JOMO KENYATTA UNIVERSITY

OF
AGRICULTURE & TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF OPEN, DISTANCE &

eLEARNING
IN COLLABORATION WITH
SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCES $
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY

BIT 2224 INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

LAST REVISION ON November 4, 2013

CALVIN OTIENO
(otienocalvins22@[Link])

P.O. Box 62000, 00200

Nairobi, Kenya
BIT 2224 INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
Course description
Importance of technological innovation for competitiveness, the innovation pro-
cess, elements of innovation strategy - accepting the challenge, formulating and
implementing strategy, and delivering value - managing research & development
(R&D), new product development, collaboration, commercialisation and produc-
tion and operations. Innovation and the dynamics of technological change. The
interactive and non-linear nature of innovation. Theory and practice of processes
of technology transfer and diffusion: Commercialization of technology; intellectual
property rights. Product innovation: impact of product innovation; success factors
for product innovation; developing a product innovation strategy: Interactive learn-
ing and networks of innovation: technology Platforms; firms taxonomy. Systems
of Innovation and the corporate value chai n: fostering clustering effects. Regional
innovation strategies.

Prerequisite:None

Course aims
The goal of this course is to drive home concepts, models, frameworks, and tools
that managers need in a world where creativity and innovation is fast becoming a
pre-condition for competitive advantage. The students will develop the ability to
understand the issues in and utilize the methods businesses need in order to effec-
tively manage innovation and technology.

Learning outcomes
Upon completion of this course you should be able to;

1. appreciate the complexities of relationships between business, technology in-

novation and its environment

2. Develop a mind set as well as a tool set to enable them to correctly select the
models required to provide their organizations value.

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 3. Use interaction and discussions on cases with their team members and the
entire class in order to present and defend their arguments.

4. Use both team experience and individual efforts to master the fundamentals
of management of technology and innovation.

5. Demonstrate advanced knowledge and understanding of concepts, theories

and cases relating to technology innovation management approaches

6. Understand the contribution of strategy and leadership to issues relating to

technology innovation management

Instruction methodology
A series of lectures to provide inputs on concepts and theoretical frameworks, tu-
torials where theories are applied by use of case studies and other interactive exer-
cises. Student groups present their analysis of cases and exercises and receive oral
feedback. In addition the module will include videos, site visits and guest speakers.
Overhead projector and computer, handouts, white boards, textbooks, appropriate
software.

Course Text Books

1. Tidd, J. and Bessant, J. (2009) Managing Innovation: Integrating Technolog-
ical, Market and Organizational Change, 4th edition, Chichester: John Wiley.

2. Drucker, P. (2007) Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Classic Drucker Collec-

tion) 2nd edition, Butterworth-Heinemann.

3. Fagerberg, J., Mowery, D. and Nelson, R (Eds.) (2006) The Oxford Hand-
book of Innovation, Oxford University Press.

Course Journals
1. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation

2. International Journal of Innovation and Technology

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Assessment information
The module will be assessed as follows;

• Cats, class and group activities 30%

• Written examinations 70%.

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Contents

1 Innovation And Technology Transfer 1

1.1 Innovation Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.1 Business and economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
• Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 The 8 Phases of an Innovation Management Process 6

2.1 Setting the goals for the process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.1 Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.2 Combination of ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.3 Evaluation of innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.4 Testing the ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.5 Execution of innovation implementation . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.6 Assessment of innovation life cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3 How to Harness the Power of Process Innovation 10

4 Technology And Innovation Approaches 13

4.1 Descriptive approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2 Critical approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
• Group theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
• Analytic theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5 Competitive Intelligence 21

6 Product Competition And Competitor Analysis 26

6.1 Competitor array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.2 Competitor profiling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.3 Media scanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

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CONTENTS CONTENTS

6.4 New competitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

7 Market research 33
7.1 Market research for business Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.1.1 Market information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.1.2 Market segmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.1.3 Market trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.1.4 SWOT Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

8 Research And Development 36

8.1 New product development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
8.1.1 The eight stage of Research and Development . . . . . . . . 37
8.1.2 Fuzzy Front End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

9 Product Development Strategies 47

9.0.3 Visibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
9.0.4 Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
9.0.5 Legibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
9.0.6 Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
9.0.7 Rhetorical situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
• Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
• Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
• Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

10 Legal And Ethical Issues In Technology And Innovation 53

10.1 Copyrights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
10.1.1 Limitations of Copyrights on computer works . . . . . . . . 53
10.1.2 Patents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
10.1.3 Trade secrete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
10.2 Protection of Computer Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
10.2.1 Protecting hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
10.2.2 Protecting firmware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
10.2.3 Protecting object and source code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
10.2.4 Protecting documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
10.3 Rights of Employers And Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

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CONTENTS CONTENTS

10.3.1 Ownership of products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

10.3.2 Ownership of a patent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
10.3.3 Ownership of a copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
10.3.4 Work for hire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
10.3.5 Licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
10.3.6 Trade secrete protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
10.3.7 Employment contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Solutions to Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 1
Innovation And Technology Transfer

Innovation is the application of new solutions that meet new requirements, inartic-
ulate needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective
products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to
markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as some-
thing original and new that "breaks in to" the market or into society. One usually
associates to new phenomena that are important in some way. A definition of the
term, in line with these aspects, would be the following: "An innovation is some-
thing original, new, and important in whatever field that breaks in to (or obtains a
foothold in) a market or society.
While something novel is often described as an innovation, in economics, manage-
ment science and other fields of practice and analysis it is generally considered a
process that brings together various novel ideas in a way that they have an impact
on society.
Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better
and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the
creation of the idea or method itself.
Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing
something different rather than doing the same thing better.
It’s much better to think of innovation as a process than to think of it as an event. I
think about it as the process of idea management inside an organisation. This means
that in order to innovate effectively, you not only have to generate great ideas, but
you have to select the ones that you want to invest in, then execute them, figure
out how to keep people inside the organisation committed as you go through the
process, then get the new ideas to spread out in the world. And if one part of that
process goes wrong, then your innovation efforts will likely fail.
That’s kind of scary.
One of the tools that I use to help organisations assess where they are is the In-
novation Value Chain which helps assess how effective an organisation is at each
[Link] you start measuring, it turns out that organisations rarely suffer from not
having enough good ideas. I’ve had my MBA and Executive Education students
assess their own organisations for a few years now. They have analysed more than

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

200 organisations, which cover nearly every type that you can imagine: big multina-
tionals, small 1 or 2 person firms, for profits, not-for-profits, government agencies,
schools, churches, high tech firms, low tech firms. Out of those 200+ organisations,
fewer than 10 have idea problems.

1.1. Innovation Views

Due to its widespread effect, innovation is an important topic in the study of eco-
nomics, business, entrepreneurship, design, technology, sociology, and engineering.
In society, technological innovation aids in comfort, convenience, and efficiency in
everyday life cite . It can also lead to negative effects such as pollution or exploita-
tion. For instance, the benchmarks in railroad equipment and infrastructure added
to greater safety, maintenance, speed, and weight capacity for passenger services.
These innovations included wood to steel cars, iron to steel rails, stove heated to
steam heated cars, gas lighting to electric lighting, diesel powered to electric diesel
locomotives. By the mid 20th century, trains were making longer, faster, and more
comfortable trips at lower costs for [Link] areas that add to everyday
quality of life include: the innovations to the light bulb from incandescent to com-
pact fluorescent then LED technologies which offer greater efficiency, durability
and brightness; adoption of modems to cellular phones, paving the way to smart-
phones which supply the public with internet access any time or place; cathode ray
tube to flat screen LCD televisions and others.
Innovation is not only a modern phenomenon. Classicist Armand D’Angour has
argued that Ancient Greece provides a model for innovation and reactions to it.
Innovation is the development of new value through solutions that meet new needs,
or adding value to old customers by providing new ways of maximizing their current
level of productivity. It is the catalyst to growth.

1.1.1. Business and economics

In business and economics, innovation is the catalyst to growth. With rapid ad-
vancements in transportation and communications over the past few decades, the
old world concepts of factor endowments and comparative advantage which focused
on an area’s unique inputs are outmoded for today’s global economy. Economist
Joseph Schumpeter, who contributed greatly to the study of innovation, argued that
industries must incessantly revolutionize the economic structure from within, that

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

is innovate with better or more effective processes and products, such as the shift
from the craft shop to factory. He famously asserted that “creative destruction is
the essential fact about capitalism. In addition, entrepreneurs continuously look for
better ways to satisfy their consumer base with improved quality, durability, ser-
vice, and price which come to fruition in innovation with advanced technologies
and organizational strategies.
One prime example is the explosive boom of Silicon Valley startups out of the
Stanford Industrial Park. In 1957, dissatisfied employees of Shockley Semicon-
ductor, the company of Nobel laureate and co-inventor of the transistor William
Shockley, left to form an independent firm, Fairchild Semiconductor. After sev-
eral years, Fairchild developed into a formidable presence in the sector. Eventually,
these founders left to start their own companies based on their own, unique, latest
ideas, and then leading employees started their own firms. Over the next 20 years,
this snowball process launched the momentous startup company explosion of infor-
mation technology firms. Essentially, Silicon Valley began as 65 new enterprises
born out of Shockley’s eight former employees.

