Technology is an enabler
Many people mistakenly still find it 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 in many business schools. You may have the technology to build an improved mousetrap, but if you have no mice or the old mousetrap is effective, there's no opportunity and then the technology to build an improved one becomes irrelevant. On another hand, if you are overrun with mice then the opportunity exists to innovate something using your technology.
Another example, one with which I am intimately familiar, are electronic devices 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 chance to produce a meaningful innovation employing their technology. Actually to survive, these companies had to morph oftentimes into something totally different and if they certainly were lucky they could take advantage of derivatives of the original technology. http://yourtechcrunch.com/ More often than not, the first technology wound up in the scrap heap. Technology, thus, is an enabler whose ultimate value proposition is to create improvements to our lives. To be able to be relevant, it must be properly used to produce innovations that are driven by opportunity.
Technology as a competitive advantage?
Many companies list a technology as one of the competitive advantages. Is this valid? In some cases 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 a good example. Not just achieved it 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? Looking at how many semiconductor companies that exist today (with new ones forming every day), I'd say not. How about microprocessor technology? Again, no. A lot of microprocessor companies out there. How 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, little of a competitive advantage. Competition from competing technologies and easy access to IP mitigates the perceived competitive advantage of any particular technology. Android vs iOS is a good example of how this works. Both os's 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), caught up relatively quickly. The causes with this lie not in the underlying technology, however in how the merchandise made possible by those technologies were brought to market (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 is easier for a competitor to match or leapfrog. Take as an example wireless cellphone technology. Company V introduced 4G products prior to Company A and while it could experienced a brief term advantage, the moment Company A introduced their 4G products, the benefit because of technology disappeared. The buyer returned to choosing Company A or Company V predicated on price, service, coverage, whatever, however not predicated on technology. Thus technology may have been relevant in the short term, however in the long run, became irrelevant.https://techwaa.com/
In today's world, technologies have a tendency to quickly become commoditized, and within any particular technology lies the seeds of its death.
Technology's Relevance
This information was written from the prospective of an end customer. From the 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 such as a product. An enabling product, but something nonetheless, and thus it's 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 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 much less relevant to them.
