Growth Through Innovation: Managing the Technology-Driven Enterprise

Abstract

In many of today’s businesses, we are driven by technology and technology changes fast. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” That is how Alice explains Wonderland in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass”. Most engineers think the same about their business environment. Innovation of new technologies is the name of the game. More than USD 1,400 million are spent worldwide to advance technology. We all have to run to keep the strategic positions against our competitors and we have to run to keep the side-effects of our “running”, our technological progress, under control. Over the last 20 years, researching and teaching at the University of St. Gallen and the ETH in Zurich, we have learnt that in order to cope with today’s managerial know-how, the technical “Red Queen” Game is a patchwork of successful and failed practices, some theory and a plethora of examples. Learning is not easy since feedback is hampered by good and bad luck. There is a big risk to “rationalize” managerial actions in hindsight. In this book, we present insights based on personal experience, both in business and academia, grounded as well on over 50 PhD theses on risk management, innovation and logistics. They are not recipes, but rather background information and alternative concepts about how to approach specific questions in technology and innovation management. We hope they are helpful for students in technology management to get a generic understanding on how the world of technology ticks. The experienced manager will hopefully find some stimulus on how to change her or his approach to cope with today’s fast moving environment. In our executive classes where we taught topics from this book, we found that teaching theory, concepts and examples are only part of the game. The far more important learning process and eye-opener is the transfer to real life. Therefore we attached an Economist article with an up-to-date topic to each chapter: The chapter for grasping information, the Economist article for turning that information into applicable thoughts. We hope you will enjoy plenty of these “Aha”-moments that we have also had together with our students. We would like to thank all the many managers and students for their feedback in the last few years and our many PhDs for their thorough analysis of specific business situations. There were some people that contributed with helpful reviews, graphical illustrations and proof-reading to the book, namely Silvia Boutellier, Annina Coradi, Tamara Aepli, Prof. Dr. Nils Behrmann, Dr. Eric Montagne, and Dr. Nicolas Rohner. Hopefully, this book constitutes some insights for a better understanding of technology and its effects on business, jobs, our environment and last but not least our society. Zurich, Switzerland Roman Boutellier Mareike Heinzen