Future Trends in Mechatronic Engineering

1. The Importance of Technological Innovation for Economic Progress Over the past 50 years, technological innovation (see Figure 1) has accounted for over one-third of the growth of the largest economy, the USA, in the world. The pace of innovation around the developed world is increasing dramatically in recent years owing to technological developments in communications, computerization, the Internet, etc., and the resulting globalization of markets and the global distribution of the processes of new product realization (concept development, design, prototyping, manufacture, and servicing). Some are genuinely concerned (to the extent of being frightened) with the increasing pace of innovation. For instance, as suggested by von Braun [1] “[s]uppliers of new products replacing previous ones should bear in mind that they are also reducing, or even destroying, the assets of customers, either their own or some other supplier‟s. This “creative destruction” is perhaps not exactly what Schumpeter [2, 3] had in mind when he was extolling the virtues of innovation at the beginning of this century.” However, the majority opines that innovation, when taken in its broadest sense, can become the force that could “liberate humanity in general from the preventable evil called poverty [4]”. In any case, it is generally accepted that we cannot ignore the onward march of technological innovation. Innovation may be defined as “new ways of delivering customer value [5].” Often the outcome of innovation appears in the form of a new process, product, or service. However, in many cases, the development of new services is a consequence of the availability of new processes and productse.g. the development of the Internet has resulted in a radical expansion and transformation of service industry). The new services become part of “an emerging industrial value-adding structure that supplies functionality around a new basic technology system [6].” When a corporation is mainly competing on the basis of superior productivity (functional capability/input) and quality, the focus is on process innovation (in addition to strategic issues related to organization, human resource development, marketing, etc.). However, as the corporation forges ahead towards competing on the basis of innovation, more and more attention needs to be paid to product innovation. Productivity Quality Innovation Industrial Progress Figure 1 PQI Competitive Strategies