6.3Technology Strategy and Business Industry

In technology strategy and business industry, it helps to first grasp the big picture of how to leverage technology in management (MOT, innovation, roadmaps), then broaden out to the concrete AI technologies prominent in recent exams, the business systems (POS, EDI, etc.) specific to each industry, and e-business. Level 3 pushes into the names of the barriers an innovation must cross to become a business, and the countermeasure needed at each stage.

6.3.1MOT and innovation

• MOT (Management of Technology) is a management philosophy for connecting technical strength to business results and corporate value. It distinguishes three barriers where strong technology can still fail to become a business: the "devil's river," where research stalls for lack of continued funding; the "valley of death," where funds and people fall short in turning research into a product; and "Darwin's sea," where a finished product still loses out in market competition. The level-3 point is judging what support (funding, partnerships, market testing, etc.) is needed at each stage.
• Innovation is creating unprecedented value through the reform of technology or mechanisms. Distinguish sustaining innovation, which merely improves existing products, from disruptive innovation, which disrupts and replaces existing markets and products. Open innovation is a method that generates innovation not by relying solely on in-house technology and knowledge but by incorporating technology and ideas from outside (other companies, universities, startups, etc.); it comes up in contexts where an external partnership supplies the funding or technology needed to cross the valley of death. A technology roadmap is a plan diagram, laid out along a time axis, showing the technologies a company should hold or acquire and when and into which product/business they will be deployed.