• Organizations
In the organizational context, innovation may be linked to positive changes in effi-
ciency, productivity, quality, competitiveness, market share, and others. However,
recent research findings highlight the complementary role of organizational culture
in enabling organizations to translate innovative activity into tangible performance
improvements.
All organizations can innovate, including for example hospitals, universities, and
local governments. For instance, former Mayor Martin O’Malley pushed the City
of Baltimore to use CitiStat, a performance-measurement data and management
system that allows city officials to maintain statistics on crime trends to condition
of potholes. This system aids in better evaluation of policies and procedures with
accountability and efficiency in terms of time and money. In its first year, CitiStat
saved the city $13.2 million. Even mass transit systems have innovated with hybrid
bus fleets to real time tracking at bus stands. In addition, the growing use of mobile
data terminals in vehicles that serves as communication hubs between vehicles and
control center automatically send data on location, passenger counts, engine per-
formance, mileage and other information. This tool helps to deliver and manage

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

transportation systems.
Still other innovative strategies include hospitals digitizing medical information in
electronic medical records; HUD’s HOPE VI initiatives to eradicate city’s severely
distressed public housing to revitalized, mixed income environments; the Harlem
Children’s Zone that uses a community-based approach to educate local area chil-
dren; and EPA’s brownfield grants that aids in turning over brownfields for environ-
mental protection, green spaces, community and commercial development.
Example . Explain the term innovation?
Solution: Innovation is the development of new value through solutions that meet
new needs, or adding value to old customers by providing new ways of maximizing
their current level of productivity. It is the catalyst to growth. 

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

Revision Question

E XERCISE 1.  Outline any two negative effects of innovation?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 2
The 8 Phases of an Innovation Management Process

The innovation management process has become an important part of the opera-
tions of many businesses, as the recognition of the importance of initiatives towards
innovation has become much more common. That said, while many companies do
attempt to have a solid approach to creativity and innovation, too few actually focus
on it as a single function. Instead, they seem to hold many separate activities in
isolation, such as brainstorming sessions, pilot projects and campaigns, and vague
communication with the market, and simply keep fingers crossed that it will come
together in the end. While this has worked for some in the past, it is far from the
ideal way of performing this important task. Instead, the best way to accomplish
this is to have a set innovation activities which integrates the activity into the regular
cycle of your business. The list below shows the phases in innovation management
process, which will help your organization to put it all together as one process.

2.1. Setting the goals for the process

Innovation always begins with a goal in mind. It is many times based on finding the
solution to a problem. Once you have this goal, it should be discussed among every-
one in the problem solving team. This team may consist of you and another person,
a group of people, or may even be all of your organization’s employees. It may

Figure 2.1:

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

involve others such as your customers (who can provide suggestions and feedback
based on their own experience with your product or service) or other stakeholders
in the business. When you establish the team for this process, make sure that you
have someone representing all the parts of the process from start to the end.

2.1.1. Cooperation
The innovation team should work together so that instead of trying to come up with
an idea separately, they can bounce ideas off one another and create a collaborative
solution. This can include the use of online tools, attendance of events such as trade
shows that can be inspiring and informative, or simply consist of brainstorming
sessions. You might consider having a trained business coach facilitating the dis-
cussions. There are many online tools available for real time document sharing that
might help teams that are geographically separated to still have intense cooperation.

2.1.2. Combination of ideas

Once the ideas are in, choose the best ones and then consider whether they can be
combined to create an even greater idea. Often, strong ideas will be complementary
to one another and will join well to create an even better result. As you know, the
whole result can be bigger than its individual parts. And for this combination to
work well, you need representatives of all parties involved in the process, because
they for sure have ideas that people from other departments could not come up
with. Business coaches may be useful here for making sure that all the angles of
innovative aspect are covered.

2.1.3. Evaluation of innovation

This is an important and yet all too frequently overlooked aspect of the innovation
management process. When the best ideas have been combined, fine tuned, and
polished, it is time to subject them to evaluation based on peer reviews. This helps
to ensure that any ideas that have a promising veneer but that are poorly thought out
will be identified before resources, funding and time have been poured into them.
It also helps to select the ideas with the greatest potential from among several that
appear equally capable of being successful. It is cheap to change your innovation
at this stage compared to later stages. Each step you take forward will cost you
more. . .

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

2.1.4. Testing the ideas

Once the ideas with the greatest potential have been identified, they can be tested
so that they can be better developed. One of the most common means of testing
a product or service idea is to create a prototype or test group. This allows the
team, as well as customers and investors to have a better look at how the product
will function and what changes can be made to it so that it will be even further
improved. Make sure that the product or service not only raises interest but is able
to generate orders also. If people say that they are interested in it, then ask them if
they give you the order right away.

2.1.5. Execution of innovation implementation

The ideas that survive the testing process can be further developed and altered until
they are ready to be executed as a part of the business offerings. The execution
of implementation is a step that is unique to your business and, unless your new
product causes you to have to drastically alter the typical way that your go to market
strategy functions, then this part of the innovation management process should be
relatively commonplace in your organization. It should be easier for you to move
from testing to execution if you were able to generate orders already in testing
phase.

2.1.6. Assessment of innovation life cycle

After the execution of an idea, its implementation needs to be carefully monitored
and assessed in terms of a number of milestones that should be set. Should a mile-
stone not be reached, then changes will need to be made or the idea will need to be
shut down.
Remember to keep always customer in your mind also in execution phase and de-
sign your measuring systems so that they measure added value for the customer
(you get what you measure and customers weight you based on that!).
The next step in the process is simply to start again, always finding new needs,
inspiration, solutions and taking them through the cycle until they can be offered
by your company. Here are some reflective questions that you can use to evaluate
innovation management process in your organization:

1. Do you have a clearly defined innovation management process?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

(a) If yes, is it effective?

(b) If no, how do you see that clearly defined innovation management pro-
cess could help your organization to achieve goals better?

2. Are all the people in your organization working together towards great inno-
vations or do they do things on their own?

3. Do you always properly evaluate and test your innovations before taking them
to market?

4. Do you measure execution of providing services or products from customer’s

perspective?

Example . Outline any processes involved in innovation management?

Solution: //
i. Setting the goals for the process
ii. Cooperation
iii. Combination of ideas
iv. Evaluation of innovation
v. Testing the ideas
vi. Execution of innovation implementation
vii. Assessment of innovation life-cycle 

Revision Questions

E XERCISE 2.  Outline any processes involved in innovation management?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 3
How to Harness the Power of Process Innovation

Process innovation is very important in any organisation, because it is the way ev-
erything is produced from products and services to customer experience. Organ-
isations should do more systematic process innovation to get the benefits that are
available. To make process innovation happen properly it should be domain of all
employees. This article looks into most effective ways of harnessing the power of
process innovation.
Process innovation should always begin with a goal in mind. Traditionally, it is
based on finding a solution to a problem. To my opinion, that is too late. The time
to repair a roof is when the sun is shining, like John F. Kennedy said. The goal
should be to have a process innovation culture build into the organisation, so that it
will not be a one off project, but part of natural way of improving the organisation.
If you can make all the employees to think that it is normal to think outside the
box and try to make things better, then process innovation becomes much more
common in the organisation. You can achieve this by making innovation as a core
part of your leadership agenda and train most employees to innovate processes.
Maybe you could even start every day with a discussion of process innovation and
corporate culture that could support it until you get it in place?
The second important factor for harnessing the power of process innovation is not
to be penalized for failures; this will only discourage the risk-taking needed for the
next important process advancement. Best practices are easy to see and test, because
everyone else is already using them. That will not bring competitive advantage or
real process innovation. Focusing on best practises may lead to a situation, where
a dramatic process innovation idea will lead other people to doubt whether it will
work. You can test dramatic innovations to a point, but there will come a time, when
it just needs to be tried and seen. Most of the times those innovations will succeed
when well thought out, but sometimes they may also fail and that is something we
need to cope with. It is more fruitful to focus on next practices, instead of best
practices.
A future orientation and outcome-based thinking are very beneficial to process in-
novation. It is unlikely to succeed, if no one invests time in getting better both with
processes and innovation. Usually we are too busy with running our daily lives,

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leaving little time to grow as professionals and persons. We can only innovate ideas
that are size of our thoughts, so what we need to do is to seek ways to expand
our ways of thinking. One very powerful and practical technique is outcome based
thinking. If you focus on what is it that you want to achieve, then your mind will
stay focused in the future and find ways to realize those aspirations. Everyone in
your organization needs to have a clear grasp of where you need to go. That is how
they know what has value and what is irrelevant. The question is that will some
process innovation idea, if implemented, help move you closer to the outcomes you
have specified?
Let’s take an example of process automation innovation, which is used by certain
council in United Kingdom. The rubbish is collected in specific colour of bags,
so that the rubbish collectors will know the recycling fee has been paid. Earlier
those bags were sold from council offices, person to person. At some point they
decided to automate part of that process. So, they installed machines next to the
council doors, where you can choose the number of rubbish bags and pay for them.
After you have paid for the bags, you will get a receipt that you need to take to the
reception desk at council and someone from there will give you the bags. At the
end of the day, the only automated part was the payment, but delivering the rubbish
bags to the customers was still traditional person to person interaction. What do
you think was the outcome the process optimisation people in that council were
thinking about exactly?

