The Importance of Staying

Technically Competent

Unpublished - October 1997

(May be published in a joint SOCAP article)

Change is a fact of life, and this is even more true in the world of technology, which is usually transforming at a significantly higher metabolism rate than most other things in the world, and technology changes heavily impact the economy, world markets, corporations, and individual employees. In this everchanging landscape, it becomes much like "survival of the fittest", where corporate or individual players who are able to shift their core competencies and skill sets to keep up with technology changes can usually survive and succeed. Those who don't often end up being "eaten", or seriously weakened, by nimbler competitors. Take IBM, for example, a well-established, successful company in the mainframe computer market. Due to short-sightedness on their part about the technology shift from business mainframe to personal PC, smaller, nimbler Bill Gates successfully "ate" into this market, which could have been IBM's for the taking had they moved faster. This shortsightedness seriously weakened IBM's business, causing huge layoffs and downsizing, until they were able to recover through restructuring and shifting their strategy to better adapt to technological change. Going back even further in history, the bones of many previously successful businesses, such as horse-buggy manufacturers and slide-rule manufacturers, are glistening in the glare of the market success of their upstart competitors in automobile manufacturing and calculator, followed by computer manufacturing. The fate of individual employees operates in a similar market-driven manner, meaning, for example, those employees skilled in the manufacture of buggy whips who were able to successfully migrate their skill sets to apply to the manufacture of automobile parts, through training, individual study or some other means, probably maintained jobs. Those who didn't probably ended up populating the unemployment lines.

On the flip side of the coin are corporate and individual players who successfully "shift with the times". Texas Instruments is one example of a company that has managed to shift their core business to adapt to technological changes. Originally begun in the 1930s during the oil boom as a service-based company using seismology to find oil, TI managed to transform itself in time with technology shifts in the market throughout the following decades to become one of the stronger technology leaders even today. Their first shift was in 1940, branching out from their core business of seismology detection into the manufacture of radar-based submarine detection devices for the US government in World War II. TI shifted again in the 1950s, being the first to produce silicon transistors for the mass market and designed the world's first transistor radio (TI Web site, History of Innovation ). Their vision for the 1990s too reflects their uncanny ability to adapt to large technological changes in the market:

TI's vision, first articulated two years ago, sees
a world called the "networked society"- a society
transformed by personalized electronics all speaking
the same digital language, all able to communicate anytime,
anywhere. We envision a world where every bit that's
processed, every message that's communicated, every image
that's projected, will be touched by TI technology
(TI Web Site, TI's Strategic Direction)

This ability to stay technically component has rewarded Texas Instruments with financial success. Their 1997 third quarter operating margin increased to 14.3 percent in the quarter, up from 0.6 percent in the third quarter 1996 (TI Web site, TI Reports Increased Profits for Third Quarter 1997 ).

These shifts are usually evident at the individual employee level as well, since a simple review of job listings on any job board or classifieds section of any newspaper will quickly reveal what skill sets are in high demand. These demand shifts almost always follow the larger technology shifts in the market, so it is fairly simple to forecast what skills will be demanded in the future just by monitoring the news and technological shifts of successful market players. Like corporate players, individual players who monitor and adapt their skill sets to these shifts well are likely to succeed. Those who don't are likely to end up like the buggy whip employees.

So what differentiates the survivors from the rest of the crowd? In "survival of the fittest", it is not only perceptual ability, both in "sensing" where the game is headed and what other competitive players are "moving into the territory" to upset one's position, but is also adaptive ability to respond to changes faster than or at least as fast as those competitive players. Corporations can enhance their perceptual ability by listening to their customers, monitoring industry trends, and seeking where "new game" will be, and their adaptive ability is only tuned when this market information gets communicated to and integrated into their development and strategic decision-making processes. Oftentimes there are disconnects or growing myopia, either on the perceptual end or on the adaptive end which will cause large companies like IBM to falter in the wake of nimbler upstarts like Microsoft. Even if they survive, they will be seriously weakened until they too develop a keener perceptual and adaptive ability to shift in time with technological change in the market. Those who run the fastest to adapt to technological shifts will win, those who run fast will survive, and those who walk or stand still may collapse or be seriously injured by their faster competitors.

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