- Scoping - scope and domain of the technology should be based on the firms capabilities + the opportunity and threats as a result of the technology. Scoping is the direction based on the companies core competencies.
- Searching - determine the sources and information to follow to determine feasibility and viability. This is usually done by looking internal to the company for new technologies, external companies such as universities and governments, and external literature such as Lexis Nexis and other trade publications. Look for strong signals-citations in publications and following the action of the firms competitors. Keeping track of this information is crucial when searching for emerging technologies.
- Evaluating - technology should be evaluated against the capabilities of the company and the needs of the target market. These technologies are ranked based on financial, risk, and other criteria to determine impact on the firm and the potential market.
- Committing - how the firm should choose to proceed with the technology. Before a company commits resources, time, and money into a technology, they typically follow four types of strategies -"watch and wait" to see how the technology evolves and see how the technology is implemented and perform a quick taker, "Position and Learn" to learn more about the technology and place the firm in a position to implement, "Sense and Follow" is when the company invests the money and chooses to implement, "Believe and Lead" the firm fully commits its resources.
The four step approach allows the firm to find the technology for the customers that will be sustainable in the market, gathers information about the technology by examing the competition and information from external publications, evaluates the data collected from the "searching" phase, and makes a recommendation on whether to fully commit and implement or wait and watch to see how things change in the market.
This approach has been used by Sony with the introduction of the mini disc player. Sony created a device that allowed consumers to listen to digital music on a tiny music player that was not succeptible to the same issues of carrying CD's. The mini discs were small, lightweight, and protected from accidental scratching due to the plastic encasement that covered the mini CD. The technology hit the markets and performed very well in Europe but struggled in the US markets. With competitors using small, large-capacity hard drives and flash memory, the mini discs could not compete in storage capacity. Mini discs also required proprietary disc drives to read the media outside of it's native player. But, the minidisc was the building block for the next generation of portable music players like the iPod with it's non-skip technology of buffering the music into temporary memory (http://www.minidisc.org/minidisc_faq.html)
