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3. Knowledge facets for systems integration and information technology development
It is certainly not possible to represent the all-encompassing nature of the information technology development and transfer process in a single simple figure, such as figure 3. There are a variety of outlooks on knowledge use for information technology development, including information processing technologies, that support access to science and technology for development purposes.
The thrust of this paper is that systems engineering, as a pragmatic multidisciplinary approach that is oriented to the real needs of society, is an appropriate systems management and integration technology and can be used to both study and manage the information technology development and transfer process. This is especially so since technology development and transfer processes are fundamentally multi-disciplinary ones of large scale and scope.
There are several perspectives from which knowledge may be applied to technological developments [54]. Fundamentally, these evolve from the three different types of knowledge: knowledge principles, knowledge practices, and knowledge perspectives that need to be utilized, appropriately, to enable development of operational technologies. Each is needed and if appropriate provision for these three types of knowledge is not made, efforts at development or transfer of technologies will likely fail.
Knowledge principles represent the formal reasoning-based scientific approaches that lead to the development of new knowledge. Knowledge practices represent the application of existing wisdom, often in the form of experiential-based skills and standardized rules, to the development of a new technological product that is based upon an existing product. Notions of standards for technology development and architectures that support open systems integration are especially important ones here. Finally, knowledge perspectives concern future-oriented issues that determine the relative importance of implementing potentially competing new technologies. Thus, they necessarily also involve the blend of practices and principles that should be brought to bear in resolving future-oriented technology development issues.
New systems are seldom developed, sold, or deployed in a vacuum. Usually they are improved versions of, or additions to, an existing system. The new system will normally evolve from an existing system in the generic fashion shown in figure 4. The new system may be delivered as a result of some contracted effort with an external systems engineering contractor, or it may be developed in-house. Systems integration is the process through which a number of products and services, both hardware and software, are specified and assembled into a complete system that will achieve the intended functionality.
There is an inherent relationship between systems integration engineering and standards. This exists because both system users and system developers, and purveyors or marketers, have a common need for standards that are system independent and specific developer independent. The term "open systems architecture" is now used to describe any of several generic approaches, the intent of which is to produce "open systems" that are inherently inter-operable and connectable without the need for retrofit and redesign.
An appropriate open systems architecture standard must be explicitly defined such that anyone desirous of using it can use it for implementation purposes, and must satisfy other desirable attributes of standards. Systems integration, which is fundamentally concerned with the technological and management issues needed to bring about functional operability of systems, is very concerned with these issues also, although perhaps from a slightly different viewpoint. The overall tasks of a systems integrator include:
- System definition: identifying user requirements and technological specifications for a system, including needs for systems integration to insure compatibility with existing and possible future systems;
- System design and development: including the identification of an appropriate architecture or preliminary conceptual design for the system, in turn including appropriate interfaces to existing systems, evaluating the performance of the system, potentially modifying the system architecture for better performance and enhanced inter-operability, and thereby establishing an effective open architecture for the system to be developed; and
- System test, integration, and maintenance: to insure that the operational system is cost effective and of high quality.
These are just the phases of the systems engineering life cycle [58], modified slightly to explicitly recognize the role of the systems integrator and the concomitant need for an open systems architecture. The confluence of systems integration, open systems architectures, and standards for these may be expected to lead to an open systems environment that would:
- reduce the system acquisition costs;
- reduce system integration costs;
- protect current investments in hardware and software;
- allow increased independence in acquiring new systems, and in modifying and maintaining existing systems, and through this process
- maximize the quality and effectiveness of integrated system products in re solving user and customer issues and problems.
Figure 4 The systems integration engineering process
Of central concern in a systems integration effort is the system-level information architecture. The mission areas for a system will normally vary from case to case. The primary tasks of the systems integration team are design of the overall system architecture and integration of sub-systems into this architecture. The first of these tasks calls for top-down systems engineering, while the second requires management and technical direction of contract work and bottom-up approaches to achieving interfacing and inter-operability of existing systems.
