Leapfrogging Laggards on Tech Cycles

We are living in an era of abundant technology, when everything we do has a tech element in it.

- ANURADHA GOYAL

Next to divine forces, it's technology that is all-pervasive. I wonder if it is a new-age manifestation of the divine or the latest mayajaal, a web of illusions to keep us trapped in this universe.

Like living beings, technology keeps evolving, re-inventing itself and coming back in new avatars that it is not easy to keep pace with. You keep up at one end and can lag at another. Technology adoption cycles are interesting, as they can allow a laggard to leapfrog, leaving the earlier leaders wondering what went wrong.

For example, unified payments interface or UPI for small payments may have the record for fastest and largest adoption in the history of technology. It converged on the mobile phone our debit and credit cards, ATM, cheque books, demand drafts and hard cash. E-commerce in India, which was struggling due to low penetration of credit cards and an even lower trust in e-transactions, are now flourishing with UPI. Developed countries with well-established networks of credit card use were way ahead of India at one point. But UPI made us jump ahead of them in a matter of just a few years. It will take those countries to move to UPI or the next wave of payment technology a lot more as it demands a change in systems and user habits.