Resumo - Trends In Technology Management Revisited - Inovação e Tecnologia 2023-2

RUBENSTEIN: TRENDS IN TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT REVISITED Given the reality of limited budgets and the ability to support only a limited number of investigations and projects, I suggest the following trends as the ones having high potential leverage in improving our understanding of and ability to influence the R&D/innovation processes: Trend 2—Make or Buy: This one has great potential leverage on several of the other topics since it gets at the heart of top management thinking and actions with respect to technology in their firms. It affects trends: (1) entrepreneurship, (2) the role of CRL's, (9) technology policy and imbedded technology capability, (12) effects of SBU's, and several others. A broader and deeper understanding of the motives for outsourcing, the process whereby it occurs, and its effects can help us to improve our understanding of the current trend among many firms and, perhaps, to provide informed guidance in this area. Trend 3—Networking of Divisional Technology: This is almost "terra incognita" in corporate life. The operating divisions and their associated SBU's are the ones which make and sell the firm's products and services in most US and other firms. Decentralization has become a worldwide phenomenon despite indications that it may have reached its limits in some firms. However, a large percentage of empirical studies of industrial R&D/technology have focused on corporate-level issues. Partly this is because access has been easier and more focussed via the vice president of R&D or the chief technology officer and partly because it is the more glamorous end of industrial R&D. However, the real action affecting new and improved products and processes in many firms is occurring at the operating divisional level, and we do not have enough insight into the motivations, decision-making, and operations of those technology units to really understand the total technology posture of the individual firm. This topic, again, impacts on several of the others in the list of trends. Finally, it is important to note that the portfolio of research-sponsoring organizations such as the National Science Foundation or others which have historically sponsored research is a reflection of two kinds of choices. They are: 1) the program of the sponsor in terms of key issues, and 2) the interests constrained by the capabilities of the individual researchers and research groups which apply for funding. When these two sets of choices coincide, the likelihood of a strong portfolio is increased. Albert H. Rubenstein IEEE—SM'62-F'92, received the B.S. degree in industrial engineering from Lehigh University in 1949, the M.S. and P.E. in industrial engineering from Columbia University in 1950 and 1954, respectively. In 1993 he received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from Lehigh University. He has spent his professional career in continuing leadership in research, teaching, practice, and public service related to improving the art of managing complex R&D/engineering processes in industry, government, and other contexts. His original contributions included new methods of analysis, conceptual modeling, and field experimentation and implementation for ill-structured problems. He established and has led the Program of Research on Management of R&D/Innovation (POMSRAD) at MIT and Northwestern. He established Northwestern’s pioneering Engineering Management Program, combining training of working engineers with the strong support of an ongoing research base. He has applied his research results via consulting and advising for over 100 industry and government organizations in the United States and 10 other countries via his consulting firm Ilastra. His current book is Managing Technology for the Decontrolled Firm. He was editor for 25 years of Decentralized Firm. Published from 1975 to his retirement in 1986 and served as editor emeritus after the book’s Decentralized Firm. As editor of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management for 25 years, he transformed it into the leading technical journal in the field. He was a co-founder (1986) and the director of the Center for Information and Telecommunication Technology (CITT), based in the School of Engineering, and including faculty from many disciplines. Although he has been principally an educator, he has participated actively all during his career in the practical aspects of managing engineering and technology through his direction of research programs, serving as director of a leading venture capital firm, and through his own consulting practice. He is currently the principal investigator of a long-term research program on "Users' Needs for Intelligent Systems," supported by several industrial companies in the information and telecommunication field, and a study on "The Impacts of the University-Industry Interaction on Industrial Innovation," supported by the National Science Foundation. His other current research includes technical entrepreneurship in the firm, the university, and government labs; future trends in Clinical Health Care Information Support Systems (CHISS); evaluation of R&D/technology programs and labs; and use of telecommunication to enhance technology transfer. Dr. Rubenstein received the first Pioneer in Innovation Management award was named Engineering Manager of the Year by the IEEE, both in 1992. He co-chaired a committee of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council on Management of Engineering and Technology, which focuses on university-industry interaction in research. