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of strategic technology. Actually, it is a book that virtually ignores management and gives short shrift to strategy while focusing inordinately on technology. The lack of comprehensive definitions of the key terms of strategic, management , and technology illustrates the lopsided emphasis of this book. Management is never defined although the author asserts that the general principles of good management are incorporated by implication in his discussion of technological change. The discussion of strategy is subsumed under the rubric of strategic attitude, which leaves only technology as the primary focus of the authors emphasis. Regrettably, much of the discussion of technology is reduced to an exposition of various forecasting techniques. Where there should be a balanced emphasis on management, strategy, and technology, there is only an attenuated and tedious presentation of technique which is presumed to constitute strategic technology management. The net result is a grossly disproportionate orientation toward various aspects of technology. Consequently, the use of this book seems limited tQ those individuals who function in some type of hands-on capacity with engineering or research and development. It is of limited value to those with executive or managerial responsibilities. For example, there is no single reference to any aspect of decision making, which is the most important activity for any manager. Other specific concerns are worthy of mention at this point. The book discusses technology and technique in general with no attempt to differentiate high-tech industries and companies from those with noncomplex and relatively placid technologies. There is no differentiation of various levels of technology in a given organization. For example, the technical core in the operating system is the nucleus of technological development and application for most products and services. For its part, top management is concerned with the development of strategy to guide the long-term purposes of the organization. In the book there is no integration of strategy and technology throughout the hierarchy of management. Consequently, the term strategic technology management becomes a misnomer. Additionally, technology itself is presented primarily as an internal phenomenon. There is inadequate emphasis given to the vital interchange between the technology of a given organization and that of its primary competitors as well as the current state-of-the-art. Finally, the book is devoid of integrating frameworks and concepts that should be presented early and developed through succeeding chapters with some culmination toward the end of the book. Another focus on this book results in the following questions:
1) Is this really a book that deals with technology as part of strategic management, or 2) is this a book that presumes to deal with management as a part of strategic technology, or 3) is this a book which gives lip service to management and strategy and then proceeds to present a plethora of technical platitudes and forecasting techniques in the guise of strategic technology management? I believe that the answer to the last question is affirmative. Consequently, the intended purpose of the book misses its mark by a wide margin. In closing this review on a more positive note, it is instructive to examine the proper relationship of management, strategy, and technology which is missing in this book. First of all, strategy indicates what management wants to happen in the form of long-range objectives for the total organization. Strategy reflects both external and internal orientations toward future results. Technology represents

the knowledge base through which management implements the strategy throughout the organization. Management is the prime mover in using current technology and anticipated technological change in accomplishing the basic purposes of the organization through the prevailing strategy. In essence, management creates an organizational forum for the systematic expression of technology in pursuit of the long-range objectives underlying the organizations strategy. Regrettably, this book does not address these key relationships. It begins with a broad range of good intentions and quickly and finally nmows to a consideration of techniques that are only tangentially connected to any type of strategy for the total organization. Those who want to focus on a specialized treatment of selected techniques may find this book useful. Those who wish to study the management of strategy in any form may wish to consider other sources.

Strategic Technology Management-Frederick Betz (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993, 476 pp.) Reviewed by G. H. Gaynor.
Strategic Technology Management sets forth the basics of technology management not only for technology practitioners but for all managers involved with technology-based enterprises. The book also provides course material for teaching management of technology as well as those pursuing research. While management of technology is a practitioners field, academics through their research can provide some valuable insights. Betz deviates from the typical management authors who set a specific agenda and then attempt to support it. The book focuses attention on the realities associated with managing technology. He supports the premises that general management principles and specific business understanding are essential for effective management. To quote Betz: For good management, the general principles of management must be adapted and refined to the special conditions of the process being managed. Management of technology continues to be a major competitive issue. Very few if any organizations manage their technologies from an integrative and holistic perspective. Betz, with the help of illustrative real-life examples, addresses the critical issues of this inter- and multidisciplinary field relative to: technology breakthroughs, innovation, technology strategy, * saategy Linkages, and technology partnerships. In the process, he takes us on a journey that links economic goals; core competencies; managing innovation in product development but within the project management context; technology planning; invention; implementation of technology in products and services and manufacturing; organizational structure: technology substituhon: forecasting of the rates and directions of technological change and possible discontinuities; and concludes with a discussion of research strategy and planning. Strategic Technology Management brings a new view for dealing with or embracing the concepts related to managing technology. The

The reviewer is with G. H. Gaynor and Associates, Inc , Minneapolis, MN 55403 USA. IEEE Log Number 9415977.

