The Process of Technological Innovation
Successful commercialization & continuous improvement
Eight stages of technological innovation
1. Basic research (for general nature laws)
2. Applied research (for specific problems)
3. Development (design for prototyping)
4. Engineering (design for assembly)
5. Manufacturing (design for efficiency & quality)
6. Marketing (design for acceptance & affordability)
7. Promotion (design for diffusion)
8. Improvement & enhancement (design for sustainability)
Corporate innovation process
Concept formation Product concept definition
Technical analysis Market research & 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 Inter-disciplines, -parties, -nations, -sectors
Emergence of complex technologies 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 SystemConcurrent Integration (Bordogna, 1999)
InnovationWealth Creation
Sustainable Development
AnalysisReduction
Discovery of New Knowledge & Basic Laws
Societal Needs The Public Good Natural Capital
Devices ProcessesSystems
IdeasInformation
Capital Formation & Investment
SynthesisIntegration
DesignManufactureMaintenance
Science
Policy Context
Engineering
Economic Context
Technology
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. SchumpeterCapitalism, Socialism, and DemocracyChapter VII, page 84
Creative TransformationsThe 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 ch
eap and easy Scientific information
Electrostatics, photoconductivity & photoreceptor, sensitization of Se element
Entrepreneur Carlson, Battelle, Wilson of Haloid
Novelty—industry creation & user education Branding for new product—Xeros & graphein Xerogr
aphy and registered trademark “Xerox”
History of Xerography (ii) 1949, the pioneering copy machine, Xerox A
User unfriendly, manually performed by the high-skilled operators
Unstable performance Enhancement & Market switching
Target the lead user—lithographic plate printing Lease rather than sale—reduce the novelty risk of dura
ble 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, unbending
ness, autonomy, ambition Appreciation, motivate himself and others, leadershi
p The good sense of market rather than much more inv
ention Entrepreneur enterprise Intre-preneurship incorporation
The management renew cycle
Entrepreneurship style of management for the start-ups or in the emerging stage of industry Organic system for flexibility, effectiveness, and
growth Professional management for
institutionalization or after the mature stage of industry 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
The always partner of research—customers To be a responsible profit center
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 Complements, reformers & rebels
Creative society Enjoy freedom without constraints Personal interest/survival rather than public new
order Formal & informal club for information sharing
Industrial cluster 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, evi
nce trust at all levels Envision rational solution scenarios to open-ended challeng
es Act as catalyst and master integrator in multifaceted, multi
disciplinary 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 High-Technology 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.