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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to bridge the big gulf between a hot technology and a profitable business, August 3, 2006
The last time I checked, Amazon and its online partner Borders sell almost 110,000 different books on on the general subject of technology and more than 12,000 on the general subject of innovation. Presumably these numbers will continue to increase as organizations become more actively involved with strategic planning in a global marketplace which relies so heavily on both technology and innovation.
What we have here is one of the volumes which comprise a series produced by faculty members at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. It was edited by Ranjay Gulati, Mohanbir Sawhney, and Anthony Paoni who co-authored the Preface. I feel obligated to suggest at the outset that none of the volumes in this series is an "easy read." On the contrary, each requires but will generously reward a careful consideration of its contents. In this volume, "the insight that motivated [assembling the contributions] is simple, yet powerful: [in italics] Students don't merely consume knowledge, they co-corerate knowledge." [end italics] The material is carefully organized within four Sections:
I (Chapters 1-3) Enabling Technologies and Infrastructure: The first three chapters "familiarize readers with the key technologies that are driving the evolution of computing and communication markets: wireless networks, optical networking, and chapters in semiconductor development." (Pages 3-152)
II (Chapters 4 and 5) Business Models and Markets: In this section, the focus and emphasis are on "the evolution of selected industries and interesting areas of emerging opportunity." For example, interactive television and wireless applications. (Pages 155-257)
III (Chapters 6-8) Emerging Technologies: In the final section, the contributors examine "futuristic technologies and nascent markets that are not yet well defined. For example, "hot areas" which include technology investment, nanotechnology, peer-to-peer computing, and biotechnology. (Pages 261-341)
As indicated earlier, this is by no means an "easy read" but, that said, I commend the editors and their collaborators on both the scope and depth of material discussed. Careful readers are generously rewarded with insights and frameworks which can help them make sense of the increasingly confusing business prospects of the many new technologies that are "breathlessly hyped in the media." There is an abundance of evidence to suggest what the editors characterize as a "big gulf between a hot technology and a profitable business." I share the editors' hope that their book will help readers to recognize and understand this gap so that they can then "find ways of bridging it."
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Geoffrey Moore's Dealing with Darwin, Clayton Christensen and co-authors' Seeing What's Next, and Thomas Davenport's Process Innovation, Working Knowledge, and most recently published Thinking for a Living as well as John Howells' The Management of Innovation & Technology, Michael George and co-authors' Fast Innovation, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble's 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators, and one of the most influential books ever written on this subject, Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, first published in 1987. In certain respects, Drexler's insights are even more relevant and more valuable now than ever before.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kellog Book Review, April 19, 2005
Introduction
This book shed some light on some current and future technologies. I liked it in that it hit on some very detailed aspects of the different technologies. There was a very broad range but very relevant to what's going on in the field of computer science.
Chapter 1
Technology is going in the direction Moore predicted but will begin to slow until a new way to develop the speed and power necessary becomes available. The company I work (Engineering Firm) for recently got numerous jobs that require 3-D modeling software to be used in designing their product. This software is an enormous software package that requires a very high-powered machine. Currently the software runs fine but as the industry increases it's demands to be able to interact with the design, we will be looking to more powerful machines. I can for see Holographs being used more to see the machine we are designing in a 3-D format in front of you before it goes to assembly. This would be a huge benefit to identify bugs. Some other things that I can see coming would be getting in to the model before actually building it, similar to the technology they were using in the movie Disclosure. I know there are some games that you can actually get into the game and feel like your there playing it. This will become a bigger and more demanded way of technology in the gaming world as well. In order for the computer industry to continue bringing more innovative and exciting things to the market the development of technology has to continue at a fairly fast rate. Consumers get bored with old technology and like to see new things. I feel Moore was on the right track but the limitations are starting to become prevalent and the new technologies they have on the horizon will need to become a reality in order for technology to continue at the rate it is.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 had some enlighting points. I work for a company that relies on lots of bandwidth for copying very large files. We have a fiber backbone internally and running from one plant to another. I don't see fiber running to each users desk in the near future as the cost is too much right now. An interesting point I found in the chapter was that of the fiber being run to residential areas. I feel that would be a huge improvement over cable or DSL but don't see it happening in the near future in my neighborhood. I work with large files at home as well and would like to see the bandwidth increased to transfer these files via FTP. I currently have cable modem which is sufficient but would be nice to have more bandwidth to do video conferencing, video transfers, etc. This chapter sounded pretty confident that there will be fiber run to more residents in the near future I would have to disagree with that statement mearly because of the cost to run the cabling. Consumers won't pay the increased costs just more bandwidth and the few that would; won't compensate for the others. As much as I would like to see it happen I really don't think it will anytime soon.
