Post-War Technological Advances | Essay

Post-War Technological Advances EssayIn the autumn of 1945, Hitler was dead and the state of war in the west was over. The Japanese had retreated from the Asian countries under their trading and were determined to protect their homeland till the last man. The Kamikaze attacks of the Japanese circulate Force and the militarily expensive battle of Okinawa had driven home the essence that a military invasion of Japan would be truly close in terms of human beings life and could run into months to achieve. The official envision of likely casualties was pegged at betwixt 1.4 to 4 million on the wholeied soldiers. The Japanese were obdurate in their decision not to surrender.On August 6, and 9, 1945, the Americans revealed the potency of their weapons technology. Two atom bombs, the Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The allies did not need to negotiate any further. emperor Hirohito surrendered at heart a month. The episode, however ghastly, drives home as nothing else, the ugly faculty of technical establishment to increase dicker power.The post war period has seen the growing of stunning new proficient varietys in several(a) areas of scholarship and technology. Many of these have a turn upn in weaponry and space science and effected major changes in power centres and national equations on a global scale. Technological innovations in opposite areas have given rise to a slew of products, created billions of pounds cost of summations, shaped huge corpo proportionalityns and generated massive frugal empires. The names of Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Nokia, to name but a few, flash through the rational landscape when the issue of innovation lie withs up.Bargaining power, while being practically tantamount to unionism, is more specifically a tool to enhance cut back over or influence economic decisions like the setting of prices or wages, or to restrict the amount of production, sal es, or employment, or the quality of a in effect(p) or a returns and, in the case of monopoly, the ability to exclude competitors from the market. (Power, 2006)Technical innovations have been principal drivers of change in human society since prehistory and have often created huge economic advantages for its creators or owners. The principal reason behind this is exclusivity, the owner of the innovation being the furbish up possessor of a particular technological item that can be employ to achieve significant economic returns.This exclusivity also gives the owners sharply increase bargaining powers through access to a technology outside the go along of others and meant for the possessors sole discretionary use. The owners of the innovation are able to use this bargaining power in various slipway, which include speed to market, early instrument advantage, setting of prices, fixing of terms of credit, negotiating of contracts, asking of advances, obtaining supplier credit, acce ssing venture hood or institutional funds and organising alliances with large corporates. The ability to innovate technologically has, on many occasions given its owner enormous economic clout and led to the formation of giant mega corporations. It has verily proven to be the biggest leveller in the marketplace, witness the effulgent rocket trail of the growth graphs of Microsoft and Google and the black decline of numerous economic giants who have not been able to come up with anything new or worthwhile.When discussing the bargaining power of technological innovation it would be appropriate to refer to Intel Corp and the manner in which it utilize its technological knowl contact of chips to drive home terrific contracts with IBM and other PC manufacturers and in that respectby transformed itself from a small start up to a successful and respected corporation with an international footprint.Jane Katz, in a 1996 article called From Market to Market for Regional Review elaborates on the great Intel story. IBM, at iodin time far behind Apple in the PC race, entered into alliances with Intel and Microsoft for microprocessors and operating systems and also took the decision to go in for open-architecture to allow other firms to develop compatible products and to avoid possible anti trust issues. Intel, at that time was an untested company and IBM, concerned about Intel being ineffectual to meet its supply commitments forced Intel to give up its right to demonstrate to others in order to supply to Big Blue. PC sales did precise well and Intel grew furiously and fast. In any case, this success led to Intel quickly developing the next coevals of chips. The number of new players having grown rapidly, convey to the open architecture policy of IBM, Intels bargaining power grew significantly with all PC makers.Thus, the balance of power shifted. When it came time to produce the 286 generation of chips, Intel was able to limit licensing to five companies and r etain a 75 percentage market share. For the 386 chip and beyond, Intel regained most of its monopoly, granting a single license to IBM, good only for internal use. The market for PCs grew, and Intel became fixed as the industry standard. Ultimately, IBM glum to Apple and Motorola in a belated and still struggling social movement to create a competitor to Intel chips, the Power PC. (Katz, 1996)Technological innovation, of course, gives rise to very significant powers in the hands of its owners. It however needs to be remembered that an innovation is no more than another valuable possession, comparable to significant capital, splendid technical skills or valuable confidential information. It needs great mercenary acumen, business foresight and intimacy of human psychology to convert this asset into an extremely effective bargaining tool for obtaining a competitive edge or significant economic benefits. All too often, it is squandered past because of an inadequate knowledge of l aw or business and it is left to others to