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Slide 1: Business And Technology: A Partnership That Drives The World Economy In the centuries since the industrial revolution there has developed a clear link between the business world on the one hand and the world of technology on the other. It seems as if the one feeds off the other. Each new invention means there is another product that can be marketed profitably by business people and the growing business world consistently creates a demand for new technologies. Business and technology are inseparable partners. There are numerous examples of this in the real world. One only has to consider how the invention of the ordinary calculator has revolutionized the world of accounting to see this for yourself. Thirty years ago it looked as if the introduction of software packages that can compile the financial statements of a company automatically will make accountants obsolete. The opposite has happened. The sheer number of analysis tools have made the accountant more necessary than ever to explain the figures to the ordinary man and woman in the street. The work of the accountant has certainly been made easier by the introduction of these software packages. During the same period a new career has started to take shape: that of the lecturer who has the job of training accountants and other financial staff in the workings of all these financial packages. With every new generation of spreadsheet and accounting software more complicated than its predecessor, the role of these trainers have become more pivotal. In the manufacturing industry automated production techniques have certainly put many unskilled laborers out of work. On the other hand the demand for skilled operators who know how to work with these factory 'robots' have created many new jobs in this field. There is also a growing demand for well-trained technicians who have the knowledge to service and maintain these automated production lines. The demand for labor is therefore shifting from unskilled, untrained labor to highly skilled labor all the time. There seems to be a shift to more and more complex technology driving production in the business world. This has led to a situation where countries with a cheap, well trained labor force, like China and Singapore, are getting ahead of 'old school' countries where labor is more expensive. Europe and the USA are two examples of the latter. The race to become the world's business leaders is largely driven by cheap, state-of-the-art technology. Business and technology work hand in hand in the winning countries to create a formidable force that is hard to beat by countries that have become stuck in traditional ways of doing things. SEO gold coast