Systems integration engineering requires attention to both technology and management problems on the part of both the implementation and integration teams. Technical tasks generally include assessing the impact of architectural changes on both the system under development and its stakeholders. The systems integration team should also provide systems management support relative to technical system management matters. These will generally involve cost studies and configuration management studies. Figure 5 represents the conceptual incorporation of systems integration within an overall systems engineering framework.
There are a number of motivations for systems integration. A recent study [10] identified five primary motivations for further investments in and investigations of systems integration:
(1) Experiences with information technologies have not been in accord with initial expectations. One major finding in many studies is that information technology may well enhance individual productivity, but often has great difficulty enhancing organizational productivity.
(2) Propagation of information technologies throughout nations and organizations produces the need for inter-operability and connectivity across equipment and applications.
(3) The installed base of information technology products will grow to accommodate both new technologies and new capabilities.
(4) Advances in information technology and growing appreciation for what ultimately can be accomplished will necessarily promote organizations and nations to search both for new information technology applications and new sources of competitive advantage.
(5) In the increasingly global economy of today and tomorrow, organizations and nations must rely on information technology in order to manage and coordinate their operations and to stay informed and globally competitive.
These considerations are not independent of one another, and there are others. The emergence of new information technologies, and the enhancement of those that exist today, is almost certain to occur. Information technology is so very closely related to the large-scale spectacle of global interdependence among economies, other technologies that it supports, and even nations, that its importance can only be expected to increase. These realities together with the need for continued vigilant attention to systems management for product and process quality, security, and the assurance of equity for all comprise the major challenges for systems engineering in the twenty-first century. At a pragmatic level, systems integration is very important in assuring these ends.
Figure 5 Evolving nature of systems integration engineering for development
The first efforts in systems integration should generally be to obtain, from a variety of sources, identification of
- where the information technology systems user is,
- where the user group needs to be, and
- how it should get there relative to development strategies, including systems integration.
This situation assessment effort will define the needs, constraints, and alterables of the information technology system to be developed This must, or at least surely should, be done with knowledge of the organizational and environmental variables extant. Of course, a preliminary version of this assessment was required to bring the effort to this stage.
Once the situation assessment is complete, potential additions and modifications to the existing system must be identified. The impacts of these alternatives on the resulting system are then analysed. This step should allow for some adjustment of parameters for each alternative implementation, to permit optimization of performance. These systems under consideration should be either immediately inter-operable with existing systems or at least able to be integrated with some degree of effort. There is a major need for an evaluation methodology to validate the software, the hardware, the human interfaces, and the trustworthiness and quality of the resulting system.
Cost and effectiveness indices will be determined for each alternative. These will be included in planning documents for systems augmentations. These documents will identify potential integration opportunities within the existing environment of computer hardware, software, communications, and physical plant. Also included with each evaluation should be an analysis of risk factors affecting each alternative. Risk has numerous facets or characteristics that affect cost, schedule, and trustworthiness. These should be fully explored.
Invariably, the goals of those working on an information technology systems acquisition or development project will include the following:
(1) To identify new technology approaches that will enhance functionality of the new system.
(2) To identify significant "cost drivers" that represent a high percentage of total costs of the system.
(3) To identify methods that will reduce costs while simultaneously retaining benefits and on-time delivery of the operational system.
(4) To field a quality system, within the constraints set by schedule and price, that is of high quality, and trustworthy in terms of satisfaction of customer needs.
These objectives apply to the overall information technology systems development effort in general and to systems integration in particular.
Operational deployment of a system, and related system integration concerns, is an iterative and evolving process. Systems that once fit well into a complete system may not do so at some future point. This evolving system development concept is shown in figure 5. The iteration and feedback are essential to ensuring continuing functionality of the system.
