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 an improved mousetrap" example taught generally in most business schools. It's likely you have the technology to build an improved mousetrap, but when you yourself 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 one other hand, if you should be overrun with mice then the opportunity exists to innovate an item making use of your technology.
Another example, one with which I am 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 chance to produce a meaningful innovation using 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 first technology wound up in the scrap heap. Technology, thus, is definitely an enabler whose ultimate value proposition is to create improvements to our lives. In order to be relevant, it needs to be utilized to create innovations which can be driven by opportunity.
Technology as a competitive advantage?
Many companies list a technology as one 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 good example. Not merely made it happen spawn new industries and products, but 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 the amount of 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've Intel, AMD, ARM, and a host of companies building custom quad core processors (Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc). So again, very little of a competitive advantage. Competition from competing technologies and quick access to IP mitigates the perceived competitive advantageous asset of any particular technology. Android vs iOS is a good exemplory case 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), swept up relatively quickly. The reason why because of this lie not in the underlying technology, 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 beds base revolutionary technology. But by it's very nature, the incremental change is easier for a competitor to match or leapfrog. Take for instance wireless cellphone technology. Company V introduced 4G products prior to Company A and while it might experienced a short term advantage, as soon as Company A introduced their 4G products, the benefit as a result of technology disappeared. The consumer went back to choosing Company A or Company V centered on price, service, coverage, whatever, but not centered on technology. Thus technology may have been relevant in the temporary, in the long term, 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 article was written from the prospective of a conclusion customer. From the developer/designer standpoint things get murkier. The further one is taken off the technology, the less relevant it becomes. To a developer, the technology will look such as for instance a product. An enabling product, but an item nonetheless, and thus it is highly relevant. Bose works 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 worried about how it sounds, what's the price, what's the product quality, etc., and less with how it is achieved, thus the technology used is significantly less relevant to them.
