Forecasting the Future of the Electronic Periodicals - Coursework Example

 Design and Sustainability '' Product Innovation '': The essence of Innovation and Product Life-Cycles in Forecasting the Future of the Electronic Periodicals Introduction We live in a time of change in this industry of academic periodicals. The arrival of electronic publishing has brought about the rise of new technologies. This has accelerated many of the aspects of academic periodicals. Certainly, many of the latest advances in academic periodicals have only been made achievable due to the advancement and embracing of new technologies like multimedia personal computers, the internet and World Wide Web and Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) among other broadly predictable life-cycles. Such new technologies influence their adoption rates. The literature of technology life-cycles will include a review of what scholars have to say regarding academic periodicals and also how to plot their future. In this paper, technology life-cycle will be considered and also its adoption rates in general. Product and process innovation will also be considered. Later on, the paper will study these life-cycles in the aspect of personal computer industry (Curtis & Scheschy, 2005). The Technology life-cycles and its rates in adoption This era we live in is full of ever-increasing change. Among the most obvious indicators of this is the baffling multiplicity of products available to purchase and use, and the rate at which they become technologically outdated. There has been a lot of intensive study in the field of product development and product life-cycles during the last half of this century, the last decade being viewed at a particular focus on products of high-technology such as computers and consumer electronics among others. Many researchers have sought to recognize typical life-cycle of products patterns. Phases in the technology life-cycle have been classified by means of relative percentage of customers being embraced at each stage. Earlier on, there are inventors and those who took them up early (who their primary concern was the obscured technology together with its performance). Later on, early majority pragmatists come in, followed by majority conservatives. Finally, the laggards (who were mainly interested in convenience and solutions) come in. There is a drawing by Moore on Rogers’ work, depicting the evolution between the initial adopters and early common pragmatists as a gap which high- technology companies are yet to successfully cross (see figure 1). Main focus is on why the new technologies often cause problems for present industries. Innovative technologies can sometimes be underrated or perceived as inferior by the dominant players until it is too late. There has been an achievement in a momentum towards the new technologies, making the environment for the present industries change around them and without control. What customers view as most necessary needs is regarded as ‘well enough’ and as a result, there is no care regarding the core technology (See figure 2). Figure 2: Shift from high technology to consumer commodity It is persuasively argued that the two curves in figures 1 and 2 tell the same story. The gap between initial and late adopters is traversed only when there is good enough technology. (See figure 3). Provision of this improvement is by the process of innovation, thus driving the change from products comprised of high technology to that of consumer commodity (Cooper & Edgett, 2009). Figure 3: The shift of products from technology-driven to customer-driven products Products and innovation The answer pertaining to how innovative products come into being, and the reason they are adopted relies on the kind of product and innovation used. Product types The distinctions between two types of goods according to classical economics are substitutable and non-substitutable. A good is termed as being substitutable only if it can be accessible by the user and still equally meet their needs, the expense either being zero or below. A large number of traditional products are in this category: such as cars, food, clothing and consumer electronics. On the other hand, a non-substitutable good can’t easily be switched for another. These are infrastructure products such as operating systems or network switches which are innately non-substitutable. This is because products pertaining to infrastructures provide platforms for other products to be layered. Innovation As on the graph shown in figure 3, the course of moving from left to right entails innovation, typically referring to product innovation. It involves coming up with something contemporary (or adequately different). Successful startup companies have their foundation being product innovation; by either coming up with an extensively better product or something new, such as the first Web browser. Very small companies are involved in this risky venture since they have little to lose. Then, companies always move into process innovation because their products generally shift past the transition point which is where the core technology satisfies the basic needs of the user, thus regarded as good enough (Goldenberg & Mazursky, 2002). Personal computer technology life-cycles The personal computer is considered as a technology stack, starting from the lowest level of the life cycle with the hardware layer, the layer of operating system, network layer and lastly the layer application. Hardware Most of the personal computers today work with commodity hardware for their computer accessories. Each segment contains multiple suppliers, all actively innovating while challenging each other on such aspects as convenience in cost and reliability. Moore’s law ascertains that performance/dollar keeps on doubling