Systems integration has four fundamental dimensions [31]:
(1) Integration Technology, which supports transfer of data across different subsystems. This process includes file transfer protocols, document protocols, and remote procedure calls. Automatic data transfer, common database structures for different applications, and process-to-process communications through well-defined functional interfaces and interaction protocols are examples of how integration technology is accomplished. Some form of integration technology is generally necessary for overall systems integration, but is never sufficient to insure it.
(2) Integration Architecture, which structures subsystem design to insure easy and secure data sharing across subsystems. Storage of common data in databases requires functional inter-operability if the data are to be shared. Accomplishing distributed data storage through the use of an integration architecture that has direct access to data or functional access by activating other systems is a need.
(3) Semantic Integration, which insures either that the same concepts mean the same thing in different portions of the system or that there exists a translation mechanism that will resolve semantic inconsistencies so as to allow information exchange across systems. These inconsistencies will invariably exist when the different subsystems of a DSS are procured from different vendors.
(4) User Integration, which enables a system user to concentrate on the tasks to be accomplished and not the specific details of the technological system being integrated. This will generally require easy access to different applications and systems, uniform user interfaces, consistent data, and consistent use of semantic concepts.
The three perspectives on knowledge discussed earlier in this section knowledge practices, principles, and perspectives - proactively relate to these four integration aspects, as indicated in figure 6. One major objective of any overall system acquisition effort should be to reduce implementation risks and enhance trustworthiness of the resulting system. Whether this should be accomplished through the efforts of a system integration contractor exclusively or through a more general engineering effort that might include production of new hardware and software is clearly a matter for judgement and choice based on the particular issues at hand and the particular and unique capabilities of the developing unit.
Systems integration should be capable of efficiently and effectively coping with future user needs for hardware and software acquisition. There should be an intentional linkage between information technology systems and organizational systems. Conceptual architectures and frameworks for open systems architectures and integration [48, 47] are particularly important in this regard. These are needed in order to accommodate the identification of requirements for, and the subsequent development and implementation of, an integrated system that is responsive to contemporary needs, especially for systems that can function in contemporary high-velocity environments.
Figure 6 Principal knowledge ingredients in systems integration engineering
This requires an approach that recognizes that a systems integrator and a systems user will have different perspectives on development of the system. It is only natural that a system user will be almost exclusively interested in the ultimate product and its trustworthiness. On the other hand, a systems engineer or systems integrator can be expected to have very strong interests in the process that is undertaken to insure delivery of the product. Through this interest in process, there will naturally occur an interest in product, as well. Ultimately, products or systems will be valued in terms of their ability to resolve issues or problems, and this is what the ultimate customers for a system desire. To accommodate each of these perspectives, we need a strategic level approach to quality assurance and management - one that produces total quality management, a subject of very contemporary interest.
Walton [65] is among those who have studied the necessary efforts to successfully integrate information technology into organizations. He indicates that positive economic and human outcomes will occur through the use of information technology developments that are patterned after a three-phase process of context generation, information technology system design, and implementation of the information technology system. These phases follow the general systems engineering life cycle phases of definition, development, and deployment and are illustrated in figures 5 and 7. There are three major manoeuvres at each of these phases: creating alignments, fostering commitments and supporting ownership, and developing mastery in the evolving information technology process. Walton suggests that anticipatory, or proactive, development of the organization will occur when organizational considerations and information technology are integrated at the strategic planning level for information technology implementation. Simultaneous development of both the organization and the information technology process may occur when the information technology process is introduced without organizational strategic planning considerations. Reactive adaption of the organization after implementation of a system will be needed when a technology push solution is imposed. Generally, this represents an imposed solution to a needed improvement. It may represent a solution looking for a problem. Walton provides case-studies of each of these implementation strategies.
