The Importance of Technology and Innovation Management
Technology innovation management has become an increasingly crucial aspect of successful organizations. Drexel LeBow graduates with this co-major possess sought-after skills for traditional and emerging digital economies.
This course introduces fundamental concepts, theories, and debates related to technology innovation management. You will explore how people, technological, organizational, and contextual factors shape technology innovation management practices.
Adopting Emerging Technologies
Many companies are turning to emerging technologies to enhance technology and innovation management, including solutions such as cloud computing, data analytics, and mobile devices. Though these may pose high risks, their implementation can also bring enormous advantages. Unfortunately, making such transitions may prove challenging due to changing business processes and culture before adopting these innovations.
One effective solution to this challenge is establishing a governance structure to oversee the implementation of new technologies. A leadership team should include representatives of all affected departments and stakeholders as this can facilitate mediation of conversations while making sure everyone involved understands its goals and objectives. Communication training and tracking are smoother processes.
TB801's first block introduces you to the concepts and debates surrounding technology and innovation management. Here, you will explore how people, technological, organizational, and contextual (PTOC) factors influence innovation; their effect can affect managing technology. Furthermore, you'll explore contemporary forms of innovation, such as frugal social eco-innovations.
Fostering an Innovative Organizational Culture
Businesses require an environment that encourages creativity and risk-taking for successful innovation. Employers can promote this by allowing employees to share their ideas and innovations. Companies should also strive to create an atmosphere that supports diversity and inclusion - something Procter & Gamble excels at doing with Tide Pods and Crest Whitestrips, among many others!
Business leaders play an essential role in cultivating an innovative culture. They should set an example by being open to new ideas and processes while providing employees with spaces designed for experimentation and brainstorming - physical locations such as innovation hubs, hackathons, or virtual platforms offering ideation challenges.
Organizations should also recognize and reward employee innovations, which can encourage employees and foster a sense of ownership over the company's success, serving as an example to other staff.
Research and Development Management
Research and development (R&D) management involves creating new products or enhancing existing ones through research and development (R&D). To do this effectively requires employing professionals with extensive industry-related technology knowledge and experienced project managers able to prevent overruns in any project's cost or scope.
R&D management encompasses transferring knowledge from R&D to other departments within a company and ensuring all relevant information is accessible and shared among appropriate people.
Researchers have observed that firms with high levels of R&D and management innovation outshone those with lower levels of either activity, as the processes, structures, and techniques associated with management innovation help create an ideal organizational context that encourages technological knowledge to be structured, packaged, and leveraged (Damanpour et al. 2009). Furthermore, management innovation may also help remove behavioral barriers preventing high R&D levels from leading directly to product innovations (Birkinshaw et al. 2008).
Intellectual Property Protection and Management
Intellectual property has become essential to modern organizations' business strategies, from their logo and brand name to their products, services, and processes. Therefore, such assets must be safeguarded against infringement - any breach could have severe repercussions for an organization's bottom line.
Intellectual property rights such as patents, trademarks, industrial designs, and copyrights protect new ideas and inventions while incentivizing research and development investments. Furthermore, they act as an investment protection mechanism by safeguarding returns from these investments; their rewards can then be used to support further innovation activities or reward employees who contribute towards company success.
Previous studies have demonstrated the significance of intellectual property protection as an essential determinant in companies' open technological innovation levels. A direct relationship has been observed between patent appropriability and open innovation - likely as increased patent appropriability lowers transaction costs of cooperative networks [42], making companies with effective IP management better at implementing available innovations than those without it.
Technology Investment and Budgeting
Technology and innovation management often involves allocating resources. A critical part of this is budgeting; successful strategies can assist organizations with creating budgets that prioritize innovation goals while still meeting operational and commercial requirements.
An effective budgeting process must consider all costs associated with any tech investment, from staffing and training costs for implementation and training requirements, space needs and space requirements, ongoing maintenance and upgrades, and upgrades over time. Achieve long-term cost savings or improved workflow efficiency through tech investments. It may take longer to become apparent than you think!
Flexible budgeting strategies can also assist organizations with managing unexpected circumstances. Unexpected changes may necessitate companies to reallocate technology budgets in response to unforeseen events, but function-specific budgets, annual cycles, or predetermined allocations can hinder agility. A more flexible, agile budget approach will enable rapid course corrections while still meeting business innovation and growth objectives - and an increasing number of organizations have become adept at this form of budgeting.
Implementing Agile and Adaptive IT Strategies
Companies that implement adaptive strategies are better prepared to adapt and meet the ever-evolving needs of their businesses and customers and anticipate and adapt to technological advancement.
Spotify, the music-streaming service, implemented adaptive innovation methodologies to enhance its business model and product offerings. Instead of traditional project management approaches, such as following an established plan or schedule, agile methods focus on customer delivery rather than following strict timelines.
This approach emphasizes collaboration rather than contract negotiations between teams and customers, making it easier to address clientele needs and faster product development/delivery cycles by shortening project development times.
Implementing an agile strategy allows companies to increase both employee productivity and technology efficacy. However, transformation must match your organization's cadence, context, and aspirations - for instance, it would be unrealistic for all telecom representatives to become self-managing agile teams overnight.
Cybersecurity Management and Protocols
Businesses reliant on technology must implement cybersecurity protocols as a necessary measure to secure their data against hackers and other potential security risks. Such practices also help companies comply with regulations set by government bodies or industry-specific bodies.
Keeping pace with cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities can be challenging; therefore, having a clear strategy is paramount to adequate protection.
Planned security breaches can be reduced through proper planning. An effective plan should include processes that identify all assets, tools, and teams involved in each process. This allows companies to gauge risk management and mitigation procedures and immediately prioritize those that pose higher threat levels while accepting lower risks as they arise.
In addition to creating and implementing cybersecurity plans, FRFIs should create threat models that identify specific cyber attacks posed by third parties that threaten their technology assets and assess them regularly. By doing this, they can significantly increase their cyber security programs and capabilities.
Digital Transformation Initiatives
Digital transformation initiatives are a broad business strategy that uses technology to meet evolving challenges and opportunities. They may involve altering an organization, culture, or people and implementing new technologies into products, services, or experiences. The most successful approaches focus on domains - areas within your business that provide significant value, such as customer journeys, processes, or functions. Managing digital transformation requires using traditional project management practices combined with agile methods to implement change to prioritized domains.
Some businesses use technology to transform themselves through cost reduction, supply chain efficiency improvements, work-from-anywhere environments, and streamlining production. Others use innovation and the creation of new products or services to differentiate from competitors or meet rising customer expectations.
Yet many companies need help implementing digital transformation initiatives, often failing to gain employee buy-in and fully utilize technology. Furthermore, keeping up with market trends, competitive threats, and customer expectations can take time and effort; therefore, an iterative and continuous process should be used.