In early 2002, I took a strategic management class where the instructor lectured on globalization and identified five elements that were powering the force of globalization. Two of those elements were technology advances.
- Cheap Communications
- Personal Computers
Thomas Friedman’s best selling book The World is Flat outlined ten elements that have transformed the early part of the twenty-first century. Simply put five of the ten forces outlined were technology advances in computer technology.
- Personal Computers
- Cheap communication systems
- Network applications
- Information Management through search
- Mobile and Wireless communication
Defining the term globalization is tough because of the number elements comprise it.
Today virtualization innovation centered around building virtual datacenters and on demand IT is starting to catch on but is cloud computing driving globalization or is globalization driving the need for virtualization and clouds?
To answer this question requires a fundamental understanding of the dynamics of technology innovation.
James M. Utterback’s book Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation outlines innovation occurring in three phases, with the emerging of a dominant design being a critical time to evaluate investing resources.
Are we at the point where we can say there is a dominate design with regard to cloud computing?
Is cloud computing worthy of being defined as a force that is fueling globalization?
I plan to explore these questions over time and organize my thoughts here on my blog.
Please feel free to comment, question, and criticize my posts.
Cloud computing is the new "IT" thing (pun intended). Looks like MSFT is releasing their office suite in the cloud (i.e., threatened by GOOG). I love the new innovation of cloud computing. The push filesharing of dropbox is great -- no more USB data drives for me. What companies are investment plays on cloud computing?
Isn't WoW essentially cloud gaming?
Posted by: Brian Huang | 05/14/2010 at 10:48 AM