Necesity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. However, when it comes to technology sector, the need to innovate is very much a necessity. More often that not, new innovative products and adaptability are dictated not so much by approprite use but by rapid changing market demand. It is not just the technology that is the basis for competitive advantage; at time it is a determining factorr of survival.
The acceleration of technology innnovation through information and communication technology (ICTs) impacts society, industry and economy in various ways but it is a pace of innovation that draws our attention to high tech more than any thing else. Social scientists observe that although it took "radio 38 years to acquire 50 million users, television took only 13 years to reach the same milestone, the internet four years, and the iPod three years".Social networks such as Facebook and iPhone dwarf even these rapid rates of adaptation of life to technology. Within a stretch of the past nine months, Facebook attracted 200 million new users. The total number of subscribers is now larger than the population of any country other than India and China. In the same amount of time, one billion iPhone applications have been downloaded.
The culture of innovation is often undermind by another culture - the competition to keep up with the latest tech fad. The latest tech fad sells not because any dramatic changes but because of million spent on promoting products that then bring a major return for the producers of sleek marketable products. Such a culture sells not the product itself but the idea of it. Our own tech innovators would do well to stay focused on technology that is appropriate for our local economy and needs instead of developing a complex which creates a culture of viewing everything from the outside as superior and better for us than what we develop ourselves.
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