Keen [25] is also very concerned with shaping the future through information technology as a means to an organizational end. He identifies four realities that normatively should guide information technology and organizational planning. The first of these is that a restructuring of the cost base for organizations will be needed in the 1990s due to the ubiquity of declining economic return margins across industries and countries. Also, total quality and enhanced service must be considered as basic ingredients of an organization's operations in the 1990s. Eroding prices and falling profit margins necessitate the implementation of yield management systems, which ensure a competitive advantage through time-sensitive information for planning, pricing, and deployment of resources. These are systems associated with such contemporary efforts as on-line customer service to minimize customer waiting time, airline pricing mechanisms that ensure maximum profits in the face of widely differing seat prices, and just-in-time manufacturing that attempts to reduce product development time and time to market. Keen envisions seven facets of organizational design through the use of information technology:
Figure 7 Three phases in the Walton IT development life cycle and phased efforts in creating alignment, enhancing human commitment, and enabling IT system user competence
- competitive positioning;
- geographic positioning; organizational design and redesign;
- human resource, or human capital, redeployment;
- managing information economics;
- organizational positioning and repositioning for information technology usage; and
- strong alignments of business and technology.
The major pragmatic objectives in this effort are to enable information technology system design so as to integrate the work of people and machines in support of organizational objectives.
There are many other studies of this type. A recent paper by Orlikowski and Baroudi [33] provides a very good overview of overarching theoretical perspectives and philosophical assumptions regarding information technology and organizational phenomena. Orlikowski [32] examines the degree of change facilitation in the forms of organizing and control that is brought about by information technology deployment in the workplace. Her findings indicate that present uses reinforce established forms of organizing and that they are facilitated in strengthening and cohesion of prevalent control mechanisms. Her conjecture is that present information technology deployments tend to reflect a strong commitment to the present organizing structure and functions and that the resulting integrated information technology system reflects existing forms of knowledge and influence. Organizational and institutional learning and a variety of perspectives on rationality [29, 8] remain major ingredients in this.
A fundamental goal of strategic planning and associated systems management is to develop a balanced perspective on system development so as to insure the success of the development venture. Figure 8 illustrates some of the concerns of systems management, as expressed in the components of a systems engineering management plan (SEMP) for technology development. It is a task of systems management to develop each of the 12 elements shown in this figure, and to accomplish it in such a fashion that the system customer is satisfied with the system product in terms of its ability to resolve problems. We see, then, the need for integration of problem, product, and process as essential to systems integration.
Figure 8 The need for process integration at the level of the systems engineering management plan
4. A newness matrix approach to information technology development
It is possible to characterize existing conditions in a developing nation along several dimensions relative to development or transfer, and implementation of a new information technology. Two questions seem to be of primary importance relative to judgement and choice as concerns exploitation of a potential technology development and/or transfer venture. They can be expressed in slightly different form for individuals, groups, and organizations. In generic form, they are:
(1) Which new technology markets should a unit enter?
(2) How should the unit enter these technology markets so as to maximize the likelihood of success and the reward to be obtained from success, and at the same time to control the risk of failure and the losses to be suffered in the event of a failure? Entry may occur through internal development of a new technology or through a technology transfer process. There are a number of related infrastructure questions and questions of system integration associated with either approach.
A potential new technology can be nurtured by one unit, which may vary in scope from one company to one nation, through the use of a combination of the following two basic approaches:
(1) internal development of the technology, or
(2) venture funding of others and subsequent acquisition, or transfer, of the technology.
There are many ways through which the questions just posed could be resolved. In part, the appropriate development strategy depends upon an analysis of four related questions:
(1) How new and different is the technology for the unit in question?
(2) How new and different is the market for the technology for the unit in question?
(3) How familiar is the unit in question with technological development needs?
(4) How familiar is the market for the technology to the unit in question?
The responses to these questions lead to a 16-cell selection matrix, shown in figure 9, that determines the extent to which a specific unit might be able to use various types of knowledge in order to determine solutions to the many potential problems that may arrive in making a potential new technology operational. The terms "base technology" and "base market" are used to describe technologies and markets with which a unit is presently concerned. Roberts and Berry [43] have described appropriate entry strategies for the nine cells that are most supportive of success in development of a new technological product or service. These are the nine cells associated with the three left columns and top three rows in figure 6. The 16-cell matrix is appropriately called a "newness matrix."
