R&D Project Selection Strategy: an empirical study in Spain

The author has investigated the role played by project selection methods in defining a firm's technology strategy, as exemplified by a sample of innovative companies in Spain. The information was collected by a combination of questionnaire and interview with key personnel.
The author was able to classify strategies into four groups: (1) a planning strategy, essentially a negotiation comprising top-down and bottom-up elements; (2) an economic strategy in which a large number of economic criteria set in advance by top management are used to evaluate projects; (3) a market strategy in which R&D is seen more or less as an adjunct to the Marketing function, which defines the products needed and negotiates the programme with top management; (4) a technical strategy, used in circumstances in which technological innovation is essential and in which, therefore, economic factors take a subsidiary place.
The author's data show that in companies operating a planning strategy project selection methods of various, perhaps ad hoc kinds play a key role in reaching a company consensus. For those using an economic strategy the selection criteria are predetermined and selection methods inflexible. In the case of the market strategy, evaluation methods are used solely to help to rank projects prior to selection. Firms employing the technical strategy clearly base their decisions purely on the technical merit of the various projects put up for implementation.
The paper includes information on the types of selection method used, broken down by company size and other similar criteria, and comparisons with practice in the USA, France and some other countries.     

Company technology strategy

Abstract
The authors report the results of a small-scale study of the attitudes of 174 British companies to managing their technology. Their data sources were replies to a questionnaire and interviews with 18 senior managers of the respondent companies. They relate their findings to current academic thinking about technolgy strategy, of which a bibliography and critical review is presented in the paper.
The results showed that the firms in the survey did not give much specific attention to technology when formulating their strategies. Some do not have a clear notion of what is meant by 'their technology', and others have difficulty in deciding its character. In any case a 'firm's technology' is usually seen as a cluster of technologies, which is enmeshed in a network of external technologies such as those practised by suppliers and customers, rather than as a single entity. After in-house R&D the most often used forms of technology acquisition are licensing-in and contract R&D. The import of technology presents difficulties, such as codifying it in usable form and making sure that there are in-house staff capable of using it.
The authors conclude overall that few firms in the sample can assess their technological strengths and weaknesses or clearly conceptualize their situation. They remark that academic approaches to technology strategy are oversimplified and do not sufficiently address the main problems in this area, which are to help managers to understand the nature of their technology position and the technological network of which their firm forms a part.     

Technology transfer as technological learning: a source of competitive advantage for firms with limited R&D resources

The objective of this article is to answer why and how firms in developing countries with limited R&D resources can gain sustainable competitive advantage through technology transfer (TT). Successful firms are those that can accumulate competence through internal technological learning after transferring technologies from external technology sources. Organizational intelligence, firm specificity of technology, and causal ambiguity are identified as three mediators between technological learning performance and several antecedents previously discussed in the literature. A survey of Taiwanese manufacturers is conducted to explore the technological learning phenomenon as an integral part of TT, which is important but often neglected. This article also provides an interesting research setting for the evaluation of technological learning theories.     

Morphological analysis in agricultural R&D: A technologist's approach to the definition and economic evaluation of technologies

The research scientist, the planner, and the R&D manager require a methodology that can compose a wide range of technological options within a realistic production system context and subject these options to a comprehensive, multi-parameter economic analysis. A technologically-oriented approach to the generation and ex-ante assessment of technologies is developed for this purpose in an agricultural R&D context. The approach is based on morphological analysis, in which a production process is defined as a series of tasks each of which can be accomplished by one or more alternative techniques. The model is customized for any specific production system using information provided by technology experts. This information is received in the language of the technologist, structured in a way that promotes an holistic view of the system, and processed to answer the needs of the economic evaluator. The model has been well received by technologists in the analysis of about a dozen diverse R&D projects.     

Permanent magnets: a technological analysis

Abstract
Technology analysis is a new technomanagerial discipline that provides common frameworks for analysing individual technologies and their relationships to each other. It is used here to probe the development of a particular technology, namely that of permanent magnets.
The paper traces the development of permanent magnets over the past decade and explores possible future improvements in performance parameters. The strength of magnets (i.e. energy product as expressed in kilo Joules per cubic metre) has increased from approximately 40 in the 1930s to approximately 400 at present.
Future developments will be constrained by a barrier which seems to exist at approximately 525 kilo Joules per cubic metre. However this is viewed as a barrier that can be transcended and not as an immutable limit. It therefore signifies a possible breakthrough zone.
S-curve theory leads analysts to speculate about a possible breakthrough during the five year period leading up to 1995. At that date magnetic strengths of 600+ kilo Joules per cubic metre could be aimed for.
Increased magnetic strength will improve the performance parameters of all technologies utilising magnets, unleash new magnetic based technologies and threaten many traditional areas in the fields of matter processing, transporting and storing, energy processing, and information processing and storing.
These effects will cascade through the entire technological landscape creating new markets and destroying others. The article gives an overview of these impacts on the technological landscape.     