Chapter 3
The wireless era is upon us. I feel this chapter was a look into the future. My wife and I currently rely on a cell phone as our main needs for communication. My house doesn't have a landline and I don't think it ever will. I use a wireless router for my laptop and will be soon getting a pda that is wireless. This is the trend of the future. The talk around work is when are we going wireless in the building. We have a shop that would benefit greatly since a lot of our engineers use laptops and would be more mobile and possibly more efficient if they could just pick up an move at a moments notice. The other point I liked in this chapter was that about Location Based Services. I think this is a great feature that phone companies and even car companies. I love the idea of Onstar, always having someone on the other end just in case. Or if your going out for dinner but not sure where to go it's nice to know you can get directions easily, and quickly. I think this will catch on and become the standard. I believe wireless will only grow whether it's using the 3G technologies or building upon the current technologies.
Chapter 4
This chapter was a very good insight into what's to come. I'm not sure it will take off as fast as the statistics are portraying only because of human skeptics. I love the idea of interactive TV, TIVO is a great thing. My problem is the cost. I haven't really looked into it in my area but just from what I've heard it priced higher than standard cable. I don't utilize my current cable package to it's fullest so I'm pretty sure I would use TIVO to it's fullest. It will be sometime before we move into the era of TV's and other appliances being interactive.
Chapter 5
I found this chapter to very interesting. I've had a certain fondness for having the Internet on my cell phone and pda. When I did get the chance I found that I didn't use it at all. The PDA had a decent size screen but still scrolling was annoying. My cell phone on the other hand was very bad. The LCD is small and trying to enter web addresses, or doing text messaging was very hard. I think it will be the way of the future but it will take time for consumers to adjust to the small screen sizes. The other thing I found very interesting and think will really take off is the in car and tracking computers. They currently have them in some cars and I think more will be putting them in on the higher end cars. It would be very convenient to press a button and be able to talk to someone to get directions, reservations among other things. I think the wireless era is upon us now it will just be a matter of time before it really takes off and people begin accepting it.
Chapter 6
Technology is amazing. Nanotechnology is an up and coming revelation in technology. If this technology can be harnessed there's no telling what we will be able to do. It doesn't sound like this discovery will be in the too near future. First getting the devices to handle the material at such a minute scale. This technology would be the most helpful in the healthcare area. Imagine being able to dissect the cells at the smallest possible level. This would make it easier to find cures for diseases and probably speed up the process of finding these cures.
Chapter 7
P2P networking is a great technology on the horizon. I used Napster, IMesh, etc when they first came out. Now that most are banned it's hard to find a good one for a good price. I've used Limewire and you can pretty much find anything you need and a lot of things you don't want. That would be the biggest challenge filtering out the garbage and keeping the viruses and other malicious files off the network. In an office setting this would be a great use, you could have all the pc's setup to allow a certain % of their hard drive allow others to access it and use it for file sharing. You could use DFS to show the drives in one central location but really your using the power of a multiple pc's. That would eliminate buying or leasing a server for file storage. Oracle is doing this type Grid technology in their new Oracle 10G database design. This will allow for redundancy so if a computer goes down the system will continue running on the other PC's. Very neat idea but also fairly costly when you think about the PC's you'll need to run this plus other software. Depending on your environment you may need some pretty powerful machines to begin with so this approach would work seamlessly. I've used IM's for about 10 years now. First it was AOL and now the one I choose is Yahoo. It's getting better and better. You can talk and do video. It's very cool to be able to talk to my parents who live in Ia without spending a dime. I think P2P will catch on but will take some time to become a reality. Mainly because of the security. If someone can see files on my computer and they are computer savvy they would probably be able to see things I'm not intending them too. It's a great idea but will take some time to catch on.
