The role of technology forecasting and assessment in technology management

In an increasingly complex economic and social environment, high technology companies are facing accelerating technological development and global technology-based competition. Due to the critical role of technology in a competitive environment, strategic technology management is important for enterprises. For the long-term success, companies must develop and sustain their technological capabilities to create internal and external impacts within an ambiguous socioeconomic context. In the absence of commonly agreed frameworks, elements of strategic technology management are discovered in this dissertation. The research is conducted in the context of high technology product companies, to develop a framework based on literature findings, and by obtaining qualitative information on enterprise practices. For the framework development, integrated management theory is applied to consider technology management in strategic dimension. The framework consists of structures, objectives and impacts categories, each having six main elements which contain several sub-classes. In the research, perceptions of enterprise practitioners indicated that the entire field of strategic technology management is confusing and diversely practiced. The contribution of this dissertation is benefiting practitioners by providing an outline to assist in defining and developing the practices. For the main theoretical contribution, the framework unites strategic management, organizational management, and technology management concepts in enterprise context. As a practical implication, it is suggested that companies should consider establishing and integrating strategic technology management as a distinguishing managerial discipline amongst other organizational functions. Enterprises should consider defining and developing the necessary structures and objectives for strategic technology management, to proactively manage impacts of technology for competitiveness of the enterprise, and for sustainable development of its socioeconomic environment. In conclusion, the framework provides for scholars and practitioners a logical structure to elements of strategic technology management.

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Elements of strategic technology management

Building on the idea of innovation platforms, the traditional innovation process can be seen from a different perspective as consisting of a product innovation process and a technology innovation process. This paper describes how firms can explore these innovation platforms to deploy their competencies to different markets. An example drawn from the field of bionics illustrates the application of the model.

The concept of the integrated innovation process

A methodology for quantitative assessment of new technologies is presented in the context of communications satellite constellations. The fundamental idea is that new technologies will shift the Pareto-optimal frontier when considering tradeos between performance, lifecycle cost and capacity. The suggested process first establishes a baseline by finding a Pareto optimal set of architectures on the basis of mature, state-of-theart technologies (technology readiness level TRL=8). Lifecycle cost, performance and capacity of each architecture are predicted by a modular software simulation. The fidelity of the simulation is ascertained by benchmarking against existing systems such as Iridium and Globalstar. Next, a set of potential candidate technologies is identified whose TRL is in the range of 5-7. Each of these technologies is modelled and infused individually into the simulation and the eect on the Pareto front is observed, relative to the baseline case. The next step consists of analyzing allowable pairs of technologies to predict their joint eect. The methodology is demonstrated for a set of four technologies applicable to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) communications satellite constellations: optical intersatellite links (OISL), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), large-scale deployable reflectors (LDR) and digital beamforming (DBF). The proposed methodology is potentially helpful in technology selection as well as in technology portfolio management.

Quantitative Assessment of Technology Infusion in Communications Satellite Constellations

The accelerated technological change has become a fact and will continue to challenge industrial and societal development into the next century. In the conviction that a technical university must take responsibility not only for technology research but also for its management, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has, since the 1980s, been extending its activities to take this challenge into account. Going beyond the traditional discipline of "Industrial Engineering" the Technology Management Program has been established in research and education, directed towards graduate students as well as executives of technology-intensive enterprises. Its vision is to close a critical gap between the not yet adequate management awareness of technology and the omnipresent "technology reality" in most enterprises.

Bringing technology into management: the call of reality going beyond industrial management at the ETH

It is pointed out that current approaches to technology management express the need to manage technology systematically, from both strategic and operational perspectives. However, they do not make a conceptual link with general management issues, a link which constitutes an indispensable prerequisite for the adequate acceptance of technology-related decision factors. The author presents the contours of an integrative concept of technology management. Its main features include management issues on the normative, strategic, and operational levels of general management. In addition, it allows for the dynamic development of enterprises. A user surface of the concept which enables management to give an enterprise-specific diagnosis of the state and corresponding requirements of technology management is discussed. >

H.P. Tschirky

Papers

Technology management: an integrating function of general management