"Newness" is the key concern in the newness matrix entries in figure 9, which indicates a basic 16-cell model of experiential familiarity with technology and market. Certainly, much about many information technologies will be new to a developing nation. But a potential innovation may be a new technology or a new market, in general - or for a specific company within a developing nation. Also, there are questions of existing technologies with which a new technology must be integrated, and experiential familiarity with the system integration process can also be expected to vary. Expanding on these concepts so as to be able to indicate generic costs and effectiveness indices, including success and failure possibilities, is a goal of a new technology identification study.
Figure 9 Experiential familiarity with market and technology effect ease of entry and risk
The newness matrix, illustrated in figure 9, suggests an approach for analysing the risks, hazards, and uncertainties associated with introducing a new technology. Such uncertainties, both in the market-place and in the technology itself, constitute, in the terminology of business, the risk factor. Risk, of course, is of fundamental importance as a decision-making influencer in both systems management and enterprise management.
The newness matrix is particularly relevant in the early stages of a technology's development, where there are numerous uncertainties. For example, Florida and Keeney [15] have argued that American industry has tended to rely on major technological breakthroughs rather than incremental improvements in technology as the major mechanism for technological progress, with substantial competitive disadvantages as a result. The newness matrix approach attempts to focus attention on just the types of problems that this, perhaps prevalent, breakthrough mentality might overlook.
Newness, or uncertainty, in markets may be due to any of the following problem areas:
- New uses. There will always be uncertainty where a new use, or function, is being offered, even if there are only relatively minor changes in the technology. For example, the widespread adoption of personal computers might seem to involve only minor changes in software technology for mainframes; but, this led initially to widespread user apathy and an entirely new and beneficial approach to development.
- User skepticism about improved performance characteristics. Many technologies are developed with the notion that they will substitute for existing technologies by providing more effective performance at a modest, or at least acceptable, increase in price. However, the ultimate consumer and purchaser may not be particularly impressed with the performance improvement. For example, supersonic commercial air travel has proven far less popular than developers of the Concorde had initially hoped. High definition television (HDTV) might well prove similarly disappointing, as consumers may find that intermediate forms of enhanced definition TV are quite acceptable for their needs.
- Requirement for human behaviour adjustment by the user. The most imaginative and potentially useful new technology can fail because users cannot, or will not, adjust their behaviour to meet the needs of the technology. A promising innovation, video phones, may flounder because people do not want callers peering at them in their home or office, but may be reluctant to turn the video off after responding to call. As a general guideline, technologies should and must serve humans. Humans will generally not serve technologies, nor should they be expected to do so.
- Competitive technologies. Competitive technologies are volatile and operate in high-velocity environments. This results in very significant uncertainties. For example, efforts by commercial earth satellite-based transmission firms to boost their share of the telecommunications market necessarily must confront exciting changes brought about by fibre optics and cellular radio communications. Initially, this may make a marketing strategy for any particular technology highly uncertain.
- Unpredictable technological developments. Scientific or engineering breakthroughs can add enormous uncertainties to markets.
- Legal barriers. Regulatory and standardization requirements can add considerable uncertainty to the technology adoption process. While these may be very beneficial, there is no reason to assume that they are always beneficial.
The other axis of the newness matrix is technology uncertainty. This may be due to any of the following factors:
- Innovativeness of technology. Almost without exception, potentially more innovative technologies will be initially associated with greater risks and uncertainties than less innovative technologies. A need in this regard is to be able to identify what is genuinely a technological innovation and what is simply an extension of existing technology. While formal knowledge will usually be needed to deal with totally new technologies, there will exist known-to-work approaches that allow one to cope with extensions of existing technologies.
- Number of constituent technologies. Uncertainty may well increase geometrically, rather than arithmetically, with the number of technologies involved in an innovation. For example, successful development of HDTV requires integration of three emerging technologies: flat-screen video displays, digital video transmission, and very high-speed processing of digital video data. Success needs to be obtained in all three, and this results in current substantial technological uncertainty.
