Technology & Innovation Management

Innovation is a process that builds upon technical inventions

echnology and innovation management is the field of scientific enquiry focused on the analysis of how a socio-technical system of interconnected elements changes over time, whether by emergence or through design, and how such changes can be leveraged to generate value in a sustainable way.

• Scientific knowledge as an input into invention

  • The linear model: basic research leads to new knowledge, from which technology development can draw

  • Scientific knowledge makes downstream inventive activity more efficient (even without direct benefits)

• Absorptive capacity (sc. knowledge is publicly available, not usable)

  • Firms need their own scientific knowledge to understand others’ discoveries
  • (including their competitors)
  • Complementarities between internal and public research

• Attracting talented inventors
  • Staff with a “taste for science”
  • Positive relationship between intellectual challenge and innovative output

• Signaling to consumers, investors, regulators
  • Publications build a reputation for quality
  • Importance depends on sector (e.g. biotech) and maturity (start-ups)

• visible design rules (visible information): decisions that affect subsequent design decisions, should be established early in the design process.
  • architecture: what modules are part of the sytem and what is their function
  • interfaces: how will the modules interact
  • sandarts for testing: how can a module's perfomance be measured?
• hidden design rules (hidden information): do not affect the design beyond the local module, can be changed often and chosen late.

• Traditional sequential organization
  • recursive information flows, information losses and inefficiencies
  • authorithy hierarchy needed
  • tighly coupled organizational structure
• Overlapping problem solving approach
  • team based organizational structure
  • reduced information losses
  • still intensive managerial coordination needed, to suceed
  • management needs to have the autority to make design and specification decisions.
• Modular organization