Summary
To harness the power of process innovation, you should always begin with a goal
in mind. That goal needs be to have a process innovation culture build into the
organisation, so that it becomes domain of all, not just selected few. Crowdsourcing
will work for process innovation, if you give most of the employees a chance to
participate it.
The second important factor for harnessing the power of process innovation is not
to be penalized for failures. People need to have possibility to try new things and
get proper, constructive feedback from those trials.
Also, a future orientation and outcome-based thinking are crucial to process inno-
vation. They will help you to think about and realize the outcomes you want to
create through process innovation endeavours.

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Example . Explain the danger of penalizing innovation failure in a firm?

Solution:
this will only discourage the risk taking needed for the next important process ad-
vancement. Best practices are easy to see and test, because everyone else is already
using them. That will not bring competitive advantage or real process innovation.
Focusing on best practises may lead to a situation, where a dramatic process inno-
vation idea will lead other people to doubt whether it will work.


Revision Question

E XERCISE 3.  Explain the danger of penalizing innovation failure in a firm?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 4
Technology And Innovation Approaches

There are a number of theories attempting to address technology, which tend to be

associated with the disciplines of science and technology studies (STS) and com-
munication studies. Most generally, the theories attempt to address the relation-
ship between technology and society and prompt questions about agency, deter-
minism/autonomy, and teleology.
If forced, one might categorize them into social and group theories. Additionally,
one might distinguish between descriptive and critical theories. Descriptive theo-
ries attempt to address the definition and substance of technology, the ways it has
emerged, changed and its relation to the human/social sphere. More substantively
it addresses the extent of which technology is autonomous and how much force it
has in determining human practice or social structure.
Critical theories of technology often take a descriptive theory as their basis and
articulate concerns, examining what way the relationship can be changed. The
authors mentioned in this article are those that have some concern with technology
or media, though they often borrow from one another and of course build upon
seminal theorists that preceded them.

4.1. Descriptive approaches

• Social construction of technology (SCOT) - argues that technology does not
determine human action, but that human action shapes technology. Key con-
cepts include:

– interpretive flexibility: "Technological artifacts are culturally constructed

and interpreted ... By this we mean not only that there is flexibility in
how people think of or interpret artifacts but also that there is flexibility
in how artifacts are designed."
– Relevant social group: shares a particular set of meanings about an arti-
fact
– ’Closure’ and stabilization: when the relevant social group has reached
a consensus

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– Wider context: "the sociocultural and political situation of a social group

shapes its norms and values, which in turn influence the meaning given
to an artifact" Key authors include MacKensie and Wajcman (1985) &
Pinch and Bijker (1992).

• Actor-network theory (ANT) - posits a heterogeneous network of humans and

non-humans as equal interrelated actors. It strives for impartiality in the de-
scription of human and nonhuman actors and the reintegration of the natural
and social worlds. For example, Latour (1992) argues that instead of wor-
rying whether we are anthropomorphizing technology, we should embrace it
as inherently anthropomorphic: technology is made by humans, substitutes
for the actions of humans, and shapes human action. What is important is
the chain and gradients of actors’ actions and competences, and the degree to
which we choose to have figurative representations. Key concepts include the
inscription of beliefs, practices, relations into technology, which is then said
to embody them. Key authors include Latour (1997) and Callon (1999).

• Structuration theory - defines structures as rules and resources organized as

properties of social systems. The theory employs a recursive notion of actions
constrained and enabled by structures which are produced and reproduced by
that action. Consequently, in this theory technology is not rendered as an ar-
tifact, but instead examines how people, as they interact with a technology in
their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situ-
ated use of that technology. Key authors include DeSantis and Poole (1990),
and Orlikowski (1992).

• Systems theory - considers the historical development of technology and me-

dia with an emphasis on inertia and heterogeneity, stressing the connections
between the artifact being built and the social, economic, political and cul-
tural factors surrounding it. Key concepts include reverse salients when ele-
ments of a system lag in development with respect to others, differentiation,
operational closure, and autopoietic autonomy. Key authors include Thomas
P. Hughes (1992) and Luhmann (2000).

• Activity theory

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4.2. Critical approaches

Critical theory goes beyond a descriptive account of how things are, to examine
why they have come to be that way, and how they might otherwise be. Critical
theory asks whose interests are being served by the status quo and assesses the
potential of future alternatives to better serve social justice. According to Geuss’s
definition, "a critical theory, then, is a reflective theory which gives agents a kind
of knowledge inherently productive of enlightenment and emancipation" (1981: 2).
Critical theory has the explicit normative and political intent of going beyond mere
description to produce actual change.
Along with other Frankfurt School critical theorists Herbert Marcuse began de-
veloping a critical theory of technology in both soviet communism and western
capitalism in ’One Dimensional Man’ (1964). Marcuse argued that whilst matters
of technology design are often presented as neutral technical choices in fact they
manifest political or moral values. Critical theory is a form of archaeology that
attempt to get beneath common sense understandings in order to reveal the power
relationships and interests determining particular technological configuration and
use.
Perhaps the most developed contemporary critical theory of technology is contained
in the works of Andrew Feenberg including ’Transforming Technology’ (2002).

• Values in Design - asks how do we ensure a place for values (alongside tech-
nical standards such as speed, efficiency, and reliability) as criteria by which
we judge the quality and acceptability of information systems and new media.
How do values such as privacy, autonomy, democracy, and social justice be-
come integral to conception, design, and development, not merely retrofitted
after completion? Key thinkers include Nissenbaum (2001).

Additionally, many authors have posed technology so as to critique and or em-

phasize aspects of technology as addressed by the mainline theories. For example,
Steve Woolgar (1991) considers technology as text in order to critique the sociology
of scientific knowledge as applied to technology and to distinguish between three
responses to that notion: the instrumental response (interpretive flexibility), the
interpretivist response (environmental/organizational influences), the reflexive re-
sponse (a double hermeneutic). Pfaffenberger (1992) treats technology as drama to
argue that a recursive structuring of technological artifacts and their social structure

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discursively regulate the technological construction of political power. A techno-

logical drama is a discourse of technological "statements" and "counterstatements"
within the processes of technological regularization, adjustment, and reconstitution.
An important philosophical approach to technology has been taken by Bernard
Stiegler, whose work has been influenced by other philosophers and historians of
technology including Gilbert Simondon and André Leroi-Gourhan. In the Schum-
peterian and Neo-Schumpeterian theories technologies are critical factors of eco-
nomic growth (Carlota Perez).

• Group theories
There are also a number of technology related theories that address how (media)
technology affects group processes. Broadly, these theories are concerned with the
social effects of communication media. Some (e.g., media richness) are concerned
with questions of media choice (i.e., when to use what medium effectively). Other
theories (social presence, SIDE, media naturalness) are concerned with the conse-
quences of those media choices (i.e., what are the social effects of using particular
communication media).

• Social presence theory (Short, et al., 1976) is a seminal theory of the social
effects of communication technology. Its main concern is with telephony
and telephone conferencing (the research was sponsored by the British Post
Office, now British Telecom). It argues that the social impact of a commu-
nication medium depend on the social presence it allows communicators to
have. Social presence is defined as a property of the medium itself: the degree
of acoustic, visual, and physical contact that it allows. The theory assumes
that more contact will increase the key components of "presence": greater
intimacy, immediacy, warmth and inter-personal rapport. As a consequence
of social presence, social influence is expected to increase. In the case of
communication technology, the assumption is that more text-based forms of
interaction (e-mail, instant messaging) are less social, and therefore less con-
ducive to social influence.

• Media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986) shares some characteristics with
social presence theory. It posits that the amount of information communi-
cated differs with respect to a medium’s richness. The theory assumes that

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resolving ambiguity and reducing uncertainty are the main goals of commu-
nication. Because communication media differ in the rate of understanding
they can achieve in a specific time (with "rich" media carrying more infor-
mation), they are not all capable of resolving uncertainty and ambiguity well.
The more restricted the medium’s capacity, the less uncertainty and equivo-
cality it is able to manage. It follows that the richness of the media should be
matched to the task so as to prevent over simplification or complication.

• Media naturalness theory (Kock, 2001; 2004) builds on human evolution

ideas and has been proposed as an alternative to media richness theory. Me-
dia naturalness theory argues that since our Stone Age hominid ancestors
have communicated primarily face to face, evolutionary pressures have led
to the development of a brain that is consequently designed for that form of
communication. Other forms of communication are too recent and unlikely
to have posed evolutionary pressures that could have shaped our brain in their
direction. Using communication media that suppress key elements found in
face to face communication, as many electronic communication media do,
thus ends up posing cognitive obstacles to communication. This is particu-
larly the case in the context of complex tasks (e.g., business process redesign,
new product development, online learning), because such tasks seem to re-
quire more intense communication over extended periods of time than simple
tasks.

• Media synchronicity theory (MST, Dennis & Valacich, 1999]) redirects rich-
ness theory towards the synchronicity of the communication.

• The Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE) (Postmes, Spears

and Lea 1999; Reicher, Spears and Postmes, 1995; Spears & Lea, 1994)
was developed as a response to the idea that anonymity and reduced pres-
ence made communication technology socially impoverished (or "deindivid-
uated"). It provided an alternative explanation for these "deindividuation ef-
fects" based on theories of social identity (e.g., Turner et al., 1987). The
SIDE model distinguishes cognitive and strategic effects of a communica-
tion technology. Cognitive effects occur when communication technologies
make "salient" particular aspects of personal or social identity. For example,
certain technologies such as email may disguise characteristics of the sender

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that individually differentiate them (i.e., that convey aspects of their personal
identity) and as a result more attention may be given to their social identity.
The strategic effects are due to the possibilities, afforded by communication
technology, to selectively communicate or enact particular aspects of identity,
and disguise others. SIDE therefore sees the social and the technological as
mutually determining, and the behavior associated with particular communi-
cation forms as the product or interaction of the two.