Chapter 8
After reading this I've realized that although computer technology has come along way there are still areas that can't get the complete benefit out of the great technology. Even though biotechnology has definitely been improved through the use of technology and computers I don't think it will ever reap the benefits like some of the other fields of study. This is because of the time it takes to Research, Develop, Test and implement drugs. The restrictions and the testing alone take months if not years. The only way biotechnology could possibly utilize the technology is if cloning or stem cell research are perfected. I'm not a proponent of either but if it's to test new drugs and it's done in a safe stable environment then I guess I wouldn't have an argument. Even then some of the drugs take months if not years to tell what side affects, results, etc. Then comes turning a profit. The chapter touched on how long it takes to actually see a profit from the creation of one drug. There is so much riding on the creation that the cost out ways the benefits in most cases. I think it will be some time before biotechnology really sees drastic changes. Don't get me wrong technology has definitely improved the drug creation but it's still costly and will be for some time to come.
Conclusion
Reading this book really opens ones eyes to what's really out there in way of technology. Not only is it computer and a server anymore. Computers have really revolutionized everything from the medical field to space exploration. Anyone reading this book will need to really appreciate the technology field as the author goes deep into some areas. I felt that at times the author lost me with some of the technical jargon but the knowledge I gained definitely came out on top. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good book to read on the topic of where has technology been and where is it going.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Kellogg book comment, April 15, 2005
Every book is interesting, in my opinion depending on how we interpret what we read. This book is also a fascinate book, which I believe that people who read it will gain more or less good information. This book can lead us to see and predict the future of the trend of technology, and how important of technology regarding our daily life.
Chapter 1 is interesting for me. I think that nowadays our life depends heavily on technology, especially computers. Everybody uses a computer in some way. Most of us use them for communication, education, entertainment and so on. The capacity of the technology is also important.
I agree with the author that we will receive enormous benefits from artificial-intelligence systems, and humans do not cope easily with exponential growth. People cannot imagine that they could get along without computers, but before computers emerged, they lived their lives and got along fine, never thinking that something was missing. Then, after computers were developed, our society or our businesses changed and grew along with them, developing a dependency. As computers evolve our dependency on them grows, but as they develop exponentially, our needs and uses for them cannot keep up.
For example, I use the computer for education and communication. Being far away from home, the Internet helps me to interact with my family. Moreover, studying requires a lot of research. The information doesn't come only from the books. Technology helps us to access different worlds. Even though my use of my computer continues to grow, I still do not use even a small fraction of its capacities, and its capacities are only a small fraction of the available technology.
My point being, our inability to handle exponential growth is already leaving us far behind the limits of technology. Sooner or later, the growth of computer technology will have to level off to remain usable and useful for humans.
After reading Chapter2, I think that the Internet is important for everybody. However, the way to get the Internet to work varies for different people. In the past, we used dial-up connection to connect to the Internet. Nowadays, we have more varieties, such as cable and DSL, which provide for us higher quality, and increased speed.
In some countries, they still use dial-up connection. For example, my country, Thailand, is still using the phone line to connect to the Internet. We just started to have cable modem, but they are really expensive. Probably, it is the same as the Fiber to the home(FTTH) in this country. Moreover, most businesses in Thailand still use the Internet via the dial-up connection. This illustrates the differences between developed countries and developing countries, and shows me the power of new technology that we cannot ignore.
This makes me think about how we can keep up with the innovations of technology. Different countries have different levels of technology systems. I've been using the Internet in the USA through DSL, which is faster than what I use in my country. I hope that soon the cable or DSL will be introduced and used wildly in Thailand.