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book includes many mini-case histories to demonstrate principles. Those mini-case histories come from organizations such as Air Products, Ethyl, Eastman Chemicals, Ford and the Taurus, GE and its refrigerator war, GTE, IBM, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), MOS Technology, Motorola, NEC, Pratt & Whitney, Sony, 3M, and Xerox. All tell the story about the need to manage technology strategically. They tell that story in relation to the critical technology issues. For the practitioner, these are stones of real-life situations; for the student or academic researcher, these should be avenues of further investigation. Betz begins with fundamentals. In relating technology and technology strategy, he tells us just what he means by innovation. He raises the issue of invention as a precursor to innovation. He provides the first clear distinctions between incremental and radical innovation and many other associated technology management principles. Betz begins by linking technology and economic good. His discussion clearly shows that technology is not a technology issue but a business issue with all of the uncertainties and the attended risks and benefits-that technology strategy and product development must also include production strategy-that a strategic attitude governs business performance. In other words, he addresses the need for managing the system rather than the pieces. He contrasts strategic planning with strategic attitude-strategic attitude recognizing science as a strategic source for a strategic technology attitude. Betz states: In exploration, the strategic attitude is more important to success than is the strategic plan. Its the attitude that allows exploration and exploitation of unplanned opportunities. Strategic attitude crosscuts all the management of technology related issues. The strategic attitude provides flexibility for taking advantage of the unplanned. Betz contrasts intuition and analysis and suggests that intuition arises from perception and commitment, and it creates a goal while analysis details the perception of and commitment to reach a strategic goal. Betz argues that management of technology is built on innovation-innovation not only in science and engineering but innovation in all disciplines involved in the process. After discussing in detail the role of innovation in product development, he links innovation with product development and project management. The next stop is Planning Technology, and here Betz provides an excellent example of the technology planning process in a diversified firm. He emphasizes the need to integrate technology change with business development. They are different sides of the same coin. He continues his emphasis on strategic attitude. In regards to R&D, he develops a logical argument that technology planning in R&D is not so much the planning of research as the development of a business focused strategic attitude in the research community. The major function of the technology planning process is to emphasize the economic impact of technical progress. Invention is the creative process in which new logical ways are imagined to manipulate nature for human purposes. With this statement Betz takes us through a series of examples linking technology to nature and to logic. The role of morphology and function are included. Readers may find this chapter a little philosophical, but please read it. You will gain some new insights and perspectives. Betz continues with the issue of implementing technology in products and services and in production. The author emphasizes strategy in the transfer of new technology to new products and services and subsequently to manufacturing. Products and services that are imbedded with new functionality impose additional risk that must be reevaluated.

Optimization of product performance must be managed within the technological and economic constraints of the firm. Spanning the new product technology to a manufacturing continuum requires manufacturing technology innovation that is incremental and continuous. Those new technologies require early costhenefit analysis in manufacturing. Industrial structure plays a role in management of technology, and here Betz focuses attention on the relevant technologies of the firm and their competitive value. He differentiates the competitive factors through illustrations based on many different industries and provides insight and approaches for both technology and product benchmarking. By using Porters value chain, he provides some concepts for analyzing economic value-adding in identifying a firms relevant technologies. Betz now discusses Technology Substitution and focuses on technology diffusion as well as substitution. He defines these concepts and develops the techniques for estimating the rates at which new technologies may penetrate markets by substituting for products and processes based on older technologies. In a series of four chapters, 10 through 13, Betz discusses Forecasting of Market Conditions, Rates of Technological Change, Directions of Technological Change, and Technology Discontinuities. These four issues draw attention to the sources of knowledge available for predicting future events, actions, and results. All four focus on anticipating some future events that relate to technology, products, process, markets, and the business system. In these four chapters Betz delineates procedures for: Anticipating market conditions. Extrapolating rate of technological change. Explaining the factors that can invalidate extrapolation. Analyzing technology as a system from a logic and morphological perspective. Analyzing the technology system from a functional perspective. Linking the technology system, the business system, and the application system into a product system. Strategic Technology Management concludes with two chapters relating to Research Strategy and Planning Research. Research strategy is obviously a precursor to planning research. Betz illustrates how certain methodologies and tools can be used in research that is directed toward technological progress. He raises the importance of scientific theory for technological innovation and stresses the point that the scientific method is based on experiment and theory-both being essential to the process of technological development. This linkage of theory and experimentation facilitates technological innovation. In Planning Research, Betz outlines a planning process for research projects that focuses on technological progress. He explains what he means by research planning and emphasizes the role of observation, modeling phenomena, envisioning discontinuities, and using applicable systems of measurement. He also includes the importance of a supportive business unit infrastructure in the planning process. Strategic Technology Management provides fundamental information for the practitioner as well as the academic researcher. For the practitioners, not only for those directly engaged in managing technology but for all managers and in all disciplines involved with technology-based organizations, it provides an understanding of the underlying issues in managing technology. For the professional engineer or scientist, it increases the breadth of understanding of the role of technology. For technology managers at all levels, it points direction and provides examples of how organizations have dealt with technology related problems and opportunities. For the nontechnical manager and executive, it provides a clear delineation of the issues involved in the management of technology and its importance to business performance. The background information included in the

