A few hundred years have already elapsed since the industrial revolution. During this time it has become clear that there is a direct link between business growth and technological development. The one seems to drive the other. Every new technology leads to new products that can be sold at a profit by entrepreneurs the world over. Business growth on the other hand drives new technological research on a continuous basis. Business and technology have become two sides of one coin.
There are numerous examples of this in the real world. One only has to consider how the invention of the ordinary calculator has revolutionized the world of accounting to see this for yourself. Thirty years ago it looked as if the introduction of software packages that can compile the financial statements of a company automatically will make accountants obsolete.
What actually happened was in fact the opposite: The huge array of financial analysis packages have created a growing demand for trained accountants to explain to ordinary business people how to interpret these results. Far from becoming obsolete, the accountant has become even more highly regarded.
Simultaneously this has resulted in a new career starting to blossom: the lecturer whose job it is to train accounting staff and business people in the inner working of all these software packages. As new generations of spreadsheets and financial software packages became ever more complex, the demand for trainers has also increased beyond all expectations.
If you look at the manufacturing world, you will see that new production techniques that are nearly completely automated have certainly caused a decrease in the demand for unskilled labor. The demand for skilled labor that know how to operate these production lines have increased at the same time.
At the same time the demand for highly trained technicians who are able to maintain and service modern production lines have also increased exponentially. There is thus a world wide shift away from unskilled to highly trained labor.
The continuous shift towards high-tech technology is changing the business world at a sometimes alarming rate. Old-world countries with an inflexible labor force and high wage levels are coming out as the losers in this game for world business dominance. The share of Asia in the world economy has nearly doubled over the past forty years, while that of Europe has dropped and the US remained stagnant.
The race is on to become the world’s dominant business force and it is largely driven by technology of mass production. In the most successful countries business and technology work together forming a nearly unbeatable combination.
