In the past few weeks, the nation has seen the equity of marriage, racism unbridled, and the ACA upheld. This week, we are discussing drones over the Georgia Capitol airspace. In my childhood here in the peach state, each of these headlines could not have been even remotely imagined. As each side vilifies the other and the doors these headlines highlight creep farther and farther open, the battle wages again anew on each issue as the liberty versus security pendulum swings. With these changes come the reaction of fear of the unknown and their once long-held power, waning.
The question now is simply to which side shall the pendulum swing for business in Georgia?
Georgia’s largest industry is agriculture. We have rolling farm lands, pine trees to harvest, and the film industry makes up the next largest industry in the state. However, Georgia is also home to 16,250 technology companies with a $113.1 billion economic impact on Georgia, making it the 5th-largest IT employment cluster in U.S. (200,000 high-tech professionals), and as I passed the Google fiber being installed in my neighborhood on my walk this week, I cannot help but wonder how the influx of disruptive innovation will break down the power holds of business and regulation in the state, in what ways it will propel our economy, and which groups will be adversely affected by it.
A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology.
Continue reading “IT & Pendulum Swings Between Liberty & Security”