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Faculdade de Administração e Ciências Contábeis Departamento de Contabilidade Disciplina: ACC 602 – Gestão da Tecnologia e Inovação Período: 2023-2 Prof. Dr. Pierre Ohayon Aluno (a): XXXXXXXXXXXXXX DRE: 123456789 Exemplo Leitura 14a UTTERBACK, J.M. A Dinâmica da Inovação na Indústria. In: Dominando a Dinâmica da Inovação, Capítulo 1, p. 1-23, Rio de Janeiro: Qualitymark, 1996. Rio de Janeiro Data questões sobre a experiência de empresas que adotaram essas tecnologias, explorando os aspectos práticos e desafios na implementação. O autor destaca a tendência crescente em direção à terceirização de tecnologia, examinando os efeitos na redução de custos, satisfação do cliente e qualidade do produto. Ele questiona se a compra de tecnologia é realmente mais econômica e eficiente do que o desenvolvimento interno, destacando a necessidade de compreender as fases do ciclo de vida mais suscetíveis à compra versus fabricação. O autor observa a crescente importância do desenvolvimento e aplicação de software no cenário de P&D, destacando as mudanças na estrutura de custos e nas características dos produtos. Ele destaca a necessidade de compreender a qualidade e produtividade do software, bem como o papel dos usuários no processo de desenvolvimento. O autor discute a falta de políticas de tecnologia claras em muitas empresas, enfatizando a importância de abordagens sistemáticas para manter e proteger as vantagens competitivas em tecnologia. Ele destaca a necessidade de políticas que abordem ameaças às competências principais, e a pesquisa pode se concentrar em avaliar o impacto de várias políticas e estratégias. O autor revisita a descentralização para SBUs, questionando seu impacto na postura tecnológica das empresas. Ele sugere a necessidade de estudos de caso para entender as mudanças nos portfólios de projetos, vulnerabilidades a surpresas externas e como as SBUs obtêm tecnologias avançadas IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 41, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1994 Trends in Technology Management Revisited Albert H. Rubenstein, Fellow, IEEE Invited Paper IN November 1985, when I was retiring as editor of the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, my final editorial was entitled "Trends in Technology Management." It provided me with an opportunity to think about some things that had been happening in the field during the previous few decades and to speculate on whether they represented significant trends or were merely transient phenomena. Table I shows the list of trends discussed in that editorial. Some of those potential trends have, indeed, become full-fledged and significant developments in the field, and others still remain as potential early warning signs of situations that may or may not fully develop. I have taken the opportunity in this paper to revisit some of those trends from another point of view—the research opportunities which such trends and potential trends provide for faculty, students, and others involved in research, both in the university and in technology-performing or technology-sponsoring organizations. Many of the trends in Table I are highly interrelated. Indeed if we were allowed to use the term "causality" in our type of research, several sets of them seem to be causally related or at least in very strong influence relationships. Despite this, it is instructive to disaggregate them and examine them individually since the particular purposes of this examination—suggesting ideas for research on them—may require a finer focus and a clear delineation of the special problem being addressed. It would be tempting to argue that since these trends are highly related, an overall solution should be attempted for the problems they represent. However, having been exposed to many failed attempts at macro solutions to "the R&D" or "the innovation" or "the technology management" problem by practitioners and consultants, as well as academic researchers over the past few decades, I am not too hopeful of such an approach—i.e., "Let's fix it once and for all." Of course, when we develop or look at flow models and influence diagrams of the many variables embodied in the trend statements, we are tempted to select a few key variables and hope that a better understanding of their role in the overall R&D/innovation process or technology management process will yield macro solutions. Analogous efforts might be attempts to solve the manufacturing process or the finance or marketing process in the firm. Manuscript received November 1994. Review of this manuscript is requested by Editor D. F. Kocaoglu. The author is with the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-3119 USA. IEEE Log Number 9405999. 0018-9391/94$04.00 © 1994 IEEE TABLE I CURRENT TRENDS IN TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT 1) Technical Entrepreneurship in the Firm 2) The Role of Corporate Research Laboratories 3) Networking of Divisional Technology 4) Long Range Technology Planning 5) R&D/Production Interface 6) Evaluation and the Technology Audit 7) Expert Systems 8) Make or Buy 9) Technology Policy and Imbedded Technology 10) Software Development Process 11) Source of CTO’s 12) Effects of SFU’s on Technology Although many of us in the field do decry the ultra-narrow and nitpicking foci of some published papers and research projects, systematic, credible research in the field does require a high level of partitioning—as compared with general policy research or management consulting practice. So, I will be discussing fairly specific research questions, some of the trends, given the sort of theme, indeed, represent fairly broad areas in the field. I. TECHNICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE FIRM Current Situation: There have been many trials and few successes in the large firm. Such special arrangements, in many instances, violate rules and procedures of organization, budgeting, decision making, decorum, management style and resource gathering. They may be fundamentally incompatible with the way large and even many medium and small firms operate. Research Opportunities • Real-time studies of what actually happens in these situations—who does what to whom and, as well as can be determined, why and with what consequences? • Who are the key players in such arrangements? What are their attitudes, behavior, and perceptions of the technical entrepreneurship process in the firm? What is their perception of risk, and what are their individual risk propensities? Of course, since such events are rare, the external validity of even real-time case studies may be questionable, although the internal validity can be greatly enhanced by use of multiple methods and a broad data base of players. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 41, NO. 4. NOVEMBER 34; XIII. CONCLUSION: A SUGGESTED RESEARCH PORTFOLIO Given the number of important issues listed in the preceding sections, where can or should one start in the project selection phase of building a research program to investigate and anticipate these trends? The criteria depend on who is doing the selection and who will be doing the research: an individual researcher and his/her students and colleagues, or a research sponsoring organization. XII. SOURCES OF CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICERS Current Situation: What was a minor trend a decade or two ago has become a clearer trend toward selecting chief technical officers (CTO's) from outside the historical line-of-advance from the corporate research lab (CRL). At meetings of the Industrial Research Institute (IRI), I encounter many more CTO's who did not move up from the scientific ranks of the CRL than ever before. Many of these non-CRL people have little or no connection or cultural attachment to R&D as such. or at least not to the longer-term, more basic type of research. Many of them do, however, have more in common with operating management and top management than the historical vice president of R&D who did come directly out of the CRL. This means that the gap between R&D/technology and top and operating management may be narrowing in their forms, but gaps are appearing between such CTO's and their "troops" in the labs . Research Opportunities Surveys, field research, biographic studies, even questionnaires may be used to address some, but not all of the questions below: • Who are the new CTO's? Where did they come from, and what is their prior experience and association with CRL's and other R&D labs? • How many and which categories (by industry, by size of firm, by technology) are part of the inner circle of company management-e.g, board of directors. executive committee, operating committee? • What is the perceived level of influence of the nonresearch CTO versus the one with the traditional background? This requires the kind of deep probing that only field research can provide. • What changes in influence (indicated by membership in the inner circle. project portfolio, budgetary support from operating units, etc.) result from changes from one type of CTO to the other? This is an opportunity for either retrospective before-after studies or real time field experiments, with other key factors being controlled by a sample large enough to provide sufficient statistical degrees of freedom for credible influence. XIII. EFFECTS OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS UNITS ON TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION Current Situation: It may seem a bit churlish in view of the high perceived success of decentralization down to the strategic business unit (SBU) level to carp on one of the system's apparent flaws, even though it may be a major one for the future. This is the narrowing and shortening of the time horizon and the consequent risk aversion that accompanies chopping up a firm's lines of business into ever shrinking autonomous units. Although sub-SBU's have not yet appeared in any great number, enough examples exist to suggest that they may become a trend, much as SBU's did a couple of decades ago. There is some evidence of the overwhelming trend toward decentralization of industry which has been evident for the past two decades picking up speed. In some companies and in some sectors where loss of control by top management has led to serious missteps missed opportunities in the market. The "return to basics" which seems to be. at least a. talking trend in industry. may be followed by a real movement back toward a larger degree of control from the top. The "lean and mean" and downsizing movements which appear to be epidemic currently may. at some point, generate the need for building up corporate staffs again. This may be needed to avoid being blindsided by external events such as regulation, competition, rapid technology change, social and economic changes, and other aspects of the environment that require careful professional analysis and planning. However, my concerns in this area are focused on the impacts which SBU's have had and can potentially have on the technology posture of the firm. Research Opportunities Although this is an area about which a lot of prescriptive writing has appeared, there is not a sufficient data base of cases of actual impact of SBU's on R&D/technology in the firm to provide a basis for making clear judgments and for revising policy and planning, if necessary. Here are some research topics that can be pursued by either case study or field research approach to provide information related to questionnaire response: • How do the firm's project portfolio, in terms of scope. time horizon and risk propensity, compare before and after division of operating units into SBU's? • What are the actual project portfolios of SBU's in terms of scope, time horizon, and risk-taking? • How vulnerable have product lines been in SBU's to surprise by competitors and other outside forces, and how have the SBU's responded and coped with potential technology threats and opportunities? • How has the product life cycle changed, if it has, subsequent to decentralization into SBU's in terms of technological obsolescence? • Where do the SBU's in a completely decentralized firm-e.g. no central CRL-get their advanced technologies? • Where do SBU's get their technology (core and specific) in firms that do have a CRL?