1.4Technology strategy management

Having excellent technology means little if it cannot be connected to business goals and customer value. This section covers ways of thinking about technology management—from the perspective of putting technology to work for the business—and methods for planning the path of development.

1.4.1Technology development strategy (MOT, innovation)

• MOT (Management of Technology) is a management approach that connects technology to business strategy and results, rather than treating it as isolated R&D. Bridging engineers and management is a key part of this.
• Innovation brings significant change to products, services, or ways of working through new technology or ideas. It often refers to discontinuous value creation that goes beyond an extension of the status quo.
• Open innovation actively brings in technology and ideas from outside the company (other companies, universities, research institutions) rather than relying solely on internal resources. It is contrasted with a go-it-alone approach (closed innovation).
• Design thinking is an approach that takes the user's point of view, repeating a cycle of empathy, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing to arrive at a solution. Its distinguishing trait is starting from the user, not from the technology.

1.4.2Technology development planning (technology roadmap)

• A technology roadmap is a plan, laid out along a time axis, showing when particular technologies will mature and which products or businesses they will be applied to. It serves as a common language linking technology development with business strategy.
• The benefit of a technology roadmap: R&D and business units can share the same vision of the future, making it easier to prioritize investment and time external collaboration (open innovation).

Picture an electronics maker launching a next-generation smart-appliance business, and walk through this section's ideas. R&D has so far polished individual component technologies—sensors, communication modules—on their own, but management wants to know clearly which business outcomes each technology connects to. This is where MOT matters: the technology team and management talk through a plan that ties technology investment to business results. Next, aiming for innovation that creates a genuinely new experience, the company adopts an open innovation framework, partnering not just internally but with university labs and startups, bringing in AI technology it did not have in-house. When planning the product, instead of starting from the technology, the team follows a design thinking process that starts from "how do users actually use appliances, and what frustrates them"—repeating user interviews, prototyping, and testing to refine the concept. Finally, the company draws up a technology roadmap showing when each technology will be ready for practical use and which product line it will appear in, sharing this future vision across R&D, the business unit, and external partners. With the roadmap in place, a plan like "sensor technology will be production-ready in two years, and the new product using it will launch in three years" is shared across the whole organization along a clear time axis, making it easier to align investment decisions.

• MOT is not something the technology department does alone—it connects technology to business results through dialogue with management
• Open innovation is a way to gain speed and ideas that would be out of reach alone, by bringing in technology and know-how the company does not have internally
• A technology roadmap functions as a common language across departments and outside partners, aligning the timing of investment decisions

1.4.3Section summary

• MOT connects technology to business strategy and results. Innovation is discontinuous value creation
• Open innovation brings in outside technology and ideas (the opposite of going it alone). Design thinking starts from the user
• A technology roadmap is a plan showing technology and business rollout along a time axis—a common language across departments and partners