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Improving productivity through technology push
ABSTRACTS
Moreover, university laboratories do not have the proper desire for this transfer, and their people are rarely interested in leaving their academic positions for jobs in industry: graduate students leaving for such jobs is one (but rare) successful method. Technology transfer is difficult, the legal and bl reaucratic barriers are often insurmountable and seemingly little research has been done on the problem. The current research project was focused on determining whether new methods of technology transfer were being discovered and put into use. The research method was literature review and a mail survey of technology transfer experts throughout the world. Their basic finding was that there are indeed new methods, as follows. I. The information
dissemination model. The premise is that industry will make more use of
that which they know about. Therefore, universities have been trying seminars, data
bases, publications
and conferen,:es.
3 _. The licensing model. Getting exclusive
rights is sometimec. the only way industry can be persuaded to invest the monies necessary to develop the technology to the point where product conversion can take place. Licensing procedures are of two types: (I) the university solicits interests in any given new technology and then evaluates the applicants and chooses the best or (2) interested firms are invited to bid, and the best bidder wins. 3. The ventare capital model. This approach uses venture capitalists to provide money to entrepreneurs who in turn will establish new firms to develop the technology. University scientists serve as consultants. 2nd the initial developer often plays a major role. 4. The large company-joint vertture modei. Tks involves the established firm directly in the laboratory work going on in the university. Production and marketing considerations are brought in much earlier. In turn, university scientists often move into the firm for 2 while during later stages of development. 5 The incirbatcr-sc,ience yurk model. The com_~ panies are often created by scientist5 who leave university laboratories. The incubators and science park staffs offer assi:+tance to developers, increasing the chance they will be
able to perform the very difficult commercialization tasks. 6. IOefer~clt model. Here, a consortium of businesses hires individuals who have permission IO enter government laboratories and ferret
oui technologies of m:erest to the consortium. They have direct access and securi: y c!earance. and the methkd pvoids laborarorg personnel having to deviate from their research efforts to bring their nndin;t .>the attention of business. 7. The agrirltltrrral e.rtension model. Though there was no evidence in the article that rhls model is being used in technology transfer outside of the agriculture field, it has functioned very well there for a long time. The needs of farmers (counterparts of the manufacturer in most of the discussion above) are given to the scientists and the findings of scientists can go directly into the field for application. The authors urge each firm to evaluate the models to find the one that best fits any particular situation and then to employ it. proving Productivity Through Technology Posh, William E. Souder, Research Technology h4anagement (March-April 19891, pp. 19-24 This is the report of a study of successfully pushed radical innovations. The author selected fifteen of them, including xerography, holography, lasers, nylon, Velcro, abrasive papers, telecouplers synthetic diamcnds and Kevlar. The findings of the literature Trsearch were discussed with R&D managers at twenty-one member firms of the Industrial Research Institute. Ten key success factors were found in all fifteerr of the cases. cases demonstrated the wisdom of atta;ktng minor or peripheral markets where the technology’s advantages were more eviders:.. Xerogr:lphl was put first into the offset dup;i:cating *:tarket. T The inventor needs to be collaborated with _. what the author calls technical entrepreneurs hnd commerc;al entrepreneurs. Holography was teamed with an engineering group at the Un!versity of Michigan and with commerciai people at Battelle. 1. Ah -sf the
306
J PROD INNOV lr%9;6:297-310
.4 ESTRACTS
MANAG
3. Since people would rather adopt technologies “on the installment plan” it is good to let them be&in as augmenters or support for established technologies. 4. Technology pull is also necessary, for example. by bringing potential customers to the lab, running free demonstrations and sending missionary sales people out as consultants. 5. In every case the developers involved themselves with the user’s problems. They actually worked with users, understood their situations. This the author calls the “anthropological” approach. 6. Every developer looked at other. available disciplines to see where joint application of the new and the old would be possible. 1I. Every developer analyzed the technology’s characteristics and then sought end uses where these characteristics would be of value. 8. Unfortunately the developers at one time or another had to await the emergence of some other complementary or facilitating technology. 