Chris Floyd’s book is aimed at higher level corporate managers, who have the task of setting technology priorities and allocating appropriate resources in manufacturing based organisations. It seeks to present “frameworks to guide thinking and tools and techniques to assist in analysis”. The author’s background, as a senior management consultant with Arthur D Little, has allowed him access to the company’s own frameworks, and he has also used plenty of examples which presumably come from his own work. The book is structured carefully, with 11 short chapters, each explaining a particular aspect of the subject.
The book starts with the assertion that technology allows companies to differentiate, reduce costs, develop new businesses and support change. The second chapter uses short examples from Glaxo and TI, to illustrate the corporate role of technology. An adaptation of work by Teece (1986) illustrates very clearly the risks and rewards of technology leadership. It is the third chapter, however, entitled “Assessing technology position”, which is of interest to operations strategists. This chapter presents a highly simplified methodology of technology selection, which has strong echoes of familiar manufacturing strategy frameworks, e.g. Hill (1993), without any specific reference to them. The five steps to corporate success apparently are,
- 1
Identify current product/market segments.
- 2
Identify the bases of competition.
- 3
Assess the implied key factors for success.
- 4
Identify relevant technologies.
- 5
Select the strategically important technologies.
The principal bases for competition include product performance, price, quality, availability, delivery performance and after sales service. Disappointingly, linkage between an overall operations strategy and its technology element is not made with any degree of authority or sophistication. The thrust of the rest of the chapter takes a somewhat narrow approach to assessment and justification. There is no discussion of issues such as the desirable degree of adoption of technology within operations or the degree of integration.
A chapter entitled “Developing technology strategies” presents simple frameworks for the assessment of R&D investment in new technology. It is in this chapter that the consulting frameworks come thick and fast. There is a 2 × 2 matrix and a 3 × 3 matrix for looking at business unit R&D investment, flowcharts and checklists for project management and portfolio planning tools. The following chapters look at technology forecasting, buying new technology, selling technology and structuring technology activities. Each one covers the basic ground, without going into any significant depth.
One of the biggest opportunities missed within the book, in my opinion, is in the chapter “Making it happen”. Even at the highest levels of corporations, implementation of leading edge technologies is a major task. The fail points, according to Floyd, are the company’s culture and informal operating practices. The recommendations he presents are to create an innovative climate, to encourage teamworking and to break down barriers between technologists and non‐technologists. At no point does the author really convey the full difficulties that many organisations observe at the implementation stage of technology development. As a consequence, the advice seems over‐simplistic and often falls far short of achieving a full, robust answer. The impact of technology on organisation systems and practices (and its relevance at the implementation stage) are simply not addressed. Issues such as the importance of timing of the implementation, or of particular stages of development, are not explored. Considering the wealth of information in the public domain which explains how key technologies have been badly implemented, it is surprising to see so little of this evaluated here.
Overall, the book is well intentioned and has an easy accessible style. The frameworks and consultancy tools within the book may well be of interest to practitioners (although the graphic quality of the diagrams is often poor). However, the book has sacrificed detail and content and an academic audience may not appreciate this.
