Technology and innovation management

As we move toward the third millennium mankind is experiencing one of the most profound changes in its history. That change is the shift from the material-based society to a knowledge-based society driven by technological know-how. Every aspect of life is being affected by technology, every corner of the world is feeling the impact of rapid technological changes. We are entering a new era whose characteristics are shaped by technological innovations. It is clear that the challenges of the next few decades will be very different from the challenges of the last few decades. The key challenge will be to harness technology and to manage it for competitive advantage. Those who are successful at it will rise above the others and be the dominant forces of the next century; those who cannot manage technology will simply be reduced to memories left over from the past. This paper addresses the emerging issues in managing innovation and technology at the threshold of the new millennium, and describes how technology-based organizations can prepare themselves to meet the challenges of the technology era. When the term “technology” is used in this paper, it is not restricted to the hardware and software combination. Those are seen as the outputs of technology, not the technology itself. Technology refers to the knowledge system that produces the results in the form of those outputs