Question

Given the speed at which technology (and technological capabilities) change, it is inevitable that you will be confronted with a situation in which you are unfamiliar with a particular technology needed to resolve your client’s opportunity or problem. Please prepare an entry addressing this, how you resolved this particular issue, and the likelihood that you may encounter such scenarios throughout your career.

Answer 1

Problem- Due to technological advancements, the client who is a multinational publishing company needs to publish their articles faster than their competitors for sustainable competitive advantage. Traditionally, the time required to publish an article is 28 days approximately. However, the competitors were able to publish faster than this scheduled time. Thus, the client was confronted with technological problem/capability to publish the articles faster.

Solution- The solution provided to the client was a technological concept which was Article Based Publishing (ABP). The ABP concept is assigning of the final citation on the articles and it is done article-by-article basis which is then compiled later into issues. This means that the final article will be published with the volume/issue number online before it is compiled into print journals. This reduced the online publication drastically to about 12 days thus providing a competitive edge for the client. This required lot of technological work around and the company had to first estimate its capabilities to accommodate this technological change.

Likelihood of its occurrence- the above was just an example of technological problems. Due to globalization and advancements in technology, there are possibilities of technological problems in future. Hence, a manager needs to be strategic in his/her decisions in order to adapt to the technological change and gain sustainability in the long-run.