International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

We present a series of two special issues with selected papers from PICMET (Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology) conferences held in 2005 and 2006. These issues focus on the path of emerging technologies from planning phase into innovation phase. This issue is the first of the series and focuses on the earlier part of the path. Its theme is "Management of Emerging Technologies". Seven papers investigating different phases of this path are included in this issue.

An organization's knowledge gained through technical conference attendance is generally isolated to the individual(s) attending the event. The aggregate corporate knowledge is extremely limited, unless the organization institutes a process to document and transfer that knowledge to the organization. Even if such a process exists, the knowledge gains are limited to the experiences and communication skills of the individuals attending the conference. Many conference proceedings are now published and provided to attendees in electronic format, such as on CD-ROM and/or published on the internet, such as IEEE conference proceedings listed at . These proceedings provide a rich repository that can be mined. Paper abstract compilations reflect "hot topics," as defined by the researchers in the field, and delineate the technical approaches being applied. R&D profiling can more fully exploit recorded conference proceedings' research to enhance corporate knowledge. This paper illustrates the potential in profiling conference proceedings through use of WebQL information retrieval and TechOasis (VantagePoint) text mining software. It shows how tracking research patterns and changes over a sequence of conferences can illuminate R&D trends, map dominant issues, and spotlight key research organizations.

This paper presents the research on the development of a new concept and methodology called Technology Development Envelope (TDE). The TDE approach is applied to identify the optimum path in developing a technology roadmap in which the company's technology strategies and business strategies are combined. TDE allows the executive level decision makers in corporations, as well as the policy level decision makers in governments to incorporate emerging technologies into the development of technology strategies. The combination of Delphi method and Hierarchical Decision Modeling (HDM) is used as a foundation for building the TDE concept. The judgments from technology developers and technology implementers are utilized in the process to ensure that the technology strategies are in full support of corporate goals and objectives.

Information about technological innovation and its evolutionary path can be explored by patent analysis. Therefore, for those firms which are dependant on large investments and a high business performance, such as stent manufacturers, integrating patent information with business strategy is the critical issue. The competition between stent manufactures is intensifying because of increasing global volume demand and improving technological performance. From a resource-based view, adopting a co-opetition strategy is essential for firms to keep sustainable competitive advantage. Over the last decade, patent rights have become a major tool of the co-opetition strategy. This study analyzes patent data from the USPTO during 1984 to 2005 and constructs patent information indicators to verify the process of technology evolution. On these grounds, we can understand the relative technological position and technological strength of the major manufacturers in this industry and also inspect their changes of position and business scope to examine the relationship between each firm's technology strategy and business strategy.

With increasing global competition, expediting the problem solving process has become crucial in the industry. Techniques such as Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) and Axiomatic Design (AD) have been widely applied for this purpose. TRIZ and AD are very powerful tools with different but complementary strengths. A previously proposed synergistic approach based on TRIZ and AD enhances the individual strengths of these methods by using them within a common framework, thus providing a more powerful methodology for problem solving. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the synergistic approach through a manufacturing related case-study. Considering the importance of validation of engineering models, a validation method for the synergistic approach is discussed based on review of design engineering validation literature.

Futures Analysis Methodologies are reviewed and assessed to determine the most appropriate methodology for assessing the future value of a current investment in a sustainable energy technology. Assessment criteria are defined and each method is evaluated against these criteria. The paper provides preliminary conclusions regarding which methodologies to pursue for the purpose of developing a model to predict the future value of a current energy/environmental technology.

Every technology should be geared to improve the quality of users' lives. The important pre-requisite is to measure the contribution of the technology to quality of life reliably and validly. This study provides a theoretical and empirical basis for the development of better measures for the contribution of a mobile data service technology to the quality of users' lives. The reliability and validity were verified through online surveys in Korea and Japan. The survey results indicated that critical mobile data services could be identified using the measures. Moreover, the critical services were found to be different between Korea and Japan.

Concurrent engineering (CE) has been widely implemented in many industries so that developers can consider all elements of the product lifecycle during the product design phase. However, although concurrent engineering is a very effective approach for product design team-up, it does not help to generate new product concepts. To build a successful innovation model, research has investigated how concurrent engineering can be extended to a new concept which covers not only the downstream phase from design concept to the entire product design process, but also the upstream phase from brainstorming to the generation process of new product concepts. Results show that a product knowledge and innovation (PKI) system based on the concepts of creativity engineering (CE-II), which is extended from the current practice of concurrent engineering, can be used to achieve the goals for both continuous and fusion-type discontinuous innovation.