9. It helps tremendously if the inventor is well known and accepted by potential users. They trust the technology mcch more. 10. The technology push process is almost always iterati\,e. Developers must wait through trial-and-modify cycles. The author applied the above fi,ldings in several ways. First, he urged readers to utilize more technology pull, presumably because it was found to be important and often ignored. Second, he feels a walk-before-run approach is necessary, seeking trial applications with other technolcqies, with current technologies in use and in simple applications. Third, he feels strongly tha: user involvement is critical partly because deveifJpers need to know more about them but also because users often need to be shown they have problems which they have not noticed a~
Peripheral applications. Move it into applications on its own, but minor ones. Broadcasting. See that everyone in the firm knows about the technology. Market scanning. Keep up with the environment. Trial and retrial. Put the technology to work on the customer’s premises, find results, try again and again. Select applications. This is the major development, after you know what the technology can do and after it has been used in many different ways. This is the breakthrough application, and may have to await some further market development (i.e., be shelved for now). Expanded applications. Repeat the process of the first seven steps for other applications. As can be seen, the new procedure is a way to incorporate the success factors into a definite procedure rather than the haphazard or accidental procedures in the fifteen famous cases. Ready, Fire, Aim, William Copulsky, The JourMarketing (Spring 1989), pp. 45-49 (GPL)
nal of Consumer
Some very successful consumer products are developed by entrepreneurially oriented marketers and managers who prevail over formal negative studies and negative staff and management opinions. Entrepreneurial product champions exist in large and small organizations, and (contrary to conventional wisdom) they can be at any level of management up to CEO. Entrepreneurial champions fight for commercial success against false negatives (Type II Errors), which occur where analysis wrongly says not to introduce the innovation. Such false negatives are rare than false positives. whereby “megamistakes” (e.g., Ford’s Edsel, L)u,LPont’s Corfam) are launched. Examples include the Sony tape recorder, which was first marketed toward schools and government agencies: many automobiles, such as rrbird. Falcon and Cougar, whose product managers often faced opposition from the !Inancial staff as well as from other top executives and staff, board games, such as
Moreover, university laboratories do not have the proper desire for this transfer, and their people are rarely interested in leaving their academic positions for jobs in industry: graduate students leaving for such jobs is one (but rare) successful method. Technology transfer is difficult, the legal and bl reaucratic barriers are often insurmountable and seemingly little research has been done on the problem. The current research project was focused on determining whether new methods of technology transfer were being discovered and put into use. The research method was literature review and a mail survey of technology transfer experts throughout the world. Their basic finding was that there are indeed new methods, as follows. I. The information
dissemination model. The premise is that industry will make more use of
that which they know about. Therefore, universities have been trying seminars, data
bases, publications
and conferen,:es.
3 _. The licensing model. Getting exclusive
rights is sometimec. the only way industry can be persuaded to invest the monies necessary to develop the technology to the point where product conversion can take place. Licensing procedures are of two types: (I) the university solicits interests in any given new technology and then evaluates the applicants and chooses the best or (2) interested firms are invited to bid, and the best bidder wins. 3. The ventare capital model. This approach uses venture capitalists to provide money to entrepreneurs who in turn will establish new firms to develop the technology. University scientists serve as consultants. 2nd the initial developer often plays a major role. 4. The large company-joint vertture modei. Tks involves the established firm directly in the laboratory work going on in the university. Production and marketing considerations are brought in much earlier. In turn, university scientists often move into the firm for 2 while during later stages of development. 5 The incirbatcr-sc,ience yurk model. The com_~ panies are often created by scientist5 who leave university laboratories. The incubators and science park staffs offer assi:+tance to developers, increasing the chance they will be
able to perform the very difficult commercialization tasks. 6. IOefer~clt model. Here, a consortium of businesses hires individuals who have permission IO enter government laboratories and ferret
