The Process of Technological Innovation
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Transcript The Process of Technological Innovation
The Process of Technological
Innovation
Successful commercialization &
continuous improvement
Eight stages of technological
innovation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Basic research (for general nature laws)
Applied research (for specific problems)
Development (design for prototyping)
Engineering (design for assembly)
Manufacturing (design for efficiency & quality)
Marketing (design for acceptance & affordability)
Promotion (design for diffusion)
Improvement & enhancement (design for
sustainability)
Corporate innovation process
Concept formation
Product concept definition
Market research & analysis
Technical analysis
Industry analysis—SWOT & business strategy
Commitment & support from strategic apex
Development
Market testing
Manufacturing & marketing
Promotion & selling
Chain-reaction of successful
innovation
Scientific invention ←→
Engineering development ←→
Entrepreneurship ←→
Management/strategy ←→
Social demand ←→
Fit environment
Innovation trajectories
Border crossings
Emergence of complex technologies
Inter-disciplines, -parties, -nations, -sectors
Fit to and cause from diverse demands, perspectives,
approaches, contexts
Age of knowledge and distributed intelligence, KDI
Network of knowledge—Building and extending the
invisible college
Learning and intelligent system—exploring the human
behavior
Computing challenge—exploit the numeric barrier
Innovation System
Concurrent Integration (Bordogna, 1999)
Analysis
Reduction
Discovery of
New Knowledge
& Basic Laws
Societal Needs
The Public Good
Natural Capital
Synthesis
Integration
Innovation
Wealth Creation
Sustainable Development
T
e
c
h
Devices
n Ideas
Processes o
l Information
Systems
o
g
y
Design
Manufacture
Maintenance
Capital Formation
& Investment
Creative transformation
Searching for innovation requirement & change
demand
Monitoring technological change &
organizational change
Transformation for sustaining performance
On internal structure of R&D, manufacturing
On external market of customer, interested parties
Successful process of innovation fulfillment
Project management & management renew
The Process of Creative
Destruction
Business leaders usually visualize a market
economy in the context of how capitalism
administers existing structures, whereas the
wiser approach is to understand how it
creates and destroys them.
Paraphrased from J. Schumpeter
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
Chapter VII, page 84
Creative Transformations
The Schumpeterian Factor
The interaction of technological innovation
with the competitive marketplace is the
fundamental driving force in capitalist
industrial progress. (Schumpeter, 1942)
The normally healthy economy was not one
in equilibrium, but one that was constantly
being disrupted by technological innovation
(The Economist, Schumpeter, 1999)
History of Xerography
Market dissatisfaction
for document reproduction even so cheap
and easy
Scientific information
Entrepreneur
Electrostatics, photoconductivity & photoreceptor, sensitization of Se
element
Carlson, Battelle, Wilson of Haloid
Novelty—industry creation & user education
Branding for new product—Xeros & graphein
Xerography and registered trademark “Xerox”
History of Xerography (ii)
1949, the pioneering copy machine, Xerox A
Enhancement & Market switching
User unfriendly, manually performed by the high-skilled
operators
Unstable performance
Target the lead user—lithographic plate printing
Lease rather than sale—reduce the novelty risk of durable
goods
1955, automatic version, CopyFlo
1958, Xerox 914 for office users
the two-part tariff leasing mechanism a successful
incentive for copying usage
Nationwide retailing & service network
History of Xerography (iii)
Scientific improvement
New material for cheap and sensitive
photoreceptor: carbonic/organic polymer
Evolution with laser & IC technology
Integrated into computer industry
Laser printer
Lessons from Xerography
Innovation success was determined by markets
eventually
Breakthrough the diffusion constraints including
designing, technological, economic, political, societal,
and even religious factors
Visionary enabler—entrepreneur & entrepreneurship
Systemic improvement process—monitor the gap
and retest for objective
Inter-disciplines—evolution with the sources of
innovation
Luck blessed the risk lover and opportunity seizer
A technological innovation
model
The case of biomedical devices
Concept formation—market pull or technological push
Feasibility analysis—technological, economic, operational
Product design and prototype development & testing
Engineering & Manufacturing design—user interface, P/P
ratio, extensible/upgrade capability
Meet the FDA requisites—the min. quality standard
Production & quality control
Marketing promotion—pricing strategy, technology cycle,
market structure, channel selection
Customer satisfaction, post/disposal service