after approximately 9 months as per the type of hardware. Peripherals There are two essential peripheral categories pertaining to electronic publishing. These are screens (for display) and printers (for output). Dimensions of displays that matter are three physical size, display resolution and depth of color. Display resolution today is 96 or 100, which is routinely available. Physical size has now grown and became cheaper, so that a 15 inch or 17 inch TFT displays become affordable. Printers used to be expensive, slow and low resolution but now they are better, thanks to technology advances in the field of both ink-jet and laser printers (Tenopir & Donald, 2000). Operating Systems These advances in hardware have been at par with the development of operating systems. Graphical user interfaces have been standardized, while the software companies are working on offering more user assistance via softwares and extra input choices like voice recognition. The operating system, which is a consumer commodity, has brought about the dominance of Microsoft in the OS market. Operating systems are examples of non-substitutable infrastructure goods. Networks This is where a shift from one non-replaceable technology to another has been witnessed in the last two decades. This is due to the transition of network protocols from ISO/OSI to TCP/IP. Most personal computer users only have the need for accessing wide area network connectivity, thus mature networking technology. Applications The two critical application technologies for electronic publishing at the moment are the Web browser (HTML format documents) and Adobe’s Acrobat technology (Portable Document Format (PDF) documents). For delivery of content, most of the academic periodicals use one or both of these formats. Adobe’s PDF technology is now mature and well-accepted newer versions are coming up, which provides extra features, better workflow support and better Web integration (Tenopir & Donald, 2000). Implications for academic periodicals What can be said about the implications will have an impact on the future of academic periodicals. The major question is, in which way will the comprehension of product life cycles, strategies in innovation and adoption curves assist in the prediction of developments in this highly fluid area? The research which is presented here even though it does not present an answer which can be a guarantee, it at least helps in clearing some of the fog. Implications as a result of academic periodicals are summed up in fewer than four definite areas: academic periodicals as products, the availability of technologies, and transitions pertaining to the user and the publisher. Academic periodicals as products It is essential at the start to view periodicals as products, having many characteristics found in other types of products known as goods. Periodicals seem to be substitutable goods on the outside — characteristically there are numerous optional periodicals in any given discipline, every one comprising of differing status, coverage and price. However, in practice, they act as examples of non-substitutable goods, since the user (individual or institutional subscriber) cannot simply substitute one for another. Periodicals vary from most non-substitutable goods because they are not infrastructure goods as already described. Even though they do not give an infrastructure upon which other things can be put up in the logic of a networking standard, they share a number of characteristics of infrastructure goods since some specific periodicals are embedded in the academic disciplines that they serve (Tenopir & Donald, 2000). Technology availability One of the problems encountered in the production of periodicals is the need for readers to have the necessary in order to be able to read these publications. The good thing is that these technologies will become much more widespread as well as readily available as they shift to consumer commodity from high technology. This is when the publisher will assume the existence of necessary technologies. Role of innovation clusters Examining clusters of innovations is probably the most recommended way of considering the diffusion of electronic publishing. The following are the possible categorization of such innovations: innovations pertaining to the roles in publishing innovation distribution and retrieval document structure innovations research validity innovations innovations in the post-publication innovations in pricing and sale Innovation in storage. There are a number of possible members in each of these categories. For example, innovation in storage is likely to include publisher storage, designated archives, initiatives in individual library and cooperative archiving which is distributed. Varying periodical projects will take on varying blend of the innovations stated above, making differing preference within each category. Conclusion The hypothesis of periodicals as products, product versus process innovation and their technological life-cycles as outlined in this research equips us to improve our understanding of the origin of periodicals and its future. Change is good and we should not let the fear of change hinder our capability in taking the best advantage offered by change (Tenopir & Donald, 2000). References Cooper, R. G., & Edgett, S. J., 2009. Product Innovation and Technology Strategy. Ontario: Stage-Gate International. Curtis, D., & Scheschy, V. M., 2005. E-journals: a how-to-do-it manual for building, managing, and supporting electronic journal collections. Chicago: Neal-Schuman Publishers. Goldenberg, J., & Mazursky, D., 2002. Creativity in Product Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tenopir, C., & Donald, K., 2000. Towards Electronic Journals. San Diego: Special Libraries Association. Read More