• Time, interaction, and performance (TIP; McGrath, 1991) theory describes

work groups as time based, multi modal, and multi-functional social systems.
Groups interact in one of the modes of inception, problem solving, conflict
resolution, and execution. The three functions of a group are production (to-
wards a goal), support (affective) and well being (norms and roles).

• Analytic theories
Finally, there are theories of technology which are not defined or claimed by a
proponent, but are used by authors in describing existing literature, in contrast to
their own or as a review of the field.
For example, Markus and Robey (1988) propose a general technology theory con-
sisting of the causal structures of agency (technological, organizational, imperative,
emergent), its structure (variance, process), and the level (micro, macro) of analysis.
Orlikowski (1992) notes that previous conceptualizations of technology typically
differ over scope (is technology more than hardware?) and role (is it an external
objective force, the interpreted human action, or an impact moderated by humans?)
and identifies three models:

1. Technological imperative: focuses on organizational characteristics which

can be measured and permits some level of contingency

2. Strategic choice: focuses on how technology is influenced by the context

and strategies of decision-makers and users

3. Technology as a trigger of structural change: views technology as a social

object

DeSanctis and Poole (1994) similarly write of three views of technology’s effects:

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1. Decision-making: the view of engineers associated with positivist, rational,

systems rationalization, and deterministic approaches

2. Institutional school: technology is an opportunity for change, focuses on

social evolution, social construction of meaning, interaction and historical
processes, interpretive flexibility, and an interplay between technology and
power

3. An integrated perspective (social technology): soft-line determinism, with

joint social and technological optimization, structural symbolic interaction
theory

Bimber (1998) addresses the determinacy of technology effects by distinguishing

between the:

1. Normative: an autonomous approach where technology is an important influ-

ence on history only where societies attached cultural and political meaning
to it (e.g., the industrialization of society)

2. Nomological: a naturalistic approach wherein an inevitable technological or-

der arises based on laws of nature (e.g., steam mill had to follow the hand
mill).

3. ’Unintended consequences:’ a fuzzy approach that is demonstrative that

technology is contingent (e.g., a car is faster than a horse, but unbeknownst
to its original creators become a significant source of pollution)

Example . Explain any three approaches to decpritive view of innovation?

Solution:
interpretive flexibility: "Technological artifacts are culturally constructed and inter-
preted ... By this we mean not only that there is flexibility in how people think of
or interpret artifacts but also that there is flexibility in how artifacts are designed."
Relevant social group: shares a particular set of meanings about an artifact
’Closure’ and stabilization: when the relevant social group has reached a consensus
Wider context: "the sociocultural and political situation of a social group shapes its
norms and values, which in turn influence the meaning given to an artifact" 

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Revision Question

E XERCISE 4.  Explain any three approaches to decpritive view of innovation?

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LESSON 5
Competitive Intelligence

A broad definition of competitive intelligence is the action of defining, gathering,

analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and
any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making
strategic decisions for an organization.
Key points of this definition:

1. Competitive intelligence is an ethical and legal business practice, as opposed

to industrial espionage which is illegal.

2. The focus is on the external business environment

3. There is a process involved in gathering information, converting it into intel-

ligence and then utilizing this in business decision making. Some CI profes-
sionals erroneouslyemphasize that if the intelligence gathered is not usable
(or actionable) then it is not intelligence.

A more focused definition of CI regards it as the organizational function responsi-

ble for the early identification of risks and opportunities in the market before they
become obvious. Experts also call this process the early signal analysis. This defi-
nition focuses attention on the difference between dissemination of widely avail-
able factual information (such as market statistics, financial reports, newspaper
clippings) performed by functions such as libraries and information centers, and
competitive intelligence which is a perspective on developments and events aimed
at yielding a competitive edge.
The term CI is often viewed as synonymous with competitor analysis, but com-
petitive intelligence is more than analyzing competitors it is about making the or-
ganization more competitive relative to its entire environment and stakeholders:
customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, macro-economic data etc.
Accepting the importance of competitive intelligence, major multinational corpo-
rations, such as ExxonMobil, Procter & Gamble, and Johnson and Johnson, have
created formal CI units. Importantly, organizations execute competitive intelligence
activities not only as a safeguard to protect against market threats and changes, but
also as a method for finding new opportunities and trends.

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Organizations use competitive intelligence to compare themselves to other organi-

zations ("competitive benchmarking"), to identify risks and opportunities in their
markets, and to pressure-test their plans against market response (war gaming),
which enable them to make informed decisions. Most firms today realize the impor-
tance of knowing what their competitors are doing and how the industry is changing,
and the information gathered allows organizations to understand their strengths and
weaknesses.
The actual importance of these categories of information to an organization depends
on the contestability of its markets, the organizational culture, the personality and
biases of its top decision makers, and the reporting structure of competitive intelli-
gence within the company.
Strategic Intelligence (SI) focuses on the longer term, looking at issues affecting a
company’s competitiveness over the course of a couple of years. The actual time
horizon for SI ultimately depends on the industry and how quickly it’s changing.
The general questions that SI answers are, ‘Where should we as a company be in X
years?’ and ’What are the strategic risks and opportunities facing us?’ This type of
intelligence work involves among others the identification of weak signals and ap-
plication of methodology and process called Strategic Early Warning (SEW), first
introduced by Gilad followed by Steven Shaker and Victor Richardson, Alessan-
dro Comai and Joaquin Tena,[25][26] and others. According to Gilad, 20% of the
work of competitive intelligence practitioners should be dedicated to strategic early
identification of weak signals within a SEW framework.
Tactical Intelligence: the focus is on providing information designed to improve
shorter-term decisions, most often related with the intent of growing market share or
revenues. Generally, it is the type of information that you would need to support the
sales process in an organization. It investigates various aspects of a product/product
line marketing:

• Product - what are people selling?

• Price - what price are they charging?

• Promotion - what activities are they conducting for promoting this product?

• Place - where are they selling this product?

• Other - sales force structure, clinical trial design, technical issues, etc.

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With the right amount of information, organizations can avoid unpleasant surprises
by anticipating competitors’ moves and decreasing response time. Examples of
competitive intelligence research is evident in daily newspapers, such as the Wall
Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune. Major airlines change hundreds of fares
daily in response to competitors’ tactics. They use information to plan their own
marketing, pricing, and production strategies.
Resources, such as the Internet, have made gathering information on competitors
easy. With a click of a button, analysts can discover future trends and market re-
quirements. However competitive intelligence is much more than this, as the ul-
timate aim is to lead to competitive advantage. As the Internet is mostly public
domain material, information gathered is less likely to result in insights that will
be unique to the company. In fact there is a risk that information gathered from
the Internet will be misinformation and mislead users, so competitive intelligence
researchers are often wary of using such information.
As a result, although the Internet is viewed as a key source, most CI professionals
should spend their time and budget gathering intelligence using primary research
networking with industry experts, from trade shows and conferences, from their
own customers and suppliers, and so on. Where the Internet is used, it is to gather
sources for primary research as well as information on what the company says about
itself and its online presence (in the form of links to other companies, its strategy
regarding search engines and online advertising, mentions in discussion forums
and on blogs, etc.). Also, important are online subscription databases and news
aggregation sources which have simplified the secondary source collection process.
Social media sources are also becoming important providing potential interviewee
names, as well as opinions and attitudes, and sometimes breaking news (e.g. via
Twitter).
Organizations must be careful not to spend too much time and effort on old com-
petitors without realizing the existence of any new competitors. Knowing more
about your competitors will allow your business to grow and succeed. The practice
of competitive intelligence is growing every year, and most companies and business
students now realize the importance of knowing their competitors.
Example . Outline any three items considered in tactical intelligence?
Solution:
Product - what are people selling?

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Price - what price are they charging?

Promotion - what activities are they conducting for promoting this product?
Place - where are they selling this product? 

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Revision Question

E XERCISE 5.  Outline any three items considered in tactical intelligence?

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LESSON 6
Product Competition And Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of

the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis
provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities
and threats. Profiling coalesces all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis
into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation,
implementation, monitoring and adjustment.
Competitor analysis is an essential component of corporate strategy. It is argued
that most firms do not conduct this type of analysis systematically enough. Instead,
many enterprises operate on what is called “informal impressions, conjectures, and
intuition gained through the tidbits of information about competitors every manager
continually receives.” As a result, traditional environmental scanning places many
firms at risk of dangerous competitive blindspots due to a lack of robust competitor
analysis.

6.1. Competitor array

One common and useful technique is constructing a competitor array. The steps
include:

• Define your industry - scope and nature of the industry

• Determine who your competitors are

• Determine who your customers are and what benefits they expect

• Determine what the key success factors are in your industry

• Rank the key success factors by giving each one a weighting - The sum of all
the weightings must add up to one.

• Rate each competitor on each of the key success factors

• Multiply each cell in the matrix by the factor weighting.

