Bleeding edge technology
Bleeding edge technology is a category of technologies so new that they could have a high risk of being unreliable and lead adopters to incur greater expense in order to make use of them. The first documented example of this term being used dates to early 1983, when an unnamed banking executive was quoted to have used it in reference to Storage Technology Corporation.
A proportion of bleeding edge technology makes it into the mainstream. For example, electronic mail (email) was once considered to be bleeding edge.
Criteria
A technology may be considered bleeding edge where it contains a degree of risk, or, more generally, there is a significant downside to early adoption, such as:
*Lack of consensus - competing ways of doing new things exist and there is little to no indication in which direction the market will go. By its very nature, consumers and firms will be unfamiliar with the product and its relationship to existing technologies, unfortunately, the penalties for "betting on the wrong horse" (e.g. in a format war) or choosing the wrong product are equally large. Whenever an organization decides to take a chance on bleeding edge technology there is a chance that they will be stuck with a white elephant or worse.
Bleeding edge computer software, especially open-source software, is very common. Indeed, it is usual practice for open-source developers to release their work-in-progress in automatically generated builds at a nightly or faster rate so that others can review, test, and, in many cases, contribute to it (beta testing). Therefore, users who want features that have not been implemented in older, more stable releases of the software are able to choose the bleeding-edge version. In such cases, the user is willing to sacrifice stability, reliability, or ease of use for the sake of increased functionality.
A proportion of bleeding edge technology makes it into the mainstream. For example, electronic mail (email) was once considered to be bleeding edge.
Criteria
A technology may be considered bleeding edge where it contains a degree of risk, or, more generally, there is a significant downside to early adoption, such as:
*Lack of consensus - competing ways of doing new things exist and there is little to no indication in which direction the market will go. By its very nature, consumers and firms will be unfamiliar with the product and its relationship to existing technologies, unfortunately, the penalties for "betting on the wrong horse" (e.g. in a format war) or choosing the wrong product are equally large. Whenever an organization decides to take a chance on bleeding edge technology there is a chance that they will be stuck with a white elephant or worse.
Bleeding edge computer software, especially open-source software, is very common. Indeed, it is usual practice for open-source developers to release their work-in-progress in automatically generated builds at a nightly or faster rate so that others can review, test, and, in many cases, contribute to it (beta testing). Therefore, users who want features that have not been implemented in older, more stable releases of the software are able to choose the bleeding-edge version. In such cases, the user is willing to sacrifice stability, reliability, or ease of use for the sake of increased functionality.
Comments