Quotes about Technology

Managers who confront disruptive technological change must be leaders, not followers, in commercializing disruptive technologies.

Well-managed companies are excellent at developing the sustaining technologies that improve the performance of their products in the ways that matter to their customers. This is because their management practices are biased toward: Listening to customers Investing aggressively in technologies that give those customers what they say they want Seeking higher margins Targeting larger markets rather than smaller ones

they reached as far upmarket as they could in each new product generation, until their drives packed the capacity to appeal to the value networks above them. It is this upward mobility that makes disruptive technologies so dangerous to established firms—and so attractive to entrants.

In dealing with disruptive technologies leading to new markets, however, market researchers and business planners have consistently dismal records.

The strategies and plans that managers formulate for confronting disruptive technological change, therefore, should be plans for learning and discovery rather than plans for execution. This is an important point to understand, because managers who believe they know a market's future will plan and invest very differently from those who recognize the uncertainties of a developing market.

Disruptive technologies bring to a market a very different value proposition than had been available previously. Generally, disruptive technologies underperform established products in mainstream markets. But they have other features that a few fringe (and generally new) customers value. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use.

Established firms attempt to push the technology into their established markets, while the successful entrants find a new market that values the technology.

progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker.

I am so glad TV had not been invented then—it meant I had to, and most certainly did, exercise and develop my powers of imagination.

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work.

Silver is used in the electronics industry and is consumed daily; stock piles of silver are dwindling.