Technology is an enabler
Many people mistakenly believe that it is technology which drives innovation. Yet from the definitions above, that is clearly not the case. It's opportunity which defines innovation and technology which enables innovation. Think of the classic "Build an improved mousetrap" example taught generally in most business schools. It's likely you have the technology to create an improved mousetrap, but when you have no mice or the old mousetrap is effective, there is no opportunity and then a technology to create an improved one becomes irrelevant. On one other hand, if you're overrun with mice then a opportunity exists to innovate a product utilizing your technology.
Another example, one with which I'm intimately familiar, are gadgets startup companies. I've been connected with both the ones that succeeded and the ones that failed. Each possessed unique leading edge technologies. The difference was opportunity. Those who failed couldn't find the opportunity to develop a meaningful innovation employing their technology. Actually to survive, these companies had to morph oftentimes into something completely different and if they certainly were lucky they could make the most of derivatives of their original technology. http://yourtechcrunch.com/ More often than not, the original technology wound up in the scrap heap. Technology, thus, is an enabler whose ultimate value proposition is to make improvements to the lives. In order to be relevant, it must be utilized to generate innovations which are driven by opportunity.
Technology as a competitive advantage?
Many companies list a technology as you of their 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 the one which enables new industries or enables solutions to problems that were previously not possible. Semiconductor technology is an excellent example. Not only made it happen spawn new industries and products, nonetheless it spawned other revolutionary technologies - transistor technology, integrated circuit technology, microprocessor technology. All which provide many of the products and services we consume today. But is semiconductor technology a competitive advantage? Taking a look at how many semiconductor companies that exist today (with new ones forming every day), I'd say not. What about microprocessor technology? Again, no. A lot of microprocessor companies out there. What about quad core microprocessor technology? Not as numerous companies, but you have 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 advantageous asset of any particular technology. Android vs iOS is an excellent example of how this works. Both operating systems 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 causes 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 each company.https://arstechnician.com/
Evolutionary technology is the one which incrementally builds upon the beds base revolutionary technology. But by it's very nature, the incremental change now is easier for a competitor to match or leapfrog. Take like wireless cellphone technology. Company V introduced 4G products just before Company A and while it might experienced a brief term advantage, the moment Company A introduced their 4G products, the bonus as a result of technology disappeared. The buyer went back to choosing Company A or Company V based on price, service, coverage, whatever, but not based on technology. Thus technology might have been relevant in the temporary, however in the long term, became irrelevant.https://techwaa.com/
In today's world, technologies have a tendency to ver quickly become commoditized, and within any particular technology lies the seeds of its own death.
Technology's Relevance
This information was written from the prospective of a conclusion customer. From a developer/designer standpoint things get murkier. The further one is removed from the technology, the less relevant it becomes. To a developer, the technology can look like a product. An enabling product, but a product nonetheless, and thus it is highly relevant. Bose uses a proprietary signal processing technology allow products that meet a couple of 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 price, what's the product quality, etc., and not really much with how it is achieved, thus the technology used is much less strongly related them.
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