Strategy and technology management: An innovation-leader case study

This paper studies a Portuguese academic start-up company, an acknowledged innovation leader in its sector, in two critical phases of its strategic development: (1) the founding of the company by a group of successful university engineering researchers in 2000 (2) its bid for internationalization in 2010. In the first case PESTLE and Porters Five Forces are the principal strategic tools which are applied while in the latter SWOT analysis is employed and this in turn leads to the identification of possible strategic options for internationalization of the company in 2010. Subsequently the company´s actual strategic choices are described. In conclusion there is a critical discussion of the case for the use of SWOT Analysis in strategic technology management and proposals are made for the inclusion of strategic analysis tools in engineering and technology courses.