutionary path.
A revolutionary technology is one which enables new industries or enables answers to problems which were previously not possible. Semiconductor technology is a great example. Not only achieved it spawn new industries and products, however it spawned other revolutionary technologies - transistor technology, integrated circuit technology, microprocessor technology. All which provide lots of the products and services we consume today. But is semiconductor technology a competitive advantage? Considering the amount of semiconductor companies that exist today (with new ones forming every day), I'd say not. Think about microprocessor technology? Again, no. A lot of microprocessor companies out there. Think about quad core microprocessor technology? Not as many companies, but you have Intel, AMD, ARM, and a number of companies building custom quad core processors (Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc). So again, very little of a competitive advantage. Competition from competing technologies and comfortable access to IP mitigates the perceived competitive benefit of any particular technology. Android vs iOS is a great exemplory case of how this works. Both os's are derivatives of UNIX. Apple used their technology to introduce iOS and gained an early market advantage. However, Google, utilizing their variant of Unix (a competing technology), swept up relatively quickly. The reasons because of this lie not in the underlying technology, in how the products made possible by those technologies were brought to advertise (free vs. walled garden, etc.) and the differences in the strategic visions of each company.https://arstechnician.com/
Evolutionary technology is one which incrementally builds upon the bottom revolutionary technology. But by it's very nature, the incremental change is simpler for a competitor to fit or leapfrog. Take for example wireless cellphone technology. Company V introduced 4G products just before Company A and while it may have had a brief term advantage, when Company A introduced their 4G products, the advantage because of technology disappeared. The buyer went back to choosing Company A or Company V predicated on price, service, coverage, whatever, however, not predicated on technology. Thus technology could have been relevant in the short term, in the future, became irrelevant.https://techwaa.com/
In today's world, technologies tend to ver quickly become commoditized, and within any particular technology lies the seeds of its death.
Technology's Relevance
This article was written from the prospective of an end customer. From the developer/designer standpoint things get murkier. The further one is taken off the technology, the less relevant it becomes. To a developer, the technology can look just like a product. An enabling product, but a product nonetheless, and thus it is highly relevant. Bose uses a proprietary signal processing technology to enable products that meet some market requirements and thus the technology and what it enables is strongly related them. https://techsitting.com/ Their clients are more worried about how it sounds, what's the cost, what's the standard, etc., and not really much with how it is achieved, thus the technology used is much less strongly related them.
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