Getting Behind Moore's Law
from the tag-team-journalism dept
I had read Michael Schrage’s recent column on how Wal-Mart trumps Moore’s Law when it first came out and found it interesting, if a little misleading in its purpose. That’s why I was surprised, but happy, to see Michael Malone in Forbes take the same article and repurpose it to make the point clearer. Schrage says that the real driver of the economy in the latter half of last decade wasn’t Silicon Valley, but Wal-Mart. Malone points out that it’s really Wal-Mart’s intelligent use of technology. Even though Wal-Mart doesn’t use cutting edge technology, they do use proven technology wisely. The point that Malone makes is that it’s not usually smart to be perfectly bleeding edge all the time, because you’re going to lose a lot of blood. Staying just a bit behind the curve (and being smart about it) lets you avoid a lot of the mistakes that the so-called “leaders” make, and really take advantage of technology.
