Technology Management is a set of management disciplines that allows organizations to manage their technological fundamentals to create competitive advantage. Typical concepts used in technology management are:
- Technology strategy
- Technology scouting
- Technology roadmapping
Investment in technology is valuable as long as there is a value for the customer and therefore it becomes a strategic decision when it is convenient to invest on technology development and when to withdraw.
Technology Strategy
Technology Strategy consists of the definition of objectives, principles and tactics relating to use of technologies within a particular organization. The strategy implies the following activities:
- interpreting competition as a major driver for technological progress
- examining the modeling of technological competition to help inform a company’s technology and pricing strategy
- defining the role of technology in the innovation strategy framework of the organization
How to define an effective Technology Strategy?
Technology Scouting
Technology Scouting is made of 3 main steps:
- identifying emerging technologies
- channeling technology related information into the organization, and
- supporting the acquisition of technologies
Technology Scouting is seen as an essential element of a modern technology management system.
The technology scout is either an employee of the company or an external consultant with the following characteristics:
- lateral thinker
- knowledgeable in science and technology
- cross-disciplinary orientated
- imaginative personality
How to perform Technology Scouting in an effective way?
Technology Roadmapping
A technology roadmap is a planning technique to support strategic and long-range planning, by matching short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions. Roadmapping techniques help companies to plan in a more holistic way to include non-financial goals and drive towards a more sustainable development.
Developing a Technology Roadmap has four major uses:
- it helps reach a consensus about a set of needs and the technologies required to satisfy those needs
- it provides a mechanism to help forecast technology developments
- it provides a framework to help plan and coordinate technology developments
- it may be used as an analysis tool to map the development and emergence from new industries
How to develop a proper Technology Roadmap?
Technology Management Masterclass
- Main principles and definitions of technology
- Brief History
- Fundamentals of the Object Process Methodology
- Technological Management Framework
- Define, construct, and use Figures of Merit to quantify technology and trace its progress over time
- Observe and understand technology trajectories to predict future rates of progression
- Describe and compare different models to quantify technology progression (S-Curves, Moore’s Law. and the Pareto Shift Model)
- Fundamentals of Patents and Intellectual Property
- Analyze recent trends in Intellectual Property Management
- Examine other forms of protection such as trade secrets
- Implement a proper Intellectual Property Strategy
- Important concepts in technology adoption and diffusion, including
innovators, early adopters, and late adopters - Causes of the disruption of existing markets or value chains
- Comparison of disruptive innovations and technological innovations
- Channels to scout technologies
- Freedom to operate analysis
- Technology selection methods
- Maturity Level models
- Definition, main purpose and different versions of technology roadmaps
- Observe how other organizations (specifically NASA) have used roadmaps
and acquaint yourself with Advanced Technology Roadmap Architecture (ATRA)
- Interpret competition as a major driver for technological progress
- Examine the modeling of technological competition to help inform a company’s technology and pricing strategy
- Industry Standards and Technological Competition