SCO103: Examine the Amount of Competition Faced by Your Tech Giant- New Empires: The Reach and Frontiers of the Tech Sector Essay, SUSS, Singapore

Question 1

Question 1 deals with the theme of tech monopolies. As shown in Study Unit 1, governments are now debating the question of whether or not the tech giants should be broken up in order to limit their monopoly power.

This question requires you to pick a tech giant and to produce an opinion article for a newspaper explaining why you think it should not be broken up. A good opinion article shows a good grasp of the key issue on hand and is able to present a succinct, accurate, and convincing argument. An example can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/20/video-games-addictive-disorder-diagnosis

Writing Guidelines and Further Instructions for Question 1:

Your article should not be longer than 600 words (excluding in-text citations and references).

Pick only one of the following 7 tech giants for your opinion article: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Baidu, Alibaba, or Tencent. This list, as you can see, only contains US and Chinese tech giants. This will give you an opportunity to showcase your awareness of diversity across global cultures and markets.

In your opinion article, you should address the following issues:

(a) Examine the amount of competition faced by your tech giant in order to define the limits of its dominance. If you can show that it faces substantial domestic and/or global competition, you may be able to weaken the case for breaking it up.

(b) Illustrate some of the ambitious innovation initiatives that your tech giant is currently pursuing. If you can show that your tech giant is still innovating aggressively, you may be able to weaken the case for breaking it up.

(c) Develop arguments to show why breaking up your tech giant would limit its efficiency and its ability to pursue bold and aggressive innovation schemes.