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6.2. Competitor profiling

The strategic rationale of competitor profiling is powerfully simple. Superior knowl-
edge of rivals offers a legitimate source of competitive advantage. The raw material
of competitive advantage consists of offering superior customer value in the firm’s
chosen market. The definitive characteristic of customer value is the adjective,
superior. Customer value is defined relative to rival offerings making competitor
knowledge an intrinsic component of corporate strategy. Profiling facilitates this
strategic objective in three important ways.
First, profiling can reveal strategic weaknesses in rivals that the firm may exploit.
Second, the proactive stance of competitor profiling will allow the firm to anticipate
the strategic response of their rivals to the firm’s planned strategies, the strategies
of other competing firms, and changes in the environment. Third, this proactive
knowledge will give the firms strategic agility. Offensive strategy can be imple-
mented more quickly in order to exploit opportunities and capitalize on strengths.
Similarly, defensive strategy can be employed more deftly in order to counter the
threat of rival firms from exploiting the firm’s own weaknesses.
Clearly, those firms practicing systematic and advanced competitor profiling have
a significant advantage. As such, a comprehensive profiling capability is rapidly
becoming a core competence required for successful competition. An appropriate
analogy is to consider this advantage as aking to having a good idea of the next
move that your opponent in a chess match will make. By staying one move ahead,
checkmate is one step closer. Indeed, as in chess, a good offense is the best defense
in the game of business as well.
A common technique is to create detailed profiles on each of your major competi-
tors. These profiles give an in-depth description of the competitor’s background,
finances, products, markets, facilities, personnel, and strategies. This involves:

• Background

– location of offices, plants, and online presences

– history - key personalities, dates, events, and trends
– ownership, corporate governance, and organizational structure

• Financials

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

– P-E ratios, dividend policy, and profitability

– various financial ratios, liquidity, and cash flow
– profit growth profile; method of growth (organic or acquisitive)

• Products

– products offered, depth and breadth of product line, and product portfo-
lio balance
– new products developed, new product success rate, and R&D strengths
– brands, strength of brand portfolio, brand loyalty and brand awareness
– patents and licenses
– quality control conformance
– reverse engineering

• Marketing

– segments served, market shares, customer base, growth rate, and cus-
tomer loyalty
– promotional mix, promotional budgets, advertising themes, ad agency
used, sales force success rate, online promotional strategy
– distribution channels used (direct & indirect), exclusivity agreements,
alliances, and geographical coverage
– pricing, discounts, and allowances

• Facilities

– plant capacity, capacity utilization rate, age of plant, plant efficiency,

capital investment
– location, shipping logistics, and product mix by plant

• Personnel

– number of employees, key employees, and skill sets

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

– strength of management, and management style

– compensation, benefits, and employee morale & retention rates

• Corporate and marketing strategies

– objectives, mission statement, growth plans, acquisitions, and divesti-

tures
– marketing strategies

6.3. Media scanning

Scanning competitor’s ads can reveal much about what that competitor believes
about marketing and their target market. Changes in a competitor’s advertising mes-
sage can reveal new product offerings, new production processes, a new branding
strategy, a new positioning strategy, a new segmentation strategy, line extensions
and contractions, problems with previous positions, insights from recent marketing
or product research, a new strategic direction, a new source of sustainable compet-
itive advantage, or value migrations within the industry.
It might also indicate a new pricing strategy such as penetration, price discrimi-
nation, price skimming, product bundling, joint product pricing, discounts, or loss
leaders. It may also indicate a new promotion strategy such as push, pull, balanced,
short term sales generation, long term image creation, informational, comparative,
affective, reminder, new creative objectives, new unique selling proposition, new
creative concepts, appeals, tone, and themes, or a new advertising agency.
It might also indicate a new distribution strategy, new distribution partners, more
extensive distribution, more intensive distribution, a change in geographical focus,
or exclusive distribution. Similar techniques can be used by observing a competi-
tor’s search engine optimization targets and practices. For example, by conducting
keyword research, one may be able to determine a competitor’s target market, key-
words, or products. Other metrics allow for detection of a competitor’s success.
Little of this intelligence is definitive: additional information is needed before con-
clusions should be drawn.
A competitor’s media strategy reveals budget allocation, segmentation and targeting
strategy, and selectivity and focus. From a tactical perspective, it can also be used
to help a manager implement his own media plan. By knowing the competitor’s

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media buy, media selection, frequency, reach, continuity, schedules, and flights, the
manager can arrange his own media plan so that they do not coincide.
Other sources of corporate intelligence include trade shows, patent filings, mutual
customers, annual reports, and trade associations.
Some firms hire competitor intelligence professionals to obtain this information.
The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals maintains a listing of indi-
viduals who provide these services.

6.4. New competitors

In addition to analysing current competitors, it is necessary to estimate future com-
petitive threats. The most common sources of new competitors are:

• Companies competing in a related product/market

• Companies using related technologies

• Companies already targeting your prime market segment but with unrelated
products

• Companies from other geographical areas and with similar products

• New start-up companies organized by former employees and/or managers of

existing companies

The entrance of new competitors is likely when:

• There are high profit margins in the industry

• There is unmet demand (insufficient supply) in the industry

• There are no major barriers to entry

• There is future growth potential

• Competitive rivalry is not intense

• Gaining a competitive advantage over existing firms is feasible

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Example . Highlight any three activity components of a competitor array?

Solution:
• Define your industry - scope and nature of the industry
• Determine who your competitors are
• Determine who your customers are and what benefits they expect
• Determine what the key success factors are in your industry
• Rank the key success factors by giving each one a weighting - The sum of all the
weightings must add up to one.
• Rate each competitor on each of the key success factors
• Multiply each cell in the matrix by the factor weighting. 

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Revision Question

E XERCISE 6.  Highlight any three activity components of a competitor array?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 7
Market research

Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or

customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. The term is com-
monly interchanged with marketing research; however, expert practitioners may
wish to draw a distinction, in that marketing research is concerned specifically about
marketing processes, while market research is concerned specifically with markets.
Market research is a key factor to maintain competitiveness over competitors. Mar-
ket research provides important information to identify and analyze the market
need, market size and competition.
Market research, which includes social and opinion research, is the systematic gath-
ering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations using sta-
tistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain
insight or support decision making.

7.1. Market research for business Technology

Market research is for discovering what people want, need, or believe. It can also
involve discovering how they act. Once that research is completed, it can be used
to determine how to market your product. Peter Drucker believed market research
to be the quintessence of marketing.
There are two major types of market research. Primary Research sub-divided into
Quantitative and Qualitative research and Secondary research.
For starting up a business, there are some important things:

7.1.1. Market information

Through Market information one can know the prices of different commodities in
the market, as well as the supply and demand situation. Information about the
markets can be obtained from different sources, varieties and formats, as well as
the sources and varieties that have to be obtained to make the business work.

7.1.2. Market segmentation

Market segmentation is the division of the market or population into subgroups with
similar motivations. It is widely used for segmenting on geographic differences,

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personality differences, demographic differences, technographic differences, use of

product differences, psychographic differences and gender differences. For B2B
segmentation firmographics is commonly used.

7.1.3. Market trends

Market trends are the upward or downward movement of a market, during a period
of time. Determining the market size may be more difficult if one is starting with a
new innovation. In this case, you will have to derive the figures from the number of
potential customers, or customer segments. Ilar 1998

7.1.4. SWOT Analysis

Is a written analysis of the Strengths,Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to
a business entity. Not only should a SWOT be used in the creation stage of the
company but could also be used throughout the life of the company. A SWOT may
also written up for the competition to understand how to develop the marketing
and product mixes. Besides information about the target market, one also needs
information about one’s competitors, customers, products, etc. Lastly, you need to
measure marketing effectiveness. A few techniques are:
• Customer analysis

• Choice modelling

• Competitor analysis

• Risk analysis

• Product research

• Advertising the research

• Marketing mix modeling

• Simulated Test Marketing

Example . Explain the importance of market research to a firm?

Solution: Market research is a key factor to maintain competitiveness over com-
petitors. Market research provides important information to identify and analyze
the market need, market size and competition 

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Revision Question

E XERCISE 7.  Explain the importance of market research to a firm?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 8
Research And Development

Research and Technical Development; or Research and Technological Devel-

opment or RTD in Europe) refers to a specific group of activities within a busi-
ness. The activities that are classified as R&D differ from company to company,
but there are two primary models. In one model, the primary function of an R&D
group is to develop new products; in the other model, the primary function of an
R&D group is to discover and create new knowledge about scientific and techno-
logical topics for the purpose of uncovering and enabling development of valuable
new products, processes, and services. Under both models, R&D differs from the
vast majority of a company’s activities which are intended to yield nearly immedi-
ate profit or immediate improvements in operations and involve little uncertainty as
to the return on investment (ROI). The first model of R&D is generally staffed by
engineers while the second model may be staffed with industrial scientists. R&D
activities are carried out by corporate (businesses) or governmental entities.
Present-day R&D is core part of the modern business world. Major decisions in
firms are made on base of research and development.
Research and development is of great importance in business as the level of com-
petition, production processes and methods are rapidly increasing. It is of special
importance in the field of marketing where companies keep an eagle eye on com-
petitors and customers in order to keep pace with modern trends and analyze the
needs, demands and desires of their customers.
Unfortunately, research and development are very difficult to manage, since the
defining feature of research is that the researchers do not know in advance exactly
how to accomplish the desired result. As a result, higher R&D spending does not
guarantee "more creativity, higher profit or a greater market share.

