3 Technology Strategy: Choosing Directions

The best manufacturing companies innovate to succeed. Companies whose strategies are to only copy and follow sometimes survive but never win. There are two critical questions for technology strategy:

Are the technologies being pursued by the company the ones the market will need? Have all high-potential technologies been considered and solutions not been locked in too soon? In a slightly different form, this question is: What new technologies and products may the competition come up with? As time to market increasingly shortens, the answers to these questions become more critical and involve more risk for the company.

Technology is pivotal for business success, and a company must bet on the next winning technology time and again. Its speculation is usually based on a reasoned understanding of the present and past. More often than not, it's just a hunch. Magazine articles and business school case studies contain a plethora of examples of business flops due to poor technology strategy.