I read an article about "anywhere marketing".
The article talks about how new technology is giving companies more of a competitive advantage. Technology today allows us to run a business from home, or on the road. It allows companies to hire across the country and their employees will never have to go into the office. Laptops, mobile internet, and cell phones make all the difference. Technology is changing the business world, and for the most part it is doing alot of good. Companies are catching on and are drastically increasing their profits by becoming more efficient. This is a good thing, but I see that there can be alot of disadvantages too. Does new technology make running a business easier or harder and in what ways?
10 comments:
I like technology and I think that when it is properly and effectively used it can be a very powerful and useful tool. What bothers me about technology is how rapidly it changes. In addition, I find it a pain in the neck when I have to learn a new system or a new technology. I think that technology can be very useful, but at the same time, it can be very time-consuming to try and learn all that there is to know about new technologies.
Overall, technology is a great thing. It makes us more productive. More productivity means more wealth and more wealth means a higher standard of living. Anyone who disagrees has "never had the joy of a welfare Christmas" (Everclear 1997).
The only thing that annoys me in the whole technology boom is the perpetuating speed at which it is causing us live. Because technology allows us to do things faster and more efficiently we should have more leisure time. However, society as a whole is filling the would-be leisure time with more activity.
That is why after I make my millions in the next few years, I plan on moving to hills and getting away from it all.
I think that the great technology push has a few problems. For one, it is causing businesses, especially ones that are a smaller and less inclined to learn about the new technology, to fall behind. I know many local companies that have not been able to keep up with larger, more advanced companies. Its terrible that these smaller companies are dying out! Also, technology is increasing so fast that I don't know how we can keep up this pace. I just don't see how more and more technology will keep helping us. I read an article that said that technology is doubling about every three years. At that rate, we will have more technology than we can handle in the near future. It almost seems like it will start hindering us if we are not careful.
There's a lot of angst in those comments.
One nitpick - a few very limited branches of newer technologies might be doubling every few years, but for most, doubling every generation or two is more reasonable.
In macro, growth theory has shown (and this is backed up by empirical evidence) that technology is a double-edged sword. Technological growth is associated with declining incomes in the short-run. This is because of the retasking of resources to keep up with the latest thing. On the other hand, the level of technology is strongly associated with higher incomes in the long-run.
But ... none of this is new. Capital investments behave the same way. When a family buys a house they can't really afford, it hurts them in the short-run, but helps out in the long-run.
Those comments may be true, but technology also allows small businesses to compete very differently than they could have even ten years ago. A small, web-based business can successfully sell to a national market that they could not have touched before. Yes, technology is quickly changing and that can be difficult manage, but those very changes can create opportunities that have never existed before. For example, a large part of my organization's budget used to be spent in mailing brochures and information. With the electronic resources available to us now, we can better distribute the information for less money. Even the newest online innovations (some are not so new) - blogs, podcasts, rss feeds, streaming video - allow companies to communicate in ways that may end up being more effective than past methods. It is probably the same discussion that people have about opportunities vs. threats - it all depends on how you look at it.
I agree with Dr. Tufte that technology is a double-edged sword. Today's generation is demanding more and more technology. Kids get bored when they aren't multi-tasking – they can be listening to music, instant messaging, texting, watching television, and surfing the Internet all at the same time. But many times, we have an information overload, which can be almost as bad as no information at all. We waste precious time digging through all the information we have. More is not always better. Getting twenty hits on an Internet search is much better than twenty thousand.
This isn't quite what I meant.
I think more is always better, on net. But, there are always costs involved.
Dr. Tufte- I disagree with your last comment. I don't belive more is always better. There are many companies that take on new technologies because it seems like a good idea and everyone else is doing it. Many times, these companies didn't compare the actual costs and benefits and chose poorly. Christensen's accounting systems example comes to mind. Many companies buy another system to control internal accounting and end up confusing people and adding extra costs.
Dr. Tufte said that technology lowers income in the short run. This is because it is so hard to keep up with. Everyone has had an experience where they bought the best thing on the market and was the envy of their friends. This situation usually only lasts about a month, before someone has a better device. Technology is costly and can be very effective.
-1 on Trinity for a spelling error.
This is a fairly common phenomenon: the level of a variable does one thing, but the growth of the variable does the opposite.
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