8.1. New product development

In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) is the complete pro-
cess of bringing a new product to market. A product is a set of benefits offered for
exchange and can be tangible (that is, something physical you can touch) or intan-
gible (like a service, experience, or belief). There are two parallel paths involved
in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design and detail en-

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gineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies
typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and com-
mercializing new product within the overall strategic process of product life cycle
management used to maintain or grow their market share.

8.1.1. The eight stage of Research and Development

1. Idea Generation is often called the "NPD" of the NPD process.

(a) Ideas for new products can be obtained from basic research using a
SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats). Mar-
ket and consumer trends, company’s R&D department, competitors, fo-
cus groups, employees, salespeople, corporate spies, trade shows, or
ethnographic discovery methods (searching for user patterns and habits)
may also be used to get an insight into new product lines or product fea-
tures.
(b) Lots of ideas are generated about the new product. Out of these ideas
many are implemented. The ideas are generated in many forms. Many
reasons are responsible for generation of an idea.
(c) Idea Generation or Brainstorming of new product, service, or store con-
cepts - idea generation techniques can begin when you have done your
OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS to support your ideas in the Idea Screen-
ing Phase (shown in the next development step).

2. Idea Screening

• The object is to eliminate unsound concepts prior to devoting resources

to them. o The screeners should ask several questions:
• Will the customer in the target market benefit from the product?
• What is the size and growth forecasts of the market segment / target
market?
• What is the current or expected competitive pressure for the product
idea?
• What are the industry sales and market trends the product idea is based
on?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

• Is it technically feasible to manufacture the product?

• Will the product be profitable when manufactured and delivered to the
customer at the target price?

3. Concept Development and Testing

(a) Develop the marketing and engineering details

(b) Investigate intellectual property issues and search patent databases
(c) Who is the target market and who is the decision maker in the purchas-
ing process?
(d) What product features must the product incorporate?
(e) What benefits will the product provide?
(f) How will consumers react to the product?
(g) How will the product be produced most cost effectively?
(h) Prove feasibility through virtual computer aided rendering and rapid
prototyping
(i) What will it cost to produce it?
(j) Testing the Concept by asking a number of prospective customers what
they think of the idea - usually citation needed via Choice Modelling.

4. Business Analysis

• Estimate likely selling price based upon competition and customer feed-
back
• Estimate sales volume based upon size of market and such tools as the
Fourt-Woodlock equation
• Estimate profitability and break-even point

5. Beta Testing and Market Testing

(a) Produce a physical prototype or mock-up

(b) Test the product (and its packaging) in typical usage situations

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

(c) Conduct focus group customer interviews or introduce at trade show

(d) Make adjustments where necessary
(e) Produce an initial run of the product and sell it in a test market area to
determine customer acceptance

6. Technical Implementation

(a) New program initiation

(b) Finalize Quality management system
(c) Resource estimation
(d) Requirement publication
(e) Publish technical communications such as data sheets
(f) Engineering operations planning
(g) Department scheduling
(h) Supplier collaboration
(i) Logistics plan
(j) Resource plan publication
(k) Program review and monitoring
(l) Contingencies - what-if planning

7. Commercialization (often considered post-NPD)

(a) Launch the product

(b) Produce and place advertisements and other promotions
(c) Fill the distribution pipeline with product
(d) Critical path analysis is most useful at this stage

8. New Product Pricing

(a) Impact of new product on the entire product portfolio

(b) Value Analysis (internal & external)

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

(c) Competition and alternative competitive technologies

(d) Differing value segments (price, value and need)
(e) Product Costs (fixed & variable)
(f) Forecast of unit volumes, revenue, and profit

These steps may be iterated as needed. Some steps may be eliminated. To re-
duce the time that the NPD process takes, many companies are completing several
steps at the same time (referred to as concurrent engineering or time to market).
Most industry leaders see new product development as a proactive process where
resources are allocated to identify market changes and seize upon new product op-
portunities before they occur (in contrast to a reactive strategy in which nothing
is done until problems occur or the competitor introduces an innovation). Many
industry leaders see new product development as an ongoing process (referred to
as continuous development) in which the entire organization is always looking for
opportunities.
For the more innovative products indicated on the diagram above, great amounts of
uncertainty and change may exist which makes it difficult or impossible to plan the
complete project before starting it. In this case, a more flexible approach may be
advisable.
Because the NPD process typically requires both engineering and marketing exper-
tise, cross-functional teams are a common way of organizing projects. The team
is responsible for all aspects of the project, from initial idea generation to final
commercialization, and they usually report to senior management (often to a vice
president or Program Manager). In those industries where products are technically
complex, development research is typically expensive and product life cycles are
relatively short, strategic alliances among several organizations helps to spread the
costs, provide access to a wider skill set and speeds up the overall process.
Also, notice that because both engineering and marketing expertise are usually crit-
ical to the process, choosing an appropriate blend of the two is important. Observe
(for example, by looking at the See also or References sections below) that this ar-
ticle is slanted more toward the marketing side. For more of an engineering slant,
see the Ulrich and Eppinger, Ullman references below.
People respond to new products in different ways. The adoption of a new technol-
ogy can be analyzed using a variety of diffusion theories such as the Diffusion of

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

Innovations [Link] needed.

A new product pricing process is important to reduce risk and increase confidence
in the pricing and marketing decisions to be made. Bernstein and Macias describe
an integrated process that breaks down the complex task of new product pricing into
manageable elements.
The Path to Developing Successful New Products points out three key processes
that can play critical role in product development: Talk to the customer; Nurture a
project culture; Keep it focused.

8.1.2. Fuzzy Front End

The Fuzzy Front End is the messy "getting ended" period of new product engi-
neering development processes. It is in the front end where the organization for-
mulates a concept of the product to be developed and decides whether or not to
invest resources in the further development of an idea. It is the phase between first
consideration of an opportunity and when it is judged ready to enter the structured
development process (Kim and Wilemon, 2007;Koen et al., 2001). It includes all
activities from the search for new opportunities through the formation of a germ of
an idea to the development of a precise concept. The Fuzzy Front End ends when
an organization approves and begins formal development of the concept.
Although the Fuzzy Front End may not be an expensive part of product develop-
ment, it can consume 50% of development time (see Chapter 3 of the Smith and
Reinertsen reference below), and it is where major commitments are typically made
involving time, money, and the product’s nature, thus setting the course for the en-
tire project and final end product. Consequently, this phase should be considered
as an essential part of development rather than something that happens “before de-
velopment,” and its cycle time should be included in the total development cycle
time.
Koen et al. (2001, pp. 47–51) distinguish five different front-end elements (not
necessarily in a particular order):

1. Opportunity Identification

2. Opportunity Analysis

3. Idea Genesis

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

4. Idea Selection

5. Concept and Technology Development

The first element is the opportunity identification. In this element, large or incre-
mental business and technological chances are identified in a more or less structured
way. Using the guidelines established here, resources will eventually be allocated
to new projects.... which then lead to a structured NPPD (New Product & Process
Development) strategy.
The second element is the opportunity analysis. It is done to translate the identified
opportunities into implications for the business and technology specific context of
the company. Here extensive efforts may be made to align ideas to target customer
groups and do market studies and/or technical trials and research.
The third element is the idea genesis, which is described as evolutionary and itera-
tive process progressing from birth to maturation of the opportunity into a tangible
idea. The process of the idea genesis can be made internally or come from outside
inputs, e.g. a supplier offering a new material/technology or from a customer with
an unusual request.
The fourth element is the idea selection. Its purpose is to choose whether to pursue
an idea by analyzing its potential business value.
The fifth element is the concept and technology development. During this part of the
front-end, the business case is developed based on estimates of the total available
market, customer needs, investment requirements, competition analysis and project
uncertainty. Some organizations consider this to be the first stage of the NPPD
process (i.e., Stage 0).
The Fuzzy Front End is also described in literature as "Front End of Innovation",
"Phase 0", "Stage 0" or "Pre-Project-Activities".
A universally acceptable definition for Fuzzy Front End or a dominant framework
has not been developed so far. In a glossary of PDMA, it is mentioned that the
Fuzzy Front End generally consists of three tasks: strategic planning, concept gen-
eration, and, especially, pre-technical evaluation. These activities are often chaotic,
unpredictable, and unstructured. In comparison, the subsequent new product devel-
opment process is typically structured, predictable, and formal.
The term Fuzzy Front End was first popularized by Smith and Reinertsen (1991).
[Link] (1988) describes the early stages of NPPD as a four step process in

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

which ideas are generated (I), subjected to a preliminary technical and market as-
sessment (II) and merged to coherent product concepts (III) which are finally judged
for their fit with existing product strategies and portfolios (IV). In a more recent pa-
per, Cooper and Edgett (2008) affirm that vital predevelopment activities include:

1. Preliminary market assessment

2. Technical assessment

3. Source of supply assessment: suppliers and partners or alliances

4. Market research: market size and segmentation analysis, VoC (voice of the
customer) research

5. Product concept testing

6. Value to the customer assessment

7. Product definition

8. Business and financial analysis

These activities yield vital information to make a Go/No-Go to Development deci-

sion.
In one of the most earliest studies using the case study method, Khurana and Rosen-
thal defined the front-end to include the interrelated activities of:

• product strategy formulation and communication

• opportunity identification and assessment

• idea generation

• product definition

• project planning

• executive reviews

Economical analysis, benchmarking of competitive products and modeling and pro-

totyping are also important activities during the front-end activities.
The outcomes of FFE are the

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

• mission statement

• customer needs

• details of the selected concept

• product definition and specifications

• economic analysis of the product

• the development schedule

• project staffing and the budget

• a business plan aligned with corporate strategy

In a paper by Husig, Kohn and Huskela (2005) a conceptual model of Front-End

Process was proposed which includes early Phases of Innovation Process. This
model is structured in three phases and three gates:

• Phase 1: Environmental screening or opportunity identification stage in which

external changes will be analysed and translated into potential business op-
portunities.