From reading this chapter (chapter 3), I think it is interesting. I think that technology is a part of our life nowsday. Cell phone is one good example. Some people have just cell phone. Some people have to have it because the development of the technology. From my experience of using the cell phone, I use it as a phone to connect to others even though right now we can do a lot with the cell phone, such as downloading the information from the Internet, checking email, sending the picture and so on.
Moreover, the connection to the Internet is everywhere, especially wireless connection. You can connect to the website wherever you want with your labtop. How convenience it is!
I believe that the trands of the high technology will increase sharply, and we will see how unbelievable of the technology in the future.
Chapter 4 is also interesting for me. This chapter focuses mainly about iTV, which I'm interested in knowing the trend of the TV program in the future. It seems interesting that we can interact with TV or we can choose the channel or the program we want to watch. For example, cable is the part for TV programs. We can choose which program we want to watch. Also, we have to pay for the movie we want to watch.
Personally, I don't care about cable or TV that much. My study, mainly, is related to the use of the Internet. I like to watch TV when I want to relax. I prefer watching news from TV. However, news, in the USA, doesn't update the information that much. I watched 1 news for 3 days, and sometimes they announced 3 times a day.
The reason why the iTV seems interesting to me at this point is because I'm interested in what program, and how we can interact with TV besides call to buy something from what we see from the advertisement, or click to buy the movies to watch.
In chapter 5 I found myself used to think that the USA and Japan were together as the leaders of high technologies. After reading this chapter, I think that even though Japan is smaller, it is the leader over the USA in the development of high technologies.
In the USA, technology is very popular and widely used in big cities. I see that newer technology explodes in big cities and slowly expands to smaller cities. M-commerce in the USA is not widely used because Americans depend heavily on the use of the Internet. Americans prefer the convenience of their laptop, and the online experience over the high per-minute cost from their cellphone. Also, the mobile devices are not as easy to use and Americans don't like the bulky mobile devices that have key pads. Moreover, most Americans use their phones to communicate with others, not to go online.
On the other hand, in Japan, the technology is designed for appearance and individual personality as well as technological function. This encourages Japanese to have a closer relationship with their personal devices. In addition, I-Mode is popular in Japan, which changes the way Japanese use their phones and the way their phones are designed. There is not a system in America that makes mobile technology user-friendly.
All in all, M-commerce has evolved to help both Japanese and Americans be more productive during commute time. It has failed to catch on in America because Americans commute by automobile while Japanese commute by train and have their hands free.
After I read about Nanotechnology in chapter 6, I felt like technology is really becoming a part of our day life. We depends heavily on technology. In addition, every technology has their own time, rise and fall. However, the most important factor is customers. Businesses have R&D, but they also need to know customers' needs and wants. Nanotechnology is in every part of businesses, such as services, medical and technology(TV, cellphone and so on).
Right now, we maybe see that Nanotechnology is not that important. Hence, it is helpful in many industries and in the future it will probably become the must-have technology.
It would be nice if my country has nanotechnology information and use within the country because my country will be developed if we have a great use of it.
Chapter 7 also provides good information that is fascinating. This chapter provides a lot of useful information to me even though it is difficult for me to understand at first time. P2P computing is an interesting factor for us nowadays. Computer and the Internet themselves are important for all of us. We use them heavily everyday.
By having P2P computing help me a lot both communicating with my friends and my family in my country and contacting and interacting with my classmate and work on my assignments. It helps me safe a lot of time.
For business companies, I think it will help them to receive and provide information from and to others.
I found that chapter 8 is interesting even though it is difficult to read at the beginning. Also, technology permeates every aspect of our daily life, including the pharmaceutical industry. It benefits every area of our lives, including our health. Biotechnology will help this industry develop quality products for many people. Also, it will cost us more. However, I think it is worth it because it will help us solve many difficult health related problems. I like the steps that they take during the production of medicine. They are the basic steps for most businesses. Even though it is really difficult me to understand the way this industry works, it is interesting to read and get more information about other business industries, such as pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology.
I think that this book is very interesting to read. I have learned and understand more about the advance technology in our lives. This book also leads me to think outside of the box, and see how technology affects business world. I believe that every book has its own value. You will gain more information and knowledge from reading this book.
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