2Technology strategy management

• 2.1MOT & types of innovation

  Covers management of technology (MOT), which ties technology to business value, and the four axes of innovation—product innovation that changes the product itself vs process innovation that changes how it is made; sustaining innovation that extends the existing performance axis vs disruptive innovation that redraws the market on a new value axis; and self-reliant closed innovation vs open innovation that draws in external resources—and judging which policy to choose under a firm's capability and speed constraints.

• 2.2Innovator's dilemma & technology diffusion

  Covers the structure of the innovator's dilemma, whereby the more established a firm is, the more its focus on existing customers and sustaining technology delays its response to disruptive technology; the chasm that frames the diffusion process by the gap between early adopters and the early majority; the diffusion of innovations (adoption curve) that sorts adopters into five types; the hype cycle that traces the wave of expectation and disillusionment; and the two barriers from research to commercialization, the valley of death and the Darwinian sea—and the judgment of how a leading firm responds to disruptive technology without being bound by existing customers.

• 2.3Technology roadmap & R&D strategy

  Covers the technology roadmap that links market, product, and technology on a time axis to chart the development path; the technology portfolio that evaluates the attractiveness of technologies to hold or acquire and the firm's own position; the technology S-curve that traces a technology's growth and its maturity limit, together with the judgment of switching to a next-generation technology; the patent strategy that defends and attacks differentiation; industry-academia collaboration that brings in external knowledge; and the core technology to lock up—and judging where and how to allocate limited R&D resources.

• 2.4Design thinking & new business development

  Covers design thinking, which discovers problems from empathy with users and iterates prototyping and testing; lean startup / MVP, which quickly validates hypotheses with a minimal product; the business model canvas, which visualizes a business's elements in nine blocks; and organizational ambidexterity (exploration and exploitation of knowledge), which reconciles deepening the existing business with exploring new domains—and judging, in a new business of high market uncertainty, between "build it out fully, then launch" and "test small and learn."