Technology Evaluation under Information Inadequacy

Assessing the benefits of a new technology can be a foremost concern for managers in technologically-intensive companies. Increasingly, technological complexity is combined with higher uncertainty (market and technology) and often decreasing budgets. This is particularly true in the case of converging technologies where markets have yet to fully emerge. The result is a need for ever more efficient resource allocation, particularly concerning the choice of R&D projects. In recent years progress has been made on techniques and methods to assess and value technological assets. Unfortunately, many of these require good estimations of future market conditions. However, the time required for technology development means that investment decisions typically have to be made when future market conditions are still uncertain. This paper is part of ongoing research that seeks to understand which technology valuation techniques perform best in the presence of ambiguity, complexity and imperfect or even absent information. Preliminary results are presented for the effectiveness of a technique for the structuring and manipulation of existing knowledge and thoughts (value roadmapping - an exploratory/divergent form of technology roadmapping).