• Phase 2: Preliminary definition of an idea or concept.

• Phase 3: Detailed product, project or concept definition, and Business plan-

ning.

The gates are:

• Opportunity screening

• Idea evaluation

• Go/No-Go for development

The final gate leads to a dedicated new product development project. Many profes-
sionals and academics consider that the general features of Fuzzy Front End (fuzzi-
ness, ambiguity, and uncertainty) make it difficult to see the FFE as a structured
process,but rather as a set of interdependent activities ( e.g. Kim and Wilemon,
2002). However, Husig et al., 2005 argue that front-end not need to be fuzzy, but

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

can be handled in a structured manner. In fact Carbone showed that when using
the front end success factors in an integrated process, product success is increased.
Peter Koen argues that in the FFE for incremental, platform and radical projects,
three separate strategies and processes are typically involved.
The traditional Stage Gate (TM) process was designed for incremental product de-
velopment, namely for a single product. The FFE for developing a new platform
must start out with a strategic vision of where the company wants to develop prod-
ucts and this will lead to a family of products. Projects for breakthrough products
start out with a similar strategic vision, but are associated with technologies which
require new discoveries.
It is worth mentioning what incremental, platform and breakthrough products are.

• Incremental products are considered to be cost reductions, improvements to

existing product lines, additions to existing platforms and repositioning of
existing products introduced in markets.

• Breakthrough products are new to the company or new to the world and offer
a 5-10 times or greater improvement in performance combined with a 30-50%
or greater reduction in costs.

• Platform products establish a basic architecture for a next generation product

or process and are substantially larger in scope and resources than incremental
projects.

Example . Explain the benefit of research and development unit to a firm?

Solution: R&D group is to develop new products; in the other model, the primary
function of an R&D group is to discover and create new knowledge about scientific
and technological topics for the purpose of uncovering and enabling development
of valuable new products, processes, and services 

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

Revision Question

E XERCISE 8.  Explain the benefit of research and development unit to a firm?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 9
Product Development Strategies

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a separate and emerging business-process man-
agement methodology related to traditional Six Sigma. While the tools and or-
der used in Six Sigma require a process to be in place and functioning, DFSS has
the objective of determining the needs of customers and the business, and driving
those needs into the product solution so created. DFSS is relevant to the complex
system/product synthesis phase, especially in the context of unprecedented system
development. It is process generation in contrast with process improvement.
DMADV, define – measure – analyze – design – verify, is sometimes synonymously
referred to as DFSS. The traditional DMAIC (define – measure – analyze – improve
– Control) Six Sigma process, as it is usually practiced, which is focused on evo-
lutionary and continuous improvement manufacturing or service process develop-
ment, usually occurs after initial system or product design and development have
been largely completed.
DMAIC Six Sigma as practiced is usually consumed with solving existing man-
ufacturing or service process problems and removal of the defects and variation
associated with defects. On the other hand, DFSS (or DMADV) strives to gener-
ate a new process where none existed, or where an existing process is deemed to
be inadequate and in need of replacement. DFSS aims to create a process with
the end in mind of optimally building the efficiencies of Six Sigma methodology
into the process before implementation; traditional Six Sigma seeks for continuous
improvement after a process already exists.
DFSS seeks to avoid manufacturing/service process problems by using advanced
Voice of the Customer techniques and proper systems engineering techniques to
avoid process problems at the outset (e.g., fire prevention). When combined, these
methods obtain the proper needs of the customer, and derive engineering system
parameter requirements that increase product and service effectiveness in the eyes
of the customer and all other people. This yields products and services that provide
great customer satisfaction and increased market share.
These techniques also include tools and processes to predict, model and simulate the
product delivery system (the processes/tools, personnel and organization, training,
facilities, and logistics to produce the product/service) as well as the analysis of

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

the developing system life cycle itself with proper investigation results and gains to
ensure absolute customer satisfaction with the proposed system design solution.
In this way, DFSS is closely related to systems engineering, operations research
(solving the knapsack problem), systems architecture, workflow balancing, and
concurrent engineering and even more. DFSS is largely a design activity requiring
specialized tools including: quality function deployment (QFD), axiomatic design,
TRIZ, Design for X, design of experiments (DOE), Taguchi methods, tolerance de-
sign, robustification and Response Surface Methodology for a single or multiple
response optimization. While these tools are sometimes used in the classic DMAIC
Six Sigma process, they are uniquely used by DFSS to analyze new and unprece-
dented systems/products.
user-centered design (UCD) is a type of user interface design and a process in
which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given ex-
tensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be
characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires de-
signers to analyse and foresee how users are likely to use a product, but also to test
the validity of their assumptions with regard to user behaviour in real world tests
with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the de-
signers of a product to understand intuitively what a first time user of their design
experiences, and what each user’s learning curve may look like.
The chief difference from other product design philosophies is that user-centered
design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the
product, rather than forcing the users to change their behavior to accommodate the
product.
The user-centered design process can help software designers to fulfill the goal
of a product engineered for their users. User requirements are considered right
from the beginning and included into the whole product cycle. These requirements
are noted and refined through investigative methods including: ethnographic study,
contextual inquiry, prototype testing, usability testing and other methods. Gener-
ative methods may also be used including: card sorting, affinity diagraming and
participatory design sessions. In addition, user requirements can be inferred by
careful analysis of usable products similar to the product being designed.

• Cooperative design: involving designers and users on an equal footing. This

is the Scandinavian tradition of design of IT artifacts and it has been evolving

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since 1970.

• Participatory design (PD), a North American term for the same concept, in-
spired by Cooperative Design, focusing on the participation of users. Since
1990, there has been a bi-annual Participatory Design Conference.

• Contextual design, “customer centered design” in the actual context, includ-

ing some ideas from Participatory design.

All these approaches follow the ISO standard Human-centred design for interactive
systems (ISO 9241-210, 2010).
The ISO standard describes 6 key principles that will ensure a design is user cen-
tered:

1. The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and envi-
ronments.

2. Users are involved throughout design and development.

3. The design is driven and refined by user-centered evaluation.

4. The process is iterative.

5. The design addresses the whole user experience.

6. The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives

As examples of UCD viewpoints, the essential elements of UCD of a web site are
considerations of visibility, accessibility, legibility and language.

9.0.3. Visibility
Visibility helps the user construct a mental model of the document. Models help
the user predict the effect(s) of their actions while using the document. Important
elements (such as those that aid navigation) should be emphatic. Users should be
able to tell from a glance what they can and cannot do with the document.

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

9.0.4. Accessibility
Users should be able to find information quickly and easily throughout the docu-
ment, regardless of its length. Users should be offered various ways to find infor-
mation (such as navigational elements, search functions, table of contents, clearly
labeled sections, page numbers, color coding, etc.). Navigational elements should
be consistent with the genre of the document. ‘Chunking’ is a useful strategy that
involves breaking information into small pieces that can be organized into some
type meaningful order or hierarchy. The ability to skim the document allows users
to find their piece of information by scanning rather than reading. Bold and italic
words are often used.

9.0.5. Legibility
Text should be easy to read: Through analysis of the rhetorical situation, the de-
signer should be able to determine a useful font style. Ornamental fonts and text in
all capital letters are hard to read, but italics and bolding can be helpful when used
correctly. Large or small body text is also hard to read. (Screen size of 10-12 pixel
sans serif and 12-16 pixel serif is recommended.) High figure-ground contrast be-
tween text and background increases legibility. Dark text against a light background
is most legible.

9.0.6. Language
Depending on the rhetorical situation, certain types of language are needed. Short
sentences are helpful, as are well-written texts used in explanations and similar bulk
text situations. Unless the situation calls for it, jargon or technical terms should not
be used. Many writers will choose to use active voice, verbs (instead of noun strings
or nominals), and simple sentence structure.

9.0.7. Rhetorical situation

A user-centered design is focused around the rhetorical situation. The rhetorical
situation shapes the design of an information medium. There are three elements to
consider in a rhetorical situation: Audience, Purpose, and Context.

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

• Audience
The audience is the people who will be using the document. The designer must
consider their age, geographical location, ethnicity, gender, education, etc.

• Purpose
The purpose is what the document targets or what problem the document is trying
to address.

• Context
The context is the circumstances surrounding the situation. The context often an-
swers the question: What situation has prompted the need for this document? Con-
text also includes any social or cultural issues that may surround the situation.

Example . Explain any six ISO principles that revolves around user centered
design and product development?
Solution: The ISO standard describes 6 key principles that will ensure a design is
user centered:
The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environ-
ments.
Users are involved throughout design and development.
The design is driven and refined by user-centered evaluation.
The process is iterative.
The design addresses the whole user experience.
The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives. 

