Better, faster and cheaper is here to stay. Are you?

Who does not like a 50” plasma TV for a thousand bucks? Or a digital SLR camera or a laptop computer for five hundred bucks or a decent car around ten grant? Embracing the mantra of “better, faster, cheaper” by scientists, engineers, and management guys have ensured that everything we dream of owning and adding to the necessities or luxuries of modern life becomes “affordable” to the common man. I am not talking about the common man with an empty wallet, but about the one who is middle class- truly middle in his/her class- not enough dough to spend but enough status to get credit- he/she can go up or down from here based on their skills and luck.

            The mantra has followers in practitioners of basic science and health industry as well. As a result in basic science you see everyone shopping for the cheapest kits, reagents and personnel (the creation and evolution of post-doctoral fellows is a grand topic in itself, but I am going to spare that one also for now) for doing research. In health industry, you see that services and work that used to done in hospitals by experts are now done at home with the use of instruments that “common man” can use. The greatest example is diabetes management. Nowadays you don’t have to rush to a hospital to check your blood glucose levels and insulin injections- you can do it yourself with the help of “point-of -care” gadgets. 

            What is the point? The point is that when some technological or scientific or managerial improvement/advancement is made it disrupts existing technology and practices. Scientists, engineers and all other kinds of innovators drive these giant leaps forward for the mankind. As a result there is an increasing demand for these folks all over the world. Countries who have invested in producing more of these have seen prosperity follow right behind. But there is the other side of the coin -the moment something better is created people flock to it and as a result people who used to make the other product lose their jobs. When that something is made faster, “less” does the job of “more” or more can be made in less time, more jobs are lost. Imagine then that something becoming cheaper- I mean not just cheaper, but a lot lot cheaper- then people buy the new cheaper product and old one loses its market. Even more people lose their jobs. No one makes a profit without raiding someone else’s wallet in one way or other. The only way to survive is adapt. Put out your antennas, sense what is going on and what is likely to come up, and remember that just because you have survived the struggles in past does not make you “FIT” enough for every future struggle. As the world advances faster and faster, it will test everybody’s ability to keep pace at every step of the way irrespective of geographic locations, developed or developing status, capitalist or communist ideologies or democratic or dictatorial politics. This is a new force of Darwinian selection in play and it is called global economy.