Management of Universal Technologies & Their Industry Implications

Abstract

It is observed that certain technologies have grown and expanded their branches to many areas and sectors of practice in such a way that they have been designated as General-Purpose Technologies. Such general-purpose technologies are identified and used in many industries to do business and to solve or simplify the problems of industries. During the last few years, it is observed that out of many general-purpose technologies, two technologies have shown accelerated growth and gave birth to many underlying sub-technologies: (1) Information Communication and Computation Technology (ICCT), and (2) Nanotechnology (NT). These two technologies are further identified as “Universal Technologies” due to their potential capability of solving problems related to basic needs, advanced wants, and dreamy desires of human beings in society. ICCT and Nanotechnology have opened up the possibility of ubiquitous solutions to many problems related to production and service industries by offering automated mobility, stability, and sustainability. In this paper, we have identified various strategies for effective management of ICCT & NT underlying technologies in solving issues pertaining to basic needs, advanced wants, and dreamy desires of human beings in society. The paper also discusses how these universal technologies can be unified to further strengthen their abilities in redefining the productivity in production-related industries and performance in service-related industries with the objective of moving towards technological singularity by building super-intelligent self-replicating machines.

Keywords: Universal technologies, Technology management, ICCT, Nanotechnology, Technological singularity, Technological unification, Redefining productivity & performance.