Technology is definitely an enabler
Lots of people 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. Consider the classic "Build a better mousetrap" example taught in most business schools. You might have the technology to build a better mousetrap, but when you yourself have no mice or the old mousetrap is useful, there is no opportunity and then your technology to build a better one becomes irrelevant. On the other hand, if you should be overrun with mice then your opportunity exists to innovate something utilizing your technology.
Another example, one with which I am intimately familiar, are consumer electronics startup companies. I've been related to both those who succeeded and those who failed. Each possessed unique leading edge technologies. The difference was opportunity. Those that failed couldn't find the opportunity to produce a meaningful innovation using their technology. In reality to survive, these companies had to morph oftentimes into something totally different and if these were lucky they might make the most of derivatives of these original technology. http://yourtechcrunch.com/ More often than not, the first technology wound up in the scrap heap. Technology, thus, is definitely an enabler whose ultimate value proposition is to make improvements to the lives. To be able to be relevant, it needs to be utilized to generate innovations which are driven by opportunity.
Technology as a competitive advantage?
Many companies list a technology together of these competitive advantages. Is this valid? Sometimes yes, but Typically 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 solutions to problems that were previously not possible. Semiconductor technology is an excellent example. Not merely made it happen spawn new industries and products, nonetheless it spawned other revolutionary technologies - transistor technology, integrated circuit technology, microprocessor technology. All which provide most of the products and services we consume today. But is semiconductor technology a competitive advantage? Looking at how many 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 numerous companies, but you've Intel, AMD, ARM, and a number of companies building custom quad core processors (Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc). So again, not much 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 an excellent example of how this works. Both os's are derivatives of UNIX. Apple used their technology to introduce iOS and gained an earlier market advantage. However, Google, utilizing their variant of Unix (a competing technology), trapped relatively quickly. The reasons with this lie not in the underlying technology, but 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 every company.https://arstechnician.com/
Evolutionary technology is the one that incrementally builds upon the base revolutionary technology. But by it's very nature, the incremental change now is easier for a competitor to complement or leapfrog. Take like wireless cellphone technology. Company V introduced 4G products prior to Company A and while it may have experienced a brief term advantage, as soon as Company A introduced their 4G products, the advantage due to technology disappeared. The customer returned to choosing Company A or Company V centered on price, service, coverage, whatever, however, not centered on technology. Thus technology could have been relevant in the short-term, but 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 death.
Technology's Relevance
This informative article was written from the prospective of a finish customer. From a 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 such as for instance a product. An enabling product, but something nonetheless, and thus it's highly relevant. Bose runs on the proprietary signal processing technology allow products that meet some market requirements and thus the technology and what it enables is relevant to them. https://techsitting.com/ Their customers are more focused on how it sounds, what's the cost, what's the quality, etc., and not really much with how it's achieved, thus the technology used is significantly less relevant to them.