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

Revision Question

E XERCISE 9.  Explain any six ISO principles that revolves around user centered
design and product development?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

LESSON 10
Legal And Ethical Issues In Technology And Innovation

10.1. Copyrights
Copyrights are designed to protect the expression of Ideas, thus a copyright applies
to a creative work. The right to copy an expression of an idea is protected by a
copyright. Copyright gives the author the exclusive rights to make copies of the
expression and sell them to the [Link] copyright however does not cover the
idea being expressed. In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
authorship extend to any idea. The copyright must apply for an original work, and
it must be in some tangible medium of expression.

10.1.1. Limitations of Copyrights on computer works

• Consider the algorithm behind a program. The algorithm is the idea, and
the statements of the programming languages are the expression of the idea.
Therefore protection is allowed for the program statements themselves, but
not for the design: copying the code intact is prohibited, but implementing
the algorithm is permitted.

• For a copyright to be in effect, there is a requirement that the work be pub-

lished. A program may be published by distributing copies of its object code,
for example on disk. However if the source code is not distributed, it has not
been published. An alleged infringement cannot have violated a copyright on
source code if the source code was never published.

• Copyright protection does not limit the kind of use of a work, only the dis-
tribution of copies. Suppose a single host on a network legally acquires a
copy of a piece of software. That host can then allow any network user to
access the software, as long as a new copy is not created. A cop right con-
trols the right to copy and distribute, is therefore not clear whether allowing
distributed access is a form of distribution.

• Although copyright protection can be applied to computer works, a copyright

was not designed for the electronic age, and thus the protection may be less

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

than what we desire. Copyright does not address all the critical elements that
desire protection.

10.1.2. Patents
Patents are unlike copyrights in that they protect inventions, not works of the mind.
The distinction is that patents are intended to apply to the result of science, tech-
nology and engineering, whereas copyrights were meant to cover works in the arts,
literature and written scholarship. A patent can protect a new and useful process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. A patent is designed to protect the
device or process for carrying out an idea, not the idea itself. A patent can be valid
only for something that is truly novel or unique, hence there can be only one patent
for a given invention.

10.1.3. Trade secrete

A trade secrete is unlike a patent or copyright in that it must be kept secret. The
information has value only as secrete and one who divulges the secret performs an
infringement. A trade secrete is information that gives one company a competitive
edge over others. Its protection is of no help when someone infers a programs
design by studying its output, or worse still decoding the object code. All these are
legal activities and both cause trade secrete protection to disappear.

10.2. Protection of Computer Objects

10.2.1. Protecting hardware
Hardware such as chips, disk drives or floppy disk media can all be patented. A
person who invents a new process for manufacturing hardware can also obtain a
second patent.

10.2.2. Protecting firmware

Trade secrete protection seems appropriate for the code embedded in a chip given
enough time one can reverse engineer and infer the code from the behavior of the
chip. The behavior of the chip does not however reveal what algorithm is used to
produce that behavior.

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

10.2.3. Protecting object and source code

Object code is usually copied so that it can be distributed for profit. The code is
a work of creativity, and most agree that object code distribution is an acceptable
medium of publication. Thus copyright protection seems appropriate. Software
developers selling to the mass market are reluctant to distribute their source code.
The code can be treated as a trade secret although sometimes it is also copyrighted
as additional protection.

10.2.4. Protecting documentation

Copyright protection is effective and appropriate for documentation because these
are essentially written works of non-fiction. Notice that the documentation is dis-
tinct from the program. A program and its documentation must be copyrighted
separately. Further more copyright protection of the documentation may win judg-
ment against someone who illegally copies both program and its documentation.

10.3. Rights of Employers And Employees

10.3.1. Ownership of products
When a programmer, as part of her job, develops a program. The program belongs
to the company she works for. She has no right over it even though she developed
it as part of her job.
However, if she built the program in the evening at home, it is not part of her job.
If she works as a programmer her employer might argue that she benefited from
training and experience gained on the job and at the very least the programmer
either conceived or thought about the project while at work. Therefore the employer
has an interest in the rights of the product. I.e. owns at least part of the rights to
the program. The situation changes if her job at the organization does not involve
programming. In that case she is free to market any computer product she markets.

10.3.2. Ownership of a patent

The person who owns work under patent or copyright law is the inventor. In the
earlier example the patent owner is the programmer. In patent law it is important
to know who filed the patent. If an employee lets the employer patent an invention,
the employer is deemed to own the patent and therefore the rights to the patent.

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Even if an employee patents something, the employer can argue for the right to use
the invention if the employer contributed some resources (such as computer time,
access to a library or database) in developing the invention.

10.3.3. Ownership of a copyright

Ownership of copyright is similar to ownership of patent. The author (programmer)
is the presumed owner of the work. The owner has all rights to an object. A special
situation known as work for hire applies to many copyrights for development of
software and other products.

10.3.4. Work for hire

In work for hire situation, the employer not the employee, is considered the author
of a work. The relationship does not have to be that of a conventional employer
to employee for work for hire to exist. An employer may be in a work for hire
relationship with an employee if the following conditions are true:

• The employer has a supervisory relationship overseeing the manner in which

the creative work is done.

• The employer has the right to fire the employee

• The employer arranges for the work to be done before the work was created
as opposed to the sale of existing work.

• A written contract between the employer and employee stating that the em-
ployer has hired the employee to do certain work.

10.3.5. Licenses
An alternative to work for hire is arrangement is licensed software. In this situation
the programmer develops and retains full ownership of the software. In return for a
fee, the programmer grants to a company a license to use the program. The license
can be for a definite or unlimited period of time, for one copy or for unlimited
number, to use at one location or at several.
This arrangement is highly advantageous to the programmer, just as a work for
higher arrangement is highly advantageous to the employer.

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10.3.6. Trade secrete protection

For a trade secret there is no registered inventor or author; there is no registration
office for trade secretes. Therefore in the event that a trade secret is revealed, the
owner can prosecute the revealer for damages suffered.
But first ownership must be established because only the owner can be harmed. As
soon as a secret is developed the company becomes the owner, an employee may
however argue about having contributed to the development of trade secrets.

10.3.7. Employment contracts

Employment contracts clearly spell out rights of ownership. Having a contract is
desirable both for employees and employers so that both will understand their rights
and responsibilities.
Example . Distinguish between a copyright and patent?
Solution: The distinction is that patents are intended to apply to the result of sci-
ence, technology and engineering, whereas copyrights were meant to cover works
in the arts, literature and written scholarship. A patent can protect a new and useful
process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. A patent is designed to
protect the device or process for carrying out an idea, not the idea itself. 

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

Revision Question

E XERCISE 10.  Distinguish between a copyright and patent?

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BIT 2224 Innovation And Technology Transfer

Solutions to Exercises
Exercise 1. It can also lead to negative effects such as pollution or exploitation.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2.

i. Setting the goals for the process

ii. Cooperation
iii. Combination of ideas
iv. Evaluation of innovation
v. Testing the ideas
vi. Execution of innovation implementation
vii. Assessment of innovation life-cycle Exercise 2
Exercise 3. //this will only discourage the risk taking needed for the next important
process advancement. Best practices are easy to see and test, because everyone else
is already using them. That will not bring competitive advantage or real process
innovation. Focusing on best practises may lead to a situation, where a dramatic
process innovation idea will lead other people to doubt whether it will work.
Exercise 3
Exercise 4.

interpretive flexibility: "Technological artifacts are culturally constructed and inter-

preted ... By this we mean not only that there is flexibility in how people think of
or interpret artifacts but also that there is flexibility in how artifacts are designed."
Relevant social group: shares a particular set of meanings about an artifact
’Closure’ and stabilization: when the relevant social group has reached a consensus
Wider context: "the sociocultural and political situation of a social group shapes its
norms and values, which in turn influence the meaning given to an artifact"
Exercise 4
Exercise 5.

Product - what are people selling?

Price - what price are they charging?
Promotion - what activities are they conducting for promoting this product?

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Place - where are they selling this product? Exercise 5

Exercise 6.

• Define your industry - scope and nature of the industry

• Determine who your competitors are
• Determine who your customers are and what benefits they expect
• Determine what the key success factors are in your industry
• Rank the key success factors by giving each one a weighting - The sum of all the
weightings must add up to one.
• Rate each competitor on each of the key success factors
• Multiply each cell in the matrix by the factor weighting. Exercise 6
Exercise 7.
Market research is a key factor to maintain competitiveness over competitors. Mar-
ket research provides important information to identify and analyze the market
need, market size and competition Exercise 7
Exercise 8.
R&D group is to develop new products; in the other model, the primary function
of an R&D group is to discover and create new knowledge about scientific and
technological topics for the purpose of uncovering and enabling development of
valuable new products, processes, and services Exercise 8
Exercise 9.
The ISO standard describes 6 key principles that will ensure a design is user cen-
tered:
The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environ-
ments.
Users are involved throughout design and development.
The design is driven and refined by user-centered evaluation.
The process is iterative.
The design addresses the whole user experience.
The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives. Exercise 9
Exercise 10.
The distinction is that patents are intended to apply to the result of science, tech-
nology and engineering, whereas copyrights were meant to cover works in the arts,

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literature and written scholarship. A patent can protect a new and useful process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. A patent is designed to protect the
device or process for carrying out an idea, not the idea itself. Exercise 10

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