Wharton On Managing Emerging Technologies

Summary:

Emerging technologies are the future for many industries and will tranform many existing industries. As defined in the preface, "Wharton Emerging technologies Management Research Program was established in 1994 and was comprised of faculty and senior executives to analyze emerging tech and develop strategies for its success across all lines of an organization. The preface defined 7 different priorities top help managing emerging technologies.

The first chapter talked about the disruption emerging technologies can have on an organization and that a required mindset and skillset are needed to be successful in the implementation process. Emerging technologies can do great things for companies and create new opportunities and competitive advantages. But, it can also destroy a business if not carefully planned. Emerging tech can have great complexity and uncertainty which create great challenges for an organization to manage. Understanding knowledge from experiements, experience, and how a customer uses the technology can help give organizations an upper hand with deriving and implementing emerging technology. But, learning from the mistakes is an invaluable lesson. The paradox a company must accept in order to be successful - commit but be flexible. There are few simple answers in emerging technology and learning managing the ambiguity can lead to the best rewards.

Comments:
Necessity is the mother of invention - pioneers are able to identify and understand the necessities and develop strategies to exploit these ideas. But, as the book stated, many pioneers fail. Companies should understand that implementing and investing in emerging technologies are risky but the rewards can be great. Apple didn't get to be #1 in the portable music device market by waiting to see what other companies were doing. They learned quickly from projects like the Newton handheld that if it doesn't catch on, try to reinnovate the product (i.e. the new iphone). I'm interested to see how the other chapters outline the framework for managing the technology and examples of how other companies have succeeded and failed.