- Manufacturing difficulties.
- Institutional changes. Required to bring about process improvements such as to lead to high quality and trustworthy products [14].
Another taxonometric dimension for consideration is the type of unit involved in a possible emerging engineering technology effort, and the nature of the technology itself. Horwitch and Prahalad [22] have identified three ideal organizational modes, and we can easily add a fourth that concerns the individual innovative researcher, such that we have:
(1) the technological innovation process practiced by the individual researcher in an academic research, or potentially industrial research, laboratory environment;
(2) the technological innovation processes found in small, high technology-oriented firms;
(3) the technological innovation processes that occur in large corporations with multi-products and multi-markets;
(4) those processes found in conglomerates, multi-organizations and transnational multisector enterprises.
The types of technologies most suitable for potential development and/or transfer investigation in each of these four modes of operation will be different, as will the appropriate risk behaviour. It would seem reasonable to augment this model to allow consideration of other modes, such as those due to individual entrepreneurs and government development assistance. Also, the dimensions of the taxonomy could be enlarged through consideration of the roles, potentially very different roles, of the technology developer in organizations of four generic sizes; individual, small to mid-size, large, and multinational. Other desirable augmentations of importance involve the gateways through which a system development must necessarily pass, and the phased life cycles that involve research and development, systems management, and enterprise management.
Of much importance also will be the type of coordination structures, or patterns of information flow and decision-making among a set of agents who accomplish various activities in order to achieve objectives associated with technology development or transfer. The study of Malone and Smith [28] illustrates that, both for human organizations and computer systems, these structures are very important in determining production costs, coordination costs, and system vulnerability to crises of various types. Decentralized markets, functional hierarchies, product hierarchies, and centralized markets are the four fundamental structures, with functional hierarchies and centralized markets being further characterized as small-scale or large-scale. The historical evolution over time of these is in the order listed. Since market pull is generally the dominant force in the long-term success of technological innovations, it is appropriate to devote abundant attention to establishing coordination structures and associated perspectives that will enable successful development of a selected technology. It would be particularly interesting to associate the following different patterns of information flow and coordination:
- goals to be achieved, or products or services to be produced (products);
- people who perform various tasks (task processors);
- people who decide which tasks should be done (task managers);
- people who decide which task processors should perform individual tasks (functional managers); and
- communications between people (information or message patterns), with different approaches to development and/or transfer of technologies so as to obtain the most appropriate relationships between organizational communications and coordination, and the development and operational implementation of specific engineering technologies in a developing nation. Figure 10 indicates some general relations among these five elements. Again, it illustrates that we have a dynamic process and that the evolution of the process variables over time is a very important consideration.
Figure 10 Conceptual illustration of dynamics and information flow and coordination in information technology development
5. Phased life cycles for system acquisition
These discussions lead us rather naturally to a set of systems engineering life cycles for acquisition of a large system. First, I will consider initial development of an emerging technology. Then, I will examine systems management, or systems engineering, of a product. Finally I will look at some notions of enterprise management.
One possible life cycle for emerging technology identification and assessment, and preliminary implementation, is comprised of two major phases, and can be further characterized by seven phases:
(1) Technology Identification and Assessment
(a) scouting and identification of requirements specifications for candidate engineering technologies;
(b) authoritative information documentation concerning technological, economic, and societal need for and feasibility of the technologies;
(c) assessment and evaluation of the technologies;
(d) selection of appropriate technologies for initial development and implementation;(2) Preliminary Operational Implementation
(a) tracking of the progress of development and implementation concerning all aspects of the candidate engineering technology;
(b) supporting the operational implementation of the technology in ways that are meaningful to the technology itself and the results obtained in the earlier phases of the process; and
(c) disengaging from studies that prove to be productive and that have been successfully transferred, or that indicate productivity or risk potentials beyond critical thresholds.
