COMMERCIALIZING NASCENT TECHNOLOGY - THE CASE OF LASER-DIODES AT SONY

To develop really new products, a company often needs to get a handle on really new technologies. Although some breakthrough products simply combine existing technologies in novel ways, other innovations requir e the successful commercialization of nascent technologies. In other w ords, such innovations depend on entirely Mew structures and methods t hat have been demonstrated in a research environment but have not yet been refined to the point where they are ready for production. The pat h from nascent technology to full-scale production presents numerous m anagerial challenges that must be overcome if a company is to develop really new products that involve really new technologies. Samuel Wood and Gary Brown discuss these challenges, and they describe methods for managing the successful commercialization of nascent technologies. Th ey illustrate these methods by examining Sony's commercialization of l aser diodes-semiconductor devices that play an important role in the o peration of CD players and other optical disk readers. They divide the process of commercializing nascent technology into three stages: appr opriation, implementation, and manufacture. The first stage-appropriat ion-involves monitoring, assessing, and capturing new technologies. So ny handles this stage with a small, loosely structured research organi zation, separate from the development organization. In this stage, man agement must ensure that the objectives pursued by the research organi zation support the development organization's long-term goals. To fost er coordination between research and development, Sony employs such ne twork-building techniques as internal research symposia and technology expositions, orientation periods for researchers, transferring manage rs between research and development and transferring researchers to de velopment and other functions. The implementation stage involves trans ferring knowledge to development, as well as refining the technology t o the point where it is reproducible, testable, and documented Sony fa cilitates technology commercialization by transferring project team me mbers from research to development and making those people responsible for implementation. To reach the final stage, manufacture, the firm m ust find the means for developing and refining mass production tools a nd procedures. Meeting this challenge requires close interaction and i ntegration between process and production engineers.