oui technologies of m:erest to the consortium. They have direct access and securi: y c!earance. and the methkd pvoids laborarorg personnel having to deviate from their research efforts to bring their nndin;t .>the attention of business. 7. The agrirltltrrral e.rtension model. Though there was no evidence in the article that rhls model is being used in technology transfer outside of the agriculture field, it has functioned very well there for a long time. The needs of farmers (counterparts of the manufacturer in most of the discussion above) are given to the scientists and the findings of scientists can go directly into the field for application. The authors urge each firm to evaluate the models to find the one that best fits any particular situation and then to employ it. proving Productivity Through Technology Posh, William E. Souder, Research Technology h4anagement (March-April 19891, pp. 19-24 This is the report of a study of successfully pushed radical innovations. The author selected fifteen of them, including xerography, holography, lasers, nylon, Velcro, abrasive papers, telecouplers synthetic diamcnds and Kevlar. The findings of the literature Trsearch were discussed with R&D managers at twenty-one member firms of the Industrial Research Institute. Ten key success factors were found in all fifteerr of the cases. cases demonstrated the wisdom of atta;ktng minor or peripheral markets where the technology’s advantages were more eviders:.. Xerogr:lphl was put first into the offset dup;i:cating *:tarket. T The inventor needs to be collaborated with _. what the author calls technical entrepreneurs hnd commerc;al entrepreneurs. Holography was teamed with an engineering group at the Un!versity of Michigan and with commerciai people at Battelle. 1. Ah -sf the
306
J PROD INNOV lr%9;6:297-310
.4 ESTRACTS
MANAG
3. Since people would rather adopt technologies “on the installment plan” it is good to let them be&in as augmenters or support for established technologies. 4. Technology pull is also necessary, for example. by bringing potential customers to the lab, running free demonstrations and sending missionary sales people out as consultants. 5. In every case the developers involved themselves with the user’s problems. They actually worked with users, understood their situations. This the author calls the “anthropological” approach. 6. Every developer looked at other. available disciplines to see where joint application of the new and the old would be possible. 1I. Every developer analyzed the technology’s characteristics and then sought end uses where these characteristics would be of value. 8. Unfortunately the developers at one time or another had to await the emergence of some other complementary or facilitating technology. 9. It helps tremendously if the inventor is well known and accepted by potential users. They trust the technology mcch more. 10. The technology push process is almost always iterati\,e. Developers must wait through trial-and-modify cycles. The author applied the above fi,ldings in several ways. First, he urged readers to utilize more technology pull, presumably because it was found to be important and often ignored. Second, he feels a walk-before-run approach is necessary, seeking trial applications with other technolcqies, with current technologies in use and in simple applications. Third, he feels strongly tha: user involvement is critical partly because deveifJpers need to know more about them but also because users often need to be shown they have problems which they have not noticed a~
Peripheral applications. Move it into applications on its own, but minor ones. Broadcasting. See that everyone in the firm knows about the technology. Market scanning. Keep up with the environment. Trial and retrial. Put the technology to work on the customer’s premises, find results, try again and again. Select applications. This is the major development, after you know what the technology can do and after it has been used in many different ways. This is the breakthrough application, and may have to await some further market development (i.e., be shelved for now). Expanded applications. Repeat the process of the first seven steps for other applications. As can be seen, the new procedure is a way to incorporate the success factors into a definite procedure rather than the haphazard or accidental procedures in the fifteen famous cases. Ready, Fire, Aim, William Copulsky, The JourMarketing (Spring 1989), pp. 45-49 (GPL)
nal of Consumer
Some very successful consumer products are developed by entrepreneurially oriented marketers and managers who prevail over formal negative studies and negative staff and management opinions. Entrepreneurial product champions exist in large and small organizations, and (contrary to conventional wisdom) they can be at any level of management up to CEO. Entrepreneurial champions fight for commercial success against false negatives (Type II Errors), which occur where analysis wrongly says not to introduce the innovation. Such false negatives are rare than false positives. whereby “megamistakes” (e.g., Ford’s Edsel, L)u,LPont’s Corfam) are launched. Examples include the Sony tape recorder, which was first marketed toward schools and government agencies: many automobiles, such as rrbird. Falcon and Cougar, whose product managers often faced opposition from the !Inancial staff as well as from other top executives and staff, board games, such as