Entrepreneur &
Entrepreneurship
A technologist or marketer possessed with
Vision, courage, initiative, concentration,
unbendingness, autonomy, ambition
Appreciation, motivate himself and others, leadership
The good sense of market rather than much more
invention
Entrepreneur enterprise
Intre-preneurship incorporation
The management renew cycle
Entrepreneurship style of management for the startups or in the emerging stage of industry
Professional management for institutionalization or
after the mature stage of industry
Organic system for flexibility, effectiveness, and growth
Bureaucratic system for cost-benefit consideration &
efficiency criteria
Renewing demand after structural rigidity and
industry decline
Venture team
Intrepreneurship
Imagine the future product concept
The gatekeeper of technology & market
Plan enabler
Project manager
A stand alone research center
Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
Keep flexible and innovative
Lessons from Xerox’s PARC
Vision
To be the future information architect and a documentation corporation
Acquire SDS data processing
Integrate xerography into computer office automation PC and WYSIWYG
interface, the Alto series
Failure
Asynchronous development between PARC and Xerox’s bureaucratic
structure
Location dispersion & communication gap: New York state (E) vs. California
state (w)
Too few product lines to fill market demand
Competition from Japanese firm’s high quality copy machines—Canon,
Sharp, Minolta, etc. and the friendly innovation of add-on carbon cartridge
Too concentrated on short-term financial performance to seize the industry
dynamics and growth opportunities
Recovery of Xerox’s PARC
Research on working process as well as new product
Innovating anywhere and learning through
Innovation transfer to the counterparts in the
organization beyond endeavoring to research
Promote linkage between technology and market
To be a responsible profit center
The always partner of research—customers
Share and broker information for entrepreneurship & new
start-ups
Motivation incentive by being the Xerox shareholder
The macro view of
technological innovation
Appropriate context for innovation survival
Creative society
Enjoy freedom without constraints
Personal interest/survival rather than public new order
Formal & informal club for information sharing
Industrial cluster
Complements, reformers & rebels
Specialization & cooperative linkage for production,
marketing, and international free trading
Knowledge exploring & training
Education & university
Lessons from Silicon Valley
Vision of technology & life
Knowledge center/window
Facilitating context/infrastructure
Venture capital
Free mobility of job
Weak-tie information network
Continuous learning
Lessons from British Midlands
Freedom facilitates entrepreneurship
Lunar society in the Birmingham of
England vs. the Home brew computer club
in the Silicon Valle
Diversity ignites the spark of innovation
Club dialogue promotes the role playing at
the other’s position
Championship drives competition, cooperation,
and benchmarking
Factors influencing
technological innovation
Scientific capability & repository
Technology life cycle
Investment scale & level
Political facilitator
Complementary technologies
Diffusion mode & rate
Factors impeded/facilitated
technological innovation
World politic/economic dynamics
Communication channel/speed
Multiple research centers—competition or
cooperation relay
Launch timing
Education/diffusion system
Visible/invisible committee
Industry policy
Mobility barriers
Public/private organizational transformation
The innovative Skill Set of 2010
(Bordogna, 1999)
Handle projects from initial conception of an idea through to
product realization
Understand, nurture, and capitalize sustainably on nature
Be alpha-numeric literate
Articulate team goals, influence others to invest in them,
evince trust at all levels
Envision rational solution scenarios to open-ended challenges
Act as catalyst and master integrator in multifaceted,
multidisciplinary projects
Understand and practice quality issues
Manifest a strategic intent in design
The innovative Skill Set of 2010
(Bordogna, 1999)
Enable comfort in interpersonal relations
Pursue standards-based practice
Practice creative transformation
Focus on innovation
Sense the coupling among seemingly disparate issues
Make sense of complexity
Contribute to, extract from, participate in the world of collective
intelligence base
Be an astute observer of strategic inflection points and
anticipate their consequences at the moment of inflection
Extended readings
Rogers, Everett M., and Judith, K. Larsen (1984),
Silicon Valley Fever: The Growth of HighTechnology Culture, Basic Books.
Howard, R. (1992), “The CEO as organizational
Architect: An Interview with Xerox CEO Paul
Allaire,” Harvard Business Review, Sept.-Oct.,
pp.107-119.
Saxenian, Annalee, (1996), Regional Advantage:
Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and
Route 128, Harvard University Press.