These seven phases are also formally the seven phases [58, 55] that can, with slight modifications in the activities for each phase, be used to identify and nurture emerging technologies that may ultimately be nurtured to the point where they have potential for additional efforts that might lead to new products and services. These seven phases are used in the literature of the National Science Foundation's Emerging Engineering Technology Research Initiative, and were first suggested to this author by Dr. Nicholas DeClaris. The critical attributes of potential development technologies should be identified as part of the initial phases of the process. These should be identified in the form of indicators that will enable early identification of a potentially successful technology. Among these attributes are: innovativeness, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, and profitability of the products, concepts, or services of the technology under consideration. Identification of productive environments for potential technology development and transfer candidates is also a need. It is not difficult to characterize the appropriate environment as one in which a highly motivated group of people are free to pursue potentially unusual ideas, as well as not so unusual ideas. The environment should be one that recognizes and rewards success and that also recognizes that there will be some failures. It must be a sense-of-urgency environment, in that the utility of any need, idea, or actual product is temporal.
The critical attributes of a technology development and transfer process should be identified in the form of indicators that will enable early identification of a potentially successful technology. Among these attributes are: innovativeness, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, and profitability of the technology products, concepts, or services. In our discussions thus far, we have emphasized the early phases of the process. There is, of course, a major need to be concerned with all seven of the phases and to support the usual product life cycle through these. I have emphasized the early phases in the discussion here only because quality products here are so critical to success of the overall process.
The latter phases of the technology development and transfer process and effective support to the entire life cycle of product development are especially important today due to the rapid shrinking of the time between technology conceptualization and subsequent product emergence. The major causes of this shrinkage would appear to be the increased intensity and significance of international competitiveness and the technological changes made possible by information technology - such as computer-aided design and manufacturing methods. One result of these two primary factors, and a host of secondary ones as well, is a shortening of the life cycle of the typical product process, or service. Another result is the ever increasing importance of knowledge as a driving force in competitive strategies. These statements appear essentially invariant, although the specific interpretation and associated implementation may well differ across particular developing and developed economies.
Figure 11 presents an interrelated sequence of two life cycles that comprise an emerging technology R&D life cycle and a systems management life cycle. To this could be added an enterprise management for product evolution life cycle, or any of several others. Recent works by Rouse [49, 50] illustrate the interrelatedness of these quite well and the need for innovation in all of them. A particular need at this time is for efforts that involve the careful integration of the R&D life cycle of emerging technology with product development life cycles for maximum competitive advantage, and a number of contemporary publications are concerned with various aspects of the many associated issues. Roussel, Saad, and Erickson [51] are particularly concerned with concepts for R&D management as a strategic competitive weapon and needed linkages between R&D management and corporate strategy. Raelin [38] is particularly concerned with corporate cultures, professional cultures, and social cultures; and the implications of these for various management aspects relating to salaried professionals. A work edited by Goodman and Sproull [18] is broadly concerned with the ways in which contemporary technology blurs existing organizational structures and functions and changes the nature of work in an organization. It also illustrates how and why potentially more valuable technologies may not be used effectively, and how and why inferior technologies sucked at a lower ultimate performance limit.
Figure 11 Technology development/transfer support to the general technological innovation process
Edosomwan [13] is especially concerned with the close relationship between technological innovation and management and the use of technologies in the workplace and associated product development. Specific guidelines and a framework for technology management, utilization, and forecasting are provided. The major suggestions include:
- provision of facilities for human resource development to enable individuals and organizations to contend with rapid technological and societal change;
- provision of continuous support for R&D efforts through effective systems management;
- identification and implementation of strategies and management controls to effectively interface organizations to their external environments;
- furnish appropriate methodologies and methods to manage technical resource and organizational complexities brought about by rapid technological change;
- identify appropriate relationships between technological innovation and product manufacturability and marketability; and
- evaluate unceasingly the positive and negative impacts of technologies in the work culture and environment, and provide corrective strategies and tactics as needed.