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mini case histories by itself will provide nontechnical managers and executives with a deeper insight into the management of technology issues. For the academic researcher, it provides an opportunity to revisit the issues related to managing technology-to focus attention on just what this inter- and multidisciplinary field entails. This is a book for people who want to think and think deeply about how they and their organizations manage technology and how they exploit their technology competencies for the benefit of all stakeholders. Betz has not provided recipes or prescriptions, but he has delineated the paths and pitfalls to managing technology holistically and as an integrated business unit function. I highly recommend reading this book, applying its recommended practices, and then using it as a reference in managing for improved business performance.

title implies, the emphasis is on heuristic methodologies rather than theory. There are no proofs of np-completeness and there is very little, if anything, on worst-case bounds analysis and exact methods that rely on sophisticated mathematics (e.g., generating valid inequalities for the underlying polytope of an integer programming formulation). This is not to say that the material presented is without theoretical foundation or that the authors have ignored the foundations of the field. Quite the contrary. When a procedure can be justified from a theoretical point of view, it is stated in the form of a proposition and either proven or left as an exercise for the reader to prove For example, if the objective is to minimize the maximum tardiness on a single machine of n jobs, each with a given due date, the corresponding proposition is that the earliest due date rule provides the optimal sequence. Those doing research in scheduling know that the literature on even a subset of the field is vast. This is particularly true when it comes to heuristics which have attracted an exponential growth in attention Heuristic Scheduling Systems with Applications to P r d ~ ~ c t i ~ n the last 10 years and have sparked academcs to push harder for over Systems and Project Management-Thomas E. Morton and David implementation, usually in the form of decision support software. W. Pentico (New York: Wiley, 1993, 695 pp.). Reviewed by Jonathan Some success has been achieved due to the pressures mentioned F. Bard. above, although there is still ample room for improvement. The need for greater flexibility in planning, coupled with the growing frustraIt is a common experience to walk into the production facilities of a high technology company and witness the latest in robotics, tion surrounding manual techniques, have led operations managers machine tools, and automated material handling systems turning out to experiment with some of the more powerful techniques that are complex products at a breakneck speed. A look behind the scenes, now available. In writing this book, the authors have underscored though, often reveals a surprising paradox between the physical plant the benefits that can come from the use of these techniques and and its operations. While the equipment designers and manufacturing have made a persuasive case for considering t engineers are working on the cutting edge, most schedulers are still pains in laying out the fundamentals and then in the dark ages. Although they get help from MRP systems and complexities of a real system. The book is divided into six parts, each of near-equal length. Part spreadsheet-based planning tools, simple scheduling heuristics, based I is essentially an exposition on scheduling. The authors lay the on logic and experience, remain the methods of choice. In the past, when large finished goods inventories were used groundwork and classify the various types of scheduling problems by to absorb customer demand and large buffer stocks were used to level and environment. They also hint at the methods that have been decouple the various stages of production, it was easy to overlook developed and give an overview of their strengths and weaknesses. or hide errors. To survive in a global market, todays manufacturers The real substance begins in Part I1 which addresses the single must run a lean and efficient shop no matter what industry they are in. machine problem. Here, the authors develop the fundamental building Rapid obsolescence and increasing complexity of products, customer blocks for scheduling by exploring exact and heuristic results for onedemands for shorter lead times, the need for more flexible reaction processor problems. They present a number of elementary results for to desired changes in product mix, and the growing awareness of the special static case (all jobs arrive simultaneously, as opposed quality issues have forced manufacturers to abandon large work-in- to the dynamic case where arrivals are scattered over the planning process buffer stocks and to adopt a just-in-time philosophy. The period) and a number of common objectives, such as minimizing cornerstones of JIT are reliable forecasting, cooperative supplier flowtime or lateness. Next, they give an introduction to methods relationships, and good shop floor scheduling. This book is concerned that depend on a certain amount of mathematical sophistication, with the latter. The authors take the view that scheduling is strategic inclElding branch-and-bound, Lagrangian relaxation, and dynamic and pervades all aspects of the business. To give a definition, programming. In keeping with the overall theme, the discussion they say that it encompasses the activities necessary to produce of these topics is thin. I doubt anyone who was not familiar with the desired outputs at the desired time, while satisfying a host of these techniques prior to reading the corresponding sections would temporal and physical constraints. But how can one do this in an feel comfortable trying to implement them. Because heuristics are effective and straightforward manner without being overwhelmed by redly the thrust, the discussion on neighborhood search (exchange the complexities of the process? procedures), intensification and diversification in the context of The strength of this book is in its presentation and integration of genetic algorithms, tabu search and simulated annealing, and beam the full range of scheduling systems, starting with the single machine search, is much more comprehensive and useful. There is also or resource and moving on to assembly shops, transfer lines, dispatch mention of neural networks and bottleneck dynamics. The latter is and control stations, high-volume repetitive lines, and finishing with explored in much more detail in subsequent chapters. projects. An attempt is made to identify the underlying principles of I Part II turns to the multimