Management of Technology - Essay Example

The paper “Management of Technology” is a pertinent example of a finance & accounting essay. It is conventional wisdom, captured in the proverb, “The early bird gets the worm,” that the sooner one can stake a claim in something the better the chances of success. This belief spills over from elements of everyday living into the business itself, embodied by the notion of “first mover’s advantage.” There have been some spectacular examples of such advantages, including eBay, Amazon.

com, and Yahoo. The era of the so-called dot-com boom was the high-water mark in terms of the belief in this idea. The successes of eBay and Amazon, and a few others were more than enough to get millions of people believing that all one had to do was to get into a market, any market indeed, and one was bound to succeed. In spite of the spectacular examples noted above, there are indications that taking a little more time to study the market and in particular, to watch the moves of first movers can help a business create the kind of success that has a lasting impact.

Tom Peters, management guru, believes that the first-mover advantage may have its roots in the oil and gas industry over one hundred years ago. In that era, the company that drilled the first oil well or built the first oil pipeline had a huge advantage over its rivals. In addition to the notion of starting first, a corollary is for the company that has started, to make an effort to get big as fast as possible. The dot-com bust saw many a first mover-company relegated to the dustbin of history or to become a footnote in failure.

Among high-profile companies that were initially awash in cash but later became casualties, were Pets.com, along with Garden.com, and even Netscape, whose presence on the Internet has dwindled and given way to new and more powerful players. The faith of some business people in the first-mover advantage, in the light of the experiences of the above companies, has dwindled, but there are still those who put a measure of faith in the first-mover advantage. “My view is that the first-mover advantage remains alive and kicking,” says Stephen Hall of Axalon Ventures in New York.