“Technology in the long-run is irrelevant”. That’s what a consumer of mine told me once i made a presentation to him approximately a new product. I were speaking about the product’s capabilities and advantages and index “modern day technology” or some thing to that effect, as certainly one of them. That is whilst he make his declaration. I realized later that he was accurate, at least inside the context of how i used “technology” in my presentation. But i started out considering whether he may be right in different contexts as nicely.

What is technology?

Merriam-Webster defines it as:

1

a: the practical software of information mainly in a specific area: engineering 2 <medical technology>

b: a functionality given via the sensible software of know-how <a car’s fuel-saving technology>

2

: a way of conducting a assignment particularly the use of technical strategies, techniques, or knowledge

three

: the specialized aspects of a specific field of undertaking <educational technology>

Wikipedia defines it as:

Generation (from greek τî­χνη, techne, “artwork, ability, foxy of hand”; and -λογî¯α, -logia[1]) is the making, modification, usage, and understanding of gear, machines, strategies, crafts, structures, and techniques of business enterprise, that allows you to resolve a hassle, enhance a preexisting technique to a hassle, gain a intention, deal with an carried out input/output relation or carry out a specific function. It can additionally talk over with the gathering of such gear, along with equipment, adjustments, arrangements and procedures. Technology notably have an effect on human as well as other animal species’ ability to manipulate and adapt to their natural environments. The term can both be applied normally or to particular areas: examples consist of creation generation, clinical technology, and records generation.

Both definitions revolve around the equal factor – software and usage.

Technology is an enabler

many human beings mistakenly agree with it’s far technology which drives innovation. But from the definitions above, this is surely no longer the case. It’s miles possibility which defines innovation and generation which permits innovation. Consider the classic “build a better mousetrap” instance taught in most business faculties. You might have the technology to construct a higher mousetrap, however when you have no mice or the vintage mousetrap works properly, there may be no possibility after which the generation to construct a better one becomes irrelevant. Then again, in case you are overrun with mice then the opportunity exists to innovate a product the use of your era.

Any other instance, one with which i am intimately acquainted, are consumer electronics startup groups. I’ve been related to each people who succeeded and those that failed. Every possessed precise leading aspect technology. The distinction changed into possibility. Those that failed could not find the opportunity to broaden a significant innovation the usage of their technology. In truth to live to tell the tale, those organizations needed to morph frequently into some thing totally one-of-a-kind and if they have been lucky they could take advantage of derivatives in their unique era. More regularly than not, the original era wound up within the scrap heap. Technology, consequently, is an enabler whose closing cost proposition is to make upgrades to our lives. A good way to be relevant, it wishes for use to create innovations that are driven by way of possibility.

Technology as a aggressive advantage?

Many groups list a generation as one among their competitive benefits. Is this legitimate? In a few cases sure, but in most instances no.

Generation develops along paths – an evolutionary direction and a innovative course.

A progressive technology is one which allows new industries or permits solutions to troubles that have been formerly now not possible. Semiconductor generation is a great example. Now not best did it spawn new industries and products, however it spawned other modern technology – transistor generation, integrated circuit era, microprocessor generation. All which offer a lot of the goods and services we eat nowadays. But is semiconductor era a aggressive benefit? Searching at the number of semiconductor businesses that exist these days (with new ones forming every day), i’d say no longer. How approximately microprocessor technology? Again, no. Lots of microprocessor organizations obtainable. How about quad center microprocessor era? No longer as many corporations, but you have intel, amd, arm, and a number of organizations constructing custom quad middle processors (apple, samsung, qualcomm, etc).

So once more, not a whole lot of a aggressive gain. Competition from competing technologies and clean get entry to to ip mitigates the perceived aggressive gain of any specific generation. Android vs ios is a superb instance of the way this works. Each running structures are derivatives of unix. Apple used their technology to introduce ios and won an early market advantage. But, google, utilising their variation of unix (a competing era), stuck up particularly speedy. The motives for this lie no longer inside the underlying era, but in how the products made possible by the ones technology were introduced to marketplace (free vs. Walled garden, and so on.) and the differences within the strategic visions of every enterprise.

Evolutionary era is one that incrementally builds upon the base modern generation. However by it’s very nature, the incremental trade is less complicated for a competitor to healthy or leapfrog. Take as an example wi-fi mobile phone technology. Enterprise v introduced 4g merchandise prior to organization a and whilst it can have had a brief time period benefit. As soon as corporation a delivered their 4g merchandise, the advantage due to technology disappeared. The consumer went returned to selecting corporation a or corporation v based totally on rate, carrier, coverage, something, however now not primarily based on generation. Consequently era could have been applicable within the brief time period, however in the long term, became inappropriate.

In modern-day global, technologies tend to speedy end up commoditized, and within any unique era lies the seeds of its own dying.

Technology’s relevance

this text became written from the prospective of an quit client. From a developer/clothier standpoint matters get murkier. The similarly one is eliminate from the technology, the much less relevant it will become. To a developer, the generation can seem like a product. An allowing product, but a product nonetheless, and thus it’s far incredibly relevant. Bose makes use of a proprietary sign processing technology to permit merchandise that meet a hard and fast of marketplace requirements and therefore the generation and what it enables is applicable to them. Their clients are greater involve with how it sounds, what is the fee, what’s the high-quality, and so forth., and no longer so much with how it’s miles done, accordingly the generation use is an awful lot less relevant to them.

Lately, i was involve in a discussion on google+ about the brand new motorola x telephone. A number of the humans on those posts slammed the phone for diverse motives – fee, locked boot loader, and so on. There were also plenty of knocks at the truth that it didn’t have a quad-middle processor like the s4 or htc one that have been priced similarly. What they didn’t draw close is that whether the manufacturer used 1, 2, 4.

Or eight cores ultimately makes no distinction so long as the cellphone can supply a competitive (or even first-class of class) characteristic set, functionality, rate, and person experience. The iPhone is one of the most successful telephones ever produce, and yet it runs on a twin-core processor. It still promises one of the first-rate consumer stories available on the market. The functions which might be enabled by using the era are what are relevant to the consumer, no longer the era itself.

The relevance of era consequently, is as an enabler, now not as a product function or a competitive benefit, or any myriad of different things – an enabler. Looking at the android running device, it’s miles an outstanding piece of software program technology, and but google gives it away. Why? Due to the fact standalone, it does nothing for google. Giving it away lets in different businesses to use their know-how to construct services and products which then act as enablers for google’s products and services. To google, it truly is wherein the real fee is.