The Economics of Technology Topics ====== A. Evolution of technology - how does technology evolve? * Role of geographical communities in technology development . Silicon valley, 128, etc. - managing technology transitions * Stages of technology deployment * Disruptive technologies - How technology's impact is *measured*... . how to measure productivity gains? - Markets that have proven to be good "wedges" for new technologies... . entertainment of various kinds . military . business productivity? - etc. B. Value Capture - Intellectual property . patent cross-licensing - analogy from telephone & car history - Investment, e.g. V.C.'s . What VC's look for... - etc. - How much of the value created by new technologies can be captured by the companies that create them? . Xerox Parc . Other industry research labs C. Structure of technology markets and systems - basic marketing . value vs. cost pricing . total end-user value may be split among multiple companies - standards . de-facto and de-jure - network effects - monopolies . natural monopolies . souces of "natural monopolies"... + desire for interoperability of complex systems (good design vs. poor design) + need for single namespaces + desire of humans for simplicity -- one-stop shopping/portals/etc. + desire for humans to avoid retraining costs + what are different technical/business models for achieving these goals? + ownership/management of common set of information + lock-in of your data (oracle database format; MS Word; etc.,etc. . case study of amazon, travelocity, etc. -- they own your config info - industry structure . horizontal vs. vertical structure (dec/ibm vs. commodity PC's) . open source vs. windows - Why bad technical designs win in the marketplace - What factors cause technology (e.g. internet) to go mass-market? - Winner-take-all phenomenon in technology standards and computer-industry companies - Why is current O/S & SW infrastructure so poor? . why is it hard to move apps from old PC to new one? - Why isn't there interpoerability in cell phones & PDA's? . question: is there room for a new focal point (e.g. web site) for asserting control over these devices? D. Technology management strategy - General discussion of role of leadership and management . importance of movitation / rewards / measuring results in large org/ . understand difference between small organizations and large orgs - Risk and value - Organizational culture - Managing research . for companies -- how to guide research in labs . IBM's approach to fostering technology . Books on creativity / idea-generation - Different time horizons for R&D - What makes a good company? . in search of excellence, etc. - How are large organizations managed and motivated? . importance of quantitative metrics, and their impact . different metrics used in industry and academia * Discussion of how pure research productivity is measured . count papers, patents, funding, paper references, etc. . different *kinds* of research: systems, theory, ... . [has anyone applied google-like analysis techniques to measuring . fame... . what works? - etc. E. Technology management tactics - Team organization (e.g. SW teams) - Importance of communication - etc. - "Academic" approaches to problems vs. what people actually use: importance of K.I.S.S. - Actual software development . formal methods not used widely... why? . importance of incremental system building - get something working quickly . How do large SW development projects work? Partitioning of design and implementation effort. . SW engineering disasters: thorac, .... more than one thing going wrong . Facts on failure rates for large SW/technology projects F. Technology and Society - How does technological change fundamentally change businesses? . maximum impact is by completely changing how the other business is run; or by creating a new business. . influential technologies: communications, transport, information mgmt. . examples such as amazon.com, yahoo.com, and older ones too. . The military's use of technology to change how war is fought? . Network-centric warfare - computing and communication technologies as defense industries - Technology's impact on productivity - Government sponsorship of technology * Role of government sponsorship of technology, and transferring it from theory to practice: . WW2, Manthattan project, NASA, etc. (SDI as a failure?) * how should research be funded and directed? - Law of unintended consequences . technology-induced cost changes: SPAM, junk mail, etc. . need to combine organization change w/technological change - Interaction w/goals of privacy, etc. . Palladium and "trusted computing" . study of .NET, MS Passport, etc.