Answer to Question #195381 in Management for Fundiswa

Question

Determine and relate any three technological invention that could have an impact on Santa Cruz guitar Co business functioning

Answer 1

1.      The Cell Phone Camera

Last week, Santa Cruz inventor Philippe Kahn had ample cause to think back 18 years to the first time someone took a picture with a mobile phone and sent it worldwide. Sophie, his daughter, has started college at NYU, and he says it hit him as he was dropping her off, so much had changed since she was born. On June 11, 1997, she was the subject of the first camera phone photograph. He had the idea while waiting for his wife to give birth at Santa Cruz's Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center: he decided to email the first baby portrait of Sophie to his friends and family from his tablet.

During his wife Sonia Lee's 18-hour job, Kahn considered how inconvenient it would be to take a snapshot and upload it to his laptop for distribution. He wanted to do something. He connected his Casio QV-10 point-and-shoot camera to his Motorola Startac phone after a couple of trips to Radio Shack for soldering wire, wrote some code, and voila! "The idea was 'point, fire, and share instantly,'" says Kahn, who is 63 years old. "That idea spawned community media, realistic telemedicine, and, more broadly, allowing Ms. and Mr. All to take and post more pictures than ever before. That's going to be a game-changer."

2.       Auto-Tune

Depending on who you ask, a man who first made his fortune listening to the sounds of the Earth to locate oil either preserved or killed music. Harold (Andy) Hildebrand began his career at Exxon in 1976 after receiving his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois. He worked on geological experiments to hunt for fossil fuel. He established his own company in 1979, which converted sound pumped underground into three-dimensional oil charts. The technology involved detonating an explosive charge and listening for the resulting sound. Hildebrand, a concert flutist since the age of 16, returned to music in 1989 to pursue something different. When a lady at a trade show dinner asked if he was practicing sound engineering, he said yes.

3.      Lightweight Communication Headsets

We've all heard of the technologies developed in garages up the road, but chances are you've seen something produced in a Santa Cruz workshop. Two pilots, dissatisfied with the industry norm of heavy, awkward headphones, developed a new lightweight style that has set a distance record–Plantronics headsets went to the moon and carried Neil Armstrong's famous first words. The company founded by Courtney Graham and Keith Larkin, known initially as Pacific Plantronics, still has a state-of-the-art headquarters in Harvey West Park, complete with a gourmet lunchroom, homegrown veggies, eco-friendly electricity, and a plethora of gadgets. During his six laps around the Earth in 1962, astronaut Wally Schirra wore a Plantronics headset under his helmet. The FAA gave their headphones to air traffic controllers in 1963. In 1967, the firm made a profit of $5.4 million by selling 100,000 headphones. It quickly rose to prominence as the leading headset manufacturer for mobile and ambulance operators.