Marketing is defined as the communication of value to customers. It is intended to make us aware of products and convince of our need for the product. Sales is the fulfillment of that need.
Technology is the means by which scientific knowledge is used to organize matter and energy to serve useful purposes. The means by which we can convert sewage and industrial waste into clear, highly purified drinking water is a system of technology.
Marketing of Technology is complicated. The technology is developed in response to the perception of a need in the world. Making water potable requires technology, and there are many specific applications; waste water treatment plants, bottling of drinking water, osmotic filters for personal use, “low tech” plastic domes that capture evaporation to produce clean water in remote places around the world where there is no technology available to produce clean water.
As we deal with increasing complex products like computers, cellphones and the expanding array consumer products that electronics based, the technology actually becomes transparent. Most user have little concern about how the product works, only that it does, in fact, work. Reliably. Without bugs. So the giant dilemma for all the consumer electronics companies is to come up with technology that provides useful features that consumers will pay to own.
This is where the problem begins. What happens when you have met the customer’s need for compute power? How does adding another gigahertz to the clock speed provide a useful distinction in the mind of the user? Will 3D displays of 4K resolution screens entice users to throw away their existing monitors and displays in the home entertainment market? Probably not.
In a lot of cases the question is; What is meaningful to the customer? What problem are we trying to solve? Not what product are we trying to sell.
If electric motors are the workhorse of industry, and we are involved in controlling the electric motor, then we must create technology by which electric motors of the future become more efficient and less costly. In large part, that is what the variable frequency drive is intended to do. VFDs regulate power usage by the motor to only that amount needed to operate the load.
How exactly we go about improving the electric motor is not clear. We have been pushing the efficiency envelope for a long time. But there is always room for improvement. That last 30 years of semiconductor development has demonstrated that.
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