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.
Taking a look at the world of manufacturing, one will see that new, nearly fully automated production techniques, have resulted in a shift in demand away from unskilled to skilled labor. There is an increasing demand for trained workers who have the ability to operate computerized production lines.
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.
There seems to be a shift to more and more complex technology driving production in the business world. This has led to a situation where countries with a cheap, well trained labor force, like China and Singapore, are getting ahead of ‘old school’ countries where labor is more expensive. Europe and the USA are two examples of the latter.
The race to become the world’s business leaders is largely driven by cheap, state-of-the-art technology. Business and technology work hand in hand in the winning countries to create a formidable force that is hard to beat by countries that have become stuck in traditional ways of doing things.
