Outline
- Abstract
- Highlights
- Keywords
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Strategic Technology Management
- 3. Guiding Principles
- 3.1. Human-Centric
- 3.2. Workshop-Based
- 3.3. Neutrally Facilitated
- 3.4. Lightly Processed
- 3.5. Modular
- 3.6. Scalable
- 3.7. Visual
- 4. Example Toolkit
- 5. Summary
- Acknowledgments
- References
رئوس مطالب
- چکیده
- کلیدواژه ها
- 1. مقدمه
- 2. مدیریت فناوری استراتژیک
- 3. اصول راهنما
- 3.1 انسان محور
- 3.2 مبتنی بر کارگاه آموزشی
- 3.3 تسهیل شده به طور بی طرف
- 3.4 پردازش شده به طور سبک
- 3.5 مدولار
- 3.6 قابل مقیاس
- 3.7 ویژوال (بصری)
- 4.تولکیت نمونه
- خلاصه
Abstract
When considering the potential uptake and utilization of technology management tools by industry, it must be recognized that companies face the difficult challenges of selecting, adopting and integrating individual tools into a toolkit that must be implemented within their current organizational processes and systems. This situation is compounded by the lack of sound advice on integrating well-founded individual tools into a robust toolkit that has the necessary degree of flexibility such that they can be tailored for application to specific problems faced by individual organizations. As an initial stepping stone to offering a toolkit with empirically proven utility, this paper provides a conceptual foundation to the development of toolkits by outlining an underlying philosophical position based on observations from multiple research and commercial collaborations with industry. This stance is underpinned by a set of operationalized principles that can offer guidance to organizations when deciding upon the appropriate form, functions and features that should be embodied by any potential tool/toolkit. For example, a key objective of any tool is to aid decision-making and a core set of powerful, flexible, scaleable and modular tools should be sufficient to allow users to generate, explore, shape and implement possible solutions across a wide array of strategic issues. From our philosophical stance, the preferred mode of engagement is facilitated workshops with a participatory process that enables multiple perspectives and structures the conversation through visual representations in order to manage the cognitive load in the collaborative environment. The generic form of the tools should be configurable for the given context and utilized in a lightweight manner based on the premise of ‘start small and iterate fast’.
Highlights ► Seven principles for developing, integrating and deploying strategy tools ► Provides a conceptual foundation for the development of management toolkits ► Outlines an underlying philosophical position based on industrial engagements ► Based on the premise of ‘start small and iterate fast’
Keywords: Management tool - Roadmapping - Strategic planning - Technology management5. Summary
In taking a practice perspective, it has been highlighted that strategic technology management (STM) tools are, generally, employed in isolation and accompanied with a lack of consideration on how to bring them together in an integrative manner. However, in this regard, there has been a challenge put forward by Phaal et al. [8] to develop a universal toolkit that can “support a wide range of technology management decisions and processes”. Their vision consists of a “minimum set of generic tools required to solve the class of problem for which they are designed, together with guidance on how to integrate, configure and deploy them”. Thus in order to provide a conceptual foundation for such an industrially relevant and academically robust strategic technology management toolkit, this paper has identified seven underpinning principles that should be operationalized when developing, integrating and deploying the tools. The seven principles are:
1. Human-centric — The STM tools should be focused on allowing their users to participate/engage/collaborate with one another to have a strategic conversation leading to a co-created solution. The key premise of the tools is to support the social interaction and aid decision-making. This will require an appreciation of the situational factors in real-world applications by taking into account the sociological and psychological aspects of the human-centric setting.
2. Workshop-based — The recommended mode of engagement for deploying an STM toolkit should be through workshops as they provide the platform for group interaction through structured activities centered on the application of the tools for solving strategic problems.
3. Neutrally facilitated — The workshops within which the STM tools are to be applied should be facilitated from a position of neutrality whereby the facilitator should be focused on the process and not contribute to the content.
4. Lightly processed — The process for using the STM tools within the workshops should be applied in a lightweight manner based on the premise of ‘start small and iterate fast’ and allow for a degree of flexibility by not being too prescriptive. This requires adapting the macro–micro level processes, the divergent–convergent constructs, and the arrangement of the plenary–small group activities for the specific engagements.
5. Modular — The STM toolkit should be built in a modular fashion with the constituent tools being readily integrated with one another. Additionally, the combined final output, or product, of using the tools should also be able to have a composite form.
6. Scalable — The tools should have the ability to be employed at the different levels both within and surrounding an organization by employing a scalable hierarchy in order to provide a wide dynamic range.
7. Visual — The tools should have a visual form for both their application in the workshops and their resulting output for the purposes of reporting/communicating. The ideal being the single page format.