Abstract

Creating and applying new knowledge and technology has long been a critical key to financial success. With increasing resource requirements for technological advance and acceleration in the rate of global technology diffusion, strategic thinking about technology must go beyond the simple development of new products or services. There are three common management failings in the strategic management of technology: the inability to understand status and trends of the technologies necessary to and sufficient for competitive advantage; a focus on product technologies and neglect of process technologies, particularly information technologies, in the search for competitive advantage; and the inability to accurately assess the time and cost of converting market need into market demand for new technology. Two straightforward but rigorous metaphors, Strategic Space and the Technology Food Chain, can help to overcome these basic shortcomings in strategic thinking.