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(III) Where's the Beef? TIM
Technology & innovation management (TIM)
The theory of technology & innovation management (TIM) is a relatively young discipline. I shall refer to some key authors and sources, leaving it up to you to study the details. I shall refer to TIM as if it were one body of knowledge, which is a simplification, which I use for practical reasons.
The theory of TIM tries to establish a model of how a given idea or invention reaches the market place ands stays (competitive) there. In so doing we need basic concepts of the actors/stakeholders, their rationale for existence, their predicted/observed (innovation) behaviour and their interrelatedness.
Basically, TIM is a chapter of elementary business theory in that it challenges classical economic theory’s assumptions of behaviour, rationale and factor conditions of the economic actors. In the “Where’s the Beef” Model, we first try to build a model into which our invention fits business-wise. Once this is done, we must ”populate” the model with real companies, markets and people. Then we must test the model assumptions with the population of targets to get a basis for judgement.Michael Porter has developed a complete body of theory, methodology and empirical evidence (plus a fair amount of misunderstood paraphrasing) to support his view of what makes industries and nations competitive. Industry in his terminology is not the individual legal entity called ”a limited company”, but rather a cluster of stakeholders who shape a given market. This is perhaps one of the most important lessons: we should not assume that the individual legal entity is the locus of innovation. Mr.
Porter has summarized his work in a number of diagrammatic ways. One such diagram is the “Porter Diamond”. Another useful diagram is Porter’s model of the building blocks of what he calls an ”industry” or a ”cluster”. Both diagrams are important, which we shall use as mnemonic devices to develop a methodology for rapid biz planning.
I ask you to prepare yourselves by searching the web for ”Michael Porter supply chain” and ”Michael Porter diamond”. In the BeefBlog I have written and stored interesting articles on Value Chain Analysis
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