Chapter 2

There are four traps that companies fall into when dealing with Emerging Technology. In chapter 2 there are solutions suggested for companies to deal with emerging technology and to help them avoid the traps.
1. Delayed Participation
2. Sticking with the Familiar
3. Reluctance to Fully Commit
4. Lack of Persistence
The solutions suggested in the chapter are listed by what they can focus on. Each of the four pitfalls can be addressed with each proposed solution. There is not one solution for each pitfall or trap.
1. Widening Peripheral Vision
2. Creating a Learning Culture
3. Staying Flexible in Strategic Ways
4. Providing Organizational Autonomy

Each of the solutions is almost a new strategy in itself. There are suggestions to address each trap contained in each solution. When a company decides to provide more organizational autonomy they are many times breaking from their main strategy to develop new ideas for development. This particular solution would include a widening of vision, creating a culture of learning (albeit in a new company or branch), and most indeed, staying flexible.

What I have been investigating and wondering about is how a company can decide what technologies to work on. There are many different types of strategies and all companies will have a different strategy to work on. Some companies will struggle to find a way to truly allow spin-offs or new companies to work freely and independent from the main company. They will always run the risk of creating a competitor that could be difficult for the larger company to deal with.

Does creating spin-offs or start-up companies under the umbrella of a larger company create more problems than solutions?

The Twitter article in the Idhao Statesman this week was interesting because it mentioned how companies use Twitter to help their business. The company that owns Twitter may not have the support to continue in business, but at this point, it seems likely they will continue, but with changes. I have spent some time looking at what current businesses are using Twitter. Not many, but there are some. According to the latest investors in Twitter, there will be more and the company is well positioned to continue growth. Southwest Airlines uses twitter. Some resorts use Twitter, like in Las Vegas and some in Mexico and such. I found that many people on Twitter try to gain insight for their upcoming travel by soliciting assistance from any of their followers.
I was not able to get into the competitors listed in the article due to time constraints. As I move through this class it may be of value to look up some of the other sites like Twitter to see how they are moving through this new technology.

Will there be an increase in the use of Twitter to the point where you could purchase Twitter IDs much like there are companies that register and sell web addresses?

– I actually found some evidence of this in the form of TweetTornado.com. This company is an advertising company that uses the Twitter tool to reach customers. Many of the comments on the site itself were not exactly positive. The service appears to be very expensive, $99 start-up with $99 monthly fees to maintain. It seems to take advantage of Twitter because Twitter does not validate e-mail addresses to start an account. This is all relatively new and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks with TweetTornado.

I have included many of the web-sites I went to from updates posted on Twitter to a variety of users. Twitter, Obama, resorts and many other searches. I just mainly wanted to see what was happening on Twitter. It is not that I think it is THE emerging technology, but I wanted to see what use it could be to a new company, or even a company like Idaho Power. Not sure that I even answered my own questions, but found lots of other information.

Resources:
http://financialstability.gov/
http://www.recovery.gov/
http://www.ombwatch.org/
http://tweettornado.com/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2477
http://www.benchmark.com/http://www.ivp.com/