Technology and Strategy: Conceptual Models and Diagnostics

In today’s complex, dynamic competitive landscape, management of technology can mean the difference between success and failure. Managers and researchers alike need effective ways to conceptualize and develop technology strategies. Richard Goodman and Michael Lawless provide tools needed to integrate firms’ technology capabilities with their competitive direction. Technology and Strategy presents models that help put technology and its market impacts into perspective. It addresses the broad questions of how technology and markets evolve, how technology can re-order the rules of competition, and how it can shift the balance of individual firms’ competitive advantage. It also blends topics currently capturing attention in business circles–such as Total Quality Management and the resource-based view of the firm–into a clear view of technology management programs. Technology and Strategy also describes methods to develop specific strategies to cope with challenges facing executives–like evaluating promising, but untried, new technologies. Using actual case studies from the electronics and bio-tech industries, Goodman and Lawless demonstrate the use of new techniques to formulate strategy, including Technology Mapping and the Innovation Audit. Both were created to help executives choose the approach to technology best suited to their firms’ particular capabilities. Offering clear, practical guidance through a complex, fast-changing world of competition, this new analysis of technology and strategy is a valuable guide for general managers, R&D and manufacturing managers, strategic planners, and academics.