NOTICIAS 2

Defining Management of Technology

A basic problem in understanding the management of technology begins with the word "technology" itself. Most people, including business executives, think of technology as the exotic, esoteric fringe of science and engineering-synthetic genes, lasers, semi-conductor chips, computers, and the like. This mind-set is part of the reason that so much of business and academic thinking relegates technology to the concern of specialists. Thus, in business it is a common belief that only those executives and managers in so-called high-technology industries need concern themselves with technology. In academia, technology is generally left to schools of engineering.

The Oxford English Dktionary defines technology as "the industrial arts." An even more straightforward definition is "know-how." Technology is the know-how we apply to basic science or to previously developed products, tools, and processes to fashion a solution to a new need. The management of technology task, in that light, becomes at once more mundane and all-pervasive. It simply will not do to view the task as adding more "bells and whistles" to a product or service. Rather, it is necessary to have a comprehensive framework for understanding the myriad ways in which technology affects both strategy and the day-to-day functioning of the business.

Congruence of Strategy and Structure

The foregoing observations have highlighted the strategic aspects of the management of technology so as to illustrate its far-reaching nature. It is necessary, however, before concluding to touch on one essential operational and structural aspect of the management of technology. Strategic Space and Technology Food Chain are useful conceptual frameworks. Filling in the framework requires an organizational structure and corporate policies that induce a climate of continuous innovation-in things large and small and at all levels of the organization. Without this, the potential winning strategies that the framework provides will not be realized. David Nadler and Michael Tushman deal extensively with this essential match of strategy and organization in their "Congruence Model of Organization Behavior"

An example that illustrates the importance of a corporate climate that encourages continuous improvement is Nucor, Inc., which is now the sixth largest U.S. steel company.   Its growth from just another small company was the result of its ability to capitalize on a new technology for making sheet steel. In the mid-1980s, the German firm SMS Schloemann-Semag, KG. demonstrated the technical feasibility of its compact-strip-production steel casting machine. Continuous strip casting had been an elusive goal of the steel industry since the mid-nineteenth century. Each new approach had ended in failure or rejection. One hundred companies visited SMS to assess its technology. Only one company, NUCOR, took the risk of adopting it. Other companies, even the U.S.'s "big steel" companies, clearly understood the importance of process technologies for realizing cost reduction and thus greater competitiveness. Additionally, large U.S. steel companies were being hammered by international competition, thus they were surely motivated to seek out competitive advantage. But for Nucor it was not a staff research person who visited SMS. It was its president, David Aycock, who, at Chairman Ken Iverson's request, traveled to Germany to personally inspect the SMS pilot plant. Nucor had no research staff. It was not a staff team that negotiated with SMS, but Iverson, Aycock, and Samuel Siegel (the chief financial officer) who personally did so. Every aspect of Nucor–from organization (e.g., direct reporting of plant managers to the president) to wage structure (which was heavily weighted toward production bonuses)–focused on individual initiative and innovation.

The resulting culture was one in which there was a willingness to accept risk and take on new challenges. This was the essential ingredient in the successful deployment of the unproven compact-strip-production technology. In short, a corporate climate conducive to innovation and risk-taking, as well as persistence in creating market pull to go with technology push, are concomitant necessities to competitive success in today's global marketplace.