Synthetic fibre technology and company strategy

The authors' aim is to examine the socioeconomic setting in which the modern technologies of synthetic fibre manufacture emerged. Their specially developed methodology consists in analysing the emergence at three hierarchical levels of analysis — at the 'macro' level, tracing the dominant line of development, the so-called technological trajectory; at the 'meso' level, characterizing the industry environment (the main focus of the paper); and at the 'micro' level within which each company's development strategy is formulated and implemented.
The paper contains a brief history of the development of the technology of synthetic fibre production. The long-term macro trajectory, pursued by the participant firms in significantly different ways, was towards making a polyamide polymer by solution condensation and spinning it into fibres by existing technology, the aim of each firm being to produce its own high performance fibre selling into a premium market. The paper describes how a number of leading firms chose their particular routes to a marketable product. The motivations varied considerably depending, for example, on legal and patent factors, previous technological choices made by the firm, the need to defend an existing core business, and identification of an empty market niche.
In spite of the general similarity of the outcomes of the technological development the authors hold that the industry is still far from standardization, a situation they explain in terms of a model of standardization put forward by Reddy and colleagues.     

Cost and performance analysis of a robotic rework cell

Printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) rework is an acceptable process step in PCBA manufacturing and widely performed using manual and semi-automated tools. Until recently, there has been a lack of international effort for the development of a fully automated rework system mostly due to the predicted high capital cost of such system. Since robots are used in PCBA manufacturing, PCBA robots are equipped and have been developed with multi-functional capabilities to assemble and inspect PCBAs. If the same equipment is used for rework, the high cost of the robot, on account of vision and other sensory needs can be eliminated and this can justify the investment. A robot-based rework system thus becomes an alternative technology to manual or semi-automated rework. Because there is no information on which technology is most appropriate, a model has been developed to predict the cost of reworking PCBAs using semi-automated and automated-robotic rework technologies. These two alternative rework technologies are analysed and compared to give an indication of how appropriate is a robotic rework cell.     

Competitive strategies and new technology: an empirical investigation in the UK polymer processing industry

This paper examines how companies can achieve competitive advantage by fitting their business strategies to the way in which new technology implementation is managed. In particular, the inter-relationship between strategy, technology and performance is examined. Five strategic types and seven types of technological objectives were used to find combinations which were associated with high performance. It was found that companies pursuing a prospector strategy (a strategy based on product innovation) combined with technological objectives emphasizing marketing, image and technical development were the highest performing group of companies. The lowest performing companies were those where strategy was dominated by price competition.
The general conclusion of the paper is that, in order to achieve competitive advantage, companies need to see technology objectives as an inherent part of strategy. The study was carried out on a sample of twenty companies within the polymer processing industry, but the findings should be applicable to companies in other industries, and particularly to smaller companies.     

Assessment of mutually beneficial technology: East-West perspective

Many firms in the transitionary economies of Central and Eastern Europe are searching for Western partners to assist them with technological development. They are particularly interested in joint ventures, strategic alliances, and management contracts. They feel that rapid infusion of new technology is the fastest way to economic recovery.
The problem is that they do not understand how their level of technology compares to the technology level in Western economies. A significant technology gap exists. This problem is further complicated because managers from transitionary economies do not have appropriate technology assessment processes to assess internal as well as external technologies. This paper reviews this problem and offers some insights on it.     

Technology analysis and R&D management

Technology analysis is a new field of knowledge aimed at creating a fuller understanding of the technological setting within which business operates. It provides a macro-discipline and is specifically aimed at improving the effectiveness of management of technology. As such it is of direct relevance to R&D management.
The essential tools of technology analysis constitute a set of analytical frameworks covering aspects such as: (i) a common approach to describing individual technological artefacts, (ii) a taxonomy of technologies, (iii) a classification of technological trends, (iv) a chart of technological limits, and (v) a socio-technical preference profile.
These frameworks help the R&D manager to dissect and debate typical R&D management problems such as: (i) selecting R&D projects, (ii) setting broad R&D objectives in the case of a given project and (iii) setting specific R&D goals to meet the said objectives. The frameworks also help the R&D manager to portray and present research achievements within a simple and intuitively appealing framework.     

