Technology can be an enabler
Lots of people mistakenly believe it is technology which drives innovation. Yet from the definitions above, that is obviously not the case. It is opportunity which defines innovation and technology which enables innovation. Think of the classic "Build a better mousetrap" example taught in most business schools. It's likely you have the technology to construct a better mousetrap, but if you have no mice or the old mousetrap works well, there is no opportunity and then the technology to construct a better one becomes irrelevant. On one other hand, if you are overrun with mice then the opportunity exists to innovate something making use of your technology.
Another example, one with which I'm intimately familiar, are consumer electronics startup companies. I've been associated with both those that succeeded and those that failed. Each possessed unique leading edge technologies. The difference was opportunity. Those who failed could not find the ability to develop a meaningful innovation utilizing their technology. In fact to survive, these companies had to morph oftentimes into something many different and if they were lucky they could make the most of derivatives of the original technology. http://yourtechcrunch.com/ More regularly than not, the initial technology wound up in the scrap heap. Technology, thus, can be an enabler whose ultimate value proposition is to produce improvements to our lives. In order to be relevant, it needs to be properly used to create innovations that are driven by opportunity.
Technology as a competitive advantage?
Many companies list a technology as you of the competitive advantages. Is this valid? In some instances yes, but In most cases no.
Technology develops along two paths - an evolutionary path and a revolutionary path.
A revolutionary technology is the one that enables new industries or enables methods to problems that were previously not possible. Semiconductor technology is a great example. Not just made it happen spawn new industries and products, but 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? Taking a look at the number of semiconductor companies that exist today (with new ones forming every day), I'd say not. Think about microprocessor technology? Again, no. Plenty of microprocessor companies out there. Think about quad core microprocessor technology? Not as many companies, but you have Intel, AMD, ARM, and a host of companies building custom quad core processors (Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc). So again, little of a competitive advantage. Competition from competing technologies and comfortable access to IP mitigates the perceived competitive advantageous asset of any particular technology. Android vs iOS is a great example of how this works. Both systems are derivatives of UNIX. Apple used their technology to introduce iOS and gained an early on market advantage. However, Google, utilizing their variant of Unix (a competing technology), swept up relatively quickly. The reason why for this lie not in the underlying technology, however in how these products made possible by those technologies were brought to promote (free vs. walled garden, etc.) and the differences in the strategic visions of every company.https://arstechnician.com/
Evolutionary technology is the one that incrementally builds upon the bottom revolutionary technology. But by it's very nature, the incremental change now is easier for a competitor to match or leapfrog. Take as an example wireless cellphone technology. Company V introduced 4G products ahead of Company A and while it might have experienced a quick term advantage, when Company A introduced their 4G products, the bonus as a result of technology disappeared. The customer 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, however in the future, became irrelevant.https://techwaa.com/
In today's world, technologies often ver quickly become commoditized, and within any particular technology lies the seeds of its own death.
Technology's Relevance
This article was written from the prospective of an end customer. From a developer/designer standpoint things get murkier. The further one is taken from the technology, the less relevant it becomes. To a developer, the technology can look just like a product. An enabling product, but something nonetheless, and thus it's highly relevant. Bose uses a proprietary signal processing technology to enable products that meet a couple of market requirements and thus the technology and what it enables is highly relevant to them. https://techsitting.com/ Their clients are more concerned with how it sounds, what's the purchase price, what's the standard, etc., and not so much with how it's achieved, thus the technology used is significantly less highly relevant to them.
