Customer Reviews

Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies

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This book covers all the bases including human resource planning, financing, managing markets and the all important role of assessing the technologies. A "Must Have" text for anyone chartered with the task of managing the chaotic and fast paced world of emerging technologies.

This book is extreemely well organized and carries the reader through the entire management process. It reinforced and validated many aspects of managing this type of technology that were I personally had to learn by trial and error. Likewise, it provided new alternatives and other key learnings that made reading the book a worthwhile experience. It provides an alternate and improved framework for evaluating this new type of technology, while exposing the pitfalls of applying traditional evaluation techniques.

It's a tremendous book about emerging technologies which many medium to large companies and executives have to tackle with in this new era. Although the book has been written by a group of academics it's very much applied to real life cases and companies. Even the first two chapters of the book can be sold seperate as an executive summary for the subject.Mr.Hakan Eminsoy hakan.eminsoy@fibabank.com.tr from Istanbul , Turkey

I bought this book on the advice from a friend and was pleasantly surprised. As a founder/CEO of a rapidly growing fiber optic business (where today's Intellectual Property can become tomorrow's dogfood) , I found the book to be a great combination of well-researched information and street-smart insights. A great companion for developing pre-emptive strategies in a technology driven economy.

It's a good anthology of perspectives about where new technologies come from and the problems of getting them adopted in the marketplace. HOWEVER, don't expect to see descriptions of the next big thing or even how to identify the next big thing. The authors are pretty clear about saying that there's no way to identify which emerging technology is going to take off. See Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan for why.

This is one of the volumes which comprise a series published by John Wiley & Sons. It was edited by George S. Day and Paul J.H. Schoemaker with Robert E. Gunther. (Day and Schoemaker are co-authors of the recently published Peripheral Vision, published by Harvard Business School Press.) In the first two chapters which serve as an introduction, they suggest that a "different game" with different rules is now being played, and suggest how to avoid the various "pitfalls" of merging technologies. The material which then follows is carefully organized within Four Parts.

"Assessing Technologies": Day and Schoemaker explore technologies' various paths of development, recommend frameworks for evaluating them, and suggest what the role of government should be during the emergence of both technologies and industries.

"Managing Markets": They examine why emerging markets (so different from mature technology markets) require new approaches to research and assessment.

"Making Strategy": They explore the various demands of strategy formulation in emerging technology firms which include the need to combine discipline and imagination, the use of scenario planning, and strategies for dividing the joint gains.

"Investing for the Future": In this final Part, Day and Schoemaker offer insights on using real options to help assess the value and potential of emerging technologies for projects in which NPV may be negative.

For whom will this brilliant book be most valuable? I suggest two different groups of decision-makers. First, those in organizations which have begun - or are about to begin - development of technologies which they hope can achieve and then sustain a competitive advantage and require expect guidance on how to manage those technologies effectively. Also, those in organizations which need expert advice when confronted technologies (developedelsewhere) which will create disruption of a given competitive marketplace and thus pose a serious threat.

For executives in both groups, there really is a "different game to be played," one which has different rules. Winning or losing that game may well depend on understanding the issues and concepts which Day and Schoemaker explain with both rigor and eloquence in this book.

Those who share my high regard for it are urged to check out Day and Schoemaker's aforementioned Peripheral Vision as well Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation, Geoffrey Moore's Dealing with Darwin, Kellogg on Innovation & Technology co-edited by Ranjay Gulati, Mohanbir Sawhney, and Anthony Paoni, The Future of Technology edited by Tom Standage, Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Joel Mokyr`s The Lever of Riches.

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