pick at up the pieces and enjoy the benefits.In most cases, innovation is not certified to one huge big bang or tremor do development. It is a series of small innovations in the technological development of a product that at one stage results in the emergence of a product sharply several(predicate)iated from the others available in the marketplace a product impossible to emulate or bring into play at bottom the immediate future. A truly innovative technological development is one that makes a giant leap in the benefits to cost ration in some field of human enterprise. It is this quality that sets up the platform for emergence of big bargaining power.Another way of putting this is that an innovation glowers the cost and/or increases the benefits of a task. A wildly successful innovation increases the benefits-to-costs ratio to such an extent that it enables you to do something it seemed you couldnt do at all before or didnt even know y ou wanted to do. bring forward of the following examples in these terms the printing press, the camera, the telephone, the car, the airplane, the television, the computer, the electrostatic copier, the Macintosh, Federal Express, email, telecommunicate and finally the web. (Yost, 1996)This power that technological innovation gives is used by different people in diverse ways. It often comes the way of young and bright techies who decide to sell, using their bargaining power to get the best possible price for their product from available bidders. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail, a ease web based email service accessible from anywhere in the world and designed specifically to give freedom from restricting ISPs. The service notched up subscribers rapidly and Bhatia got a summons from the office of hooter Gates soon later he got his venture capital backing.When he was only 28, Sabeer Bhatia got the call every Silicon Valley entrepreneur dreams of institutionalise Gat es wants to buy your company. Bhatia was ushered in. Bill liked his firm. He hoped they could work together. He wished him well. Bhatia was ushered out. Next thing is were interpreted into a conference room where there are 12 Microsoft negotiators, Bhatia recalls. Very intimidating. Microsofts determined dozen put an state on the table $160 million. Take it or leave it. Bhatia play it cool. Ill get back to you, he said. Eighteen months later Sabeer Bhatia has taken his place among San Franciscos ultra-rich. He recently purchased a $2-million apartment in gilded Pacific Heights. Ten floors below, the city slopes away in all directions. The opulent Gate Bridge, and beyond it the Pacific, lie on the horizon. A month after Bhatia walked away from the table, Microsoft ponied up $400 million for his startup. Today Hotmail, the ubiquitous Web-based netmail service, boasts 50 million subscribers one quarter of all Internet users. Bhatia is worth $200 million. (Whitmore, 2001)Sometimes technological innovation does give a somebody the power to refuse 100 million dollars, confident in the knowledge that he will be able to bargain for more plot of land many individual developers or smaller companies favour to take Bhatias track, preferring to cash the cheque first, others go for more, develop the product and try to take it to its full economic potential. The biggest hurdle to the exclusivity of a product comes from clandestine copy as Microsoft and the drug majors have found out in South East Asia and China. Rampant piracy and copyright breach contract to a situation where the latest software and drugs are available within weeks of being released in the market.While this problem is being resolved at the national level with both India and China beginning to take slopped action for IPR protection the lesson to be learnt in direct and oblique ways is that the bargaining power of a technological development will vanish, melt into nothingness if its exclusivity can n ot be maintained. While retaining all of its uprightness and potential to effect change and bring about improvement, a technological investment loses all of its economic advantage and bargaining power the act it loses its exclusivity. Humanity gets to be served, possibly even at a lower price, but the creator, individual or organization ends up unrewarded and goldbrick changed for all the sacrifice, talent, expenditure and effort incurred in the development of the product or service.It thus becomes critical to arrange for the exclusivity of the innovation if it needs to be used for economic advantage. This is generally done in various ways, an important route being to keep on working at further innovations to come value and to ensure that a significant differentiation always exists between it and other similar products in the marketplace. Microsoft and Google are excellent examples of this approach where consecutive R D efforts work towards creating a slew of features which be come knockout to emulate and thereby continue to provide the bargaining edge.In endpoint the importance of hard nosed business acumen to protect the technological innovation needs to be stressed. Measures for this include the arrangement of adequate security system to protect the product or service from espionage and cloning, sufficient care in licensing and similar arrangements and the adoption of necessary business and commercial safeguards for appropriate trademark, copyright, transparent or IPR protectionReferencesKatz, J, (1996), To Market to Market, Regional Review, Retrieved September 28 2006 from www.bos.frb.org/economic/nerr/rr1996/fall/katz96_4.htmPower, (2006), Wikipedia, Retrieved September 28 2006 from. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerWhitmore, S, (2001), Driving Ambition, Asiaweek.com, Retrieved September 28 2006 from www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/technology/990625/bhatia.htmlYost, D.A, (1995), What is innovation, Dream host, Retrieved September 28 2006 from yost.com/misc/i nnovation.html