Technology Integration: Making Critical Choices in a Dynamic World (Management of Innovation and Change)
The premise of this book is simple: In a rapidly changing environment, traditional R & D is doomed. The   alternative is technology integration, not to replace R & D but to "leverage both capabilities by managing their   interaction." The best way to achieve that is to design a process: create teams with basic knowledge,   developmental ability and implementation experience; make sure they receive input from end users and marketing;   allow them to iterate and experiment often using that input; and make sure they expect change.Iansiti's background--he holds a doctorate in solid-state physics and is on the faculty at Harvard Business School--informs this unusual book. As a research monograph and a management primer, it can be read by disparate audiences.On the research side, it summarizes Iansiti's six-year study of more than 100 R & D projects in the United States,   Europe and Japan in four areas: mainframes, semiconductors, workstations and Internet software. He explains the   fieldwork, performance and outcome measures used to evaluate the effectiveness of each project.On the management side, companies that emphasize process over product are generally more successful than those that   do not. The names that emerge from Iansiti's analysis are not surprising: Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, Yahoo. But   this list arises from an independent assessment tool.Is his methodology capable of "predicting" corporate behavior? There is a good chance.  --Upside, Stephen E. DeLong