Accelerated Product Introductions and Emerging Managerial Accounting Perspectives: Implications for Marketing Managers in the Technology Sector

Rapid changes in manufacturing and design technologies coupled with increased competition domestically and internationally have led to shorter product life cycles and compressed lead times for product introductions in the technology sector. Traditional cost accounting systems, which assume labor to be the major cost component in the production process, have resulted in distortions in cost information. Samuel Rabino and Arnold Wright describe emerging cost accounting approaches that more adequately address the changing competitive and technological environments and facilitate an improved evaluation of product launch programs.     

Management principles for evaluating and introducing disruptive technologies: the case of nanotechnology in Switzerland

In this paper we address the issue of evaluating and introducing disruptive technologies. The empirical data was compiled in an interview–based survey of 20 Swiss organizations of different sizes and from different industries. All of them have been facing the issue of evaluating nanotechnology, and most of them are currently dealing with the introduction of nanotechnology in their products and processes. The underlying framework was elaborated using approaches mainly found in the following streams of technology management literature: technology intelligence, technological decision–making, and technological capability building. The aim of our project was not to advance new management concepts, but to elaborate management principles allowing the organizations to master the challenges during evaluation and introduction of disruptive technologies. We defined these principles through identifying success factors as well as possible pitfalls, and by distilling best management practices in evaluating and introducing nanotechnology.     

Changes in the field of R&D management over the past 20 years

Abstract
The purpose of this bibliographic study is to identify trends of interest in the field of the management of technology in the last 20 years. The data used are based mainly on a classification of the topics covered by papers printed in this journal since its first publication in 1970.
On the whole, interest in most of the topics has remained steady, notably in economics of R&D, communication, innovation and creativity. The only notable decrease in interest has been in project evaluation and selection. Relative to their importance, the authors remark that in some areas in which interest has remained steady, such as creativity and innovation, not enough is being done. Areas in which interest has increased include organizational issues, the interface between R&D and production and the impact of information technology. Interest in technology strategy increased over the early part of the review period but has recently declined.
The authors conclude by listing topics which strongly deserve attention by workers in the field. They cite integration of R&D into corporate strategy, organizing for technological flexibility, technology assessment and transfer, speeding up the R&D process, measuring the impact of new information technology, intrapreneurship and defining the role of basic R&D in technology development.     

Gains from resistance: rejection of a new digital technology in a healthcare sector workplace

The issue of spaces for non-organised employee resistance has attracted renewed attention due to the diffusion of new digital technologies in the workplace. The ability of new technologies to measure and restrict employee behaviour in new ways requires explanations of resistance that account for both technology’s material characteristics and employee agency, without descending into technological determinism. This article is based on a case of effective resistance to a new data reporting technology introduced in home nursing in Denmark and explores the causes, forms and outcomes of the resistance. In this study, labour process theory is complemented with Edwards and Ramirez’s classification of dimensions of technological change. The study argues that two dimensions are important for effective employee resistance to technology: contestation of the unintended rather than the intended effects of the technology and the non-immanence of the effects in the technology, which allows the employees to reconstitute it in use.     

Technology Strategy in a Software Products Company

An overly narrow focus on core competencies and technologies may cause a firm to miss market opportunities. On the other hand, a firm's ongoing success depends on its ability to recognize and nurture the technologies necessary for the continual refinement and extension of its product families. This process of product renewal requires effective management of technological innovation, which in turn requires a clear understanding of the technological basis for a product family–that is, the product platform from which derivative or follow-on products are created. Using a software company as an example, Marc H. Meyer and Luis Lopez present a method for understanding the relationship between the nurturing of core technologies and the evolution of a product family. At the foundation of this method is the concept of a product platform–the core technologies that are common to all members of a product family. In other words, a platform provides the basic technological architecture for a series of derivative products. From an initial platform, a product family can evolve in two ways: through platform extensions or platform renewals. Platform extensions may involve changes to existing subsystems or the addition of new subsystems without altering the primary subsystems and interfaces in the existing design. Platform renewal is the redesign of a product to create an entirely new platform. To provide a basis for evaluating the effects of the software company's allocation of R&D expenditures, the authors created a product family map that differentiated between platform improvements and derivative product developments. Using the product family map, they examined R&D budgets and identified the allocation of spending among the core technologies embodied in the firms's products. The visual presentation of the product family maps and core capability investments were particularly useful for helping company management understand and learn from the consequences of past decisions. The analysis of the product family maps and R&D expenditures also provides a guideline for future decision-making. Specifically, to achieve desired amounts of technical and commercial leverage, successive product platforms in a product family must provide both balance and strength in the embodied core technologies. For market applications involving more than one core technology, a firm must pursue a balanced, inclusive technology strategy. In such cases, overemphasis on one core technology typically results in poor market performance.     

Where Do Breakthroughs Come From? Characteristics of High‐Potential Inventions

Breakthrough technological inventions create the foundation for many innovative opportunities. Through novel scientific fundamentals and unique combinations of knowledge, they form a new basis for technology development and innovation, shifting their industry's mindset about what is feasible and valuable. Prior research has, to date, characteristically taken an organizational‐level perspective on technology breakthroughs, seeking to explain the occurrence of breakthroughs as a function of firm‐level characteristics and processes. This tells us less, however, about the underlying knowledge structures of the technologies themselves. This research is based on the assumption that an examination of the knowledge foundations of high‐potential inventions can enrich our understanding about the underlying features of innovations that transform industries and advance societies. In this manner, we can clarify how certain technologies are advanced and extended, providing the basis for future discoveries. Our analysis focuses on high‐potential patents: those having the highest number of forward citations in a given class. We conduct this analysis on a sample of 298 breakthrough patents and two comparison nonbreakthrough groups in drug and semiconductor classes. Our results show that breakthrough technologies, compared with nonbreakthroughs, are more likely to build on: (1) the past technological developments of others, by backward citing and embodying knowledge from prior discoveries (earlier patents), but not one's own previous developments; (2) the latest technologies, by backward citing recent patents; (3) geographic proximity, evidenced by the fact that the focal patents backward cite patents from one's own country; and (4) greater technological breadth, evidenced by the fact that knowledge captured in the patents encompasses a larger number of technical fields. Based on these results, we frame the occurrence of breakthroughs as involving a process where these significant developments happen early in the progress of a technology, but after some relevant knowledge has accumulated. This reinforces the concept that a learning effect needs to occur before breakthroughs can happen. In addition, our findings suggest that the knowledge underlying breakthroughs is likely to come from other organizations or individuals, rather than the developing entity. They also incorporate broader insights from technological diversity but do not exhibit geographic diversity. Instead, they are associated with geographic proximity, which may better enable knowledge sharing and integration given the reliance on other entities and diverse knowledge.     

On-The-Job Training Under Firm-Specific Innovations and Worker Heterogeneity

In this article I present a general equilibrium adverse selection model of the labor market in which workers differ in their ability to learn and implement new technologies. Exogenous firm-specific process innovations require firms to teach workers the new firm-specific skills introduced by the new technology. As firms' training costs negatively depend on the expected ability of their labor force and positively on their technological level, firms seek to hire workers able to learn at least cost. I show how firm-specific human capital can explain employer- and plant-specific wage differentials caused by skilled-labor-biased technological shocks.     

The analysis of research and development efficiency in Japanese companies in the field of fuel cells using patent data

Using patent data, a new quantitative analytical method categorizes the degree of integration of leading edge technologies in order to examine the current research & development (R&D) status and strategies of companies focusing in the fuel battery field, an area showing great potential as an alternative to fossil fuels. Specifically, this paper presents three types of categorization reflecting the International Patent Classification (IPC) of patent data, and introduces the concept of 'innovation positions', which is based on this categorization. Application purposes can be different between various industrial sectors, even within the same technological field; therefore, the progress status of R&D varies and that fact is reflected in innovation positions. Additionally, this paper makes clear that innovation positions reflect differences in companies' core competences, even in the same industry. Furthermore, by conducting an analysis based on F-terms, it has been shown that dissimilarities exist in the focus of companies in the technological development of elements, even for those with identical innovation positions. This analytical method provides an original approach to comprehend technological linkages and innovation.     

Harnessing a network of experts for competitive advantage: technology scouting in the ICT industry

In order to identify discontinuous technological change and develop appropriate action, companies are increasingly building technology foresight (TF) practices. This paper explores how, using networks of experts, TF capabilities can be built. On the basis of three case studies and 43 interviews, it is shown that building foresight systems through networks of scouts yields several benefits, including the support for sourcing external technologies. Using insights from the three major telecommunication incumbents in Europe, the paper describes and discusses (1) what can be achieved by technology scouting, (2) how a process can be set up, (3) what is important in the design of a scouting network, and (4) the characteristics that should be aimed for when choosing technology scouts. The paper contributes to the methodological base of corporate foresight, to the technology management literature, and to the understanding of how companies can increase their open‐innovation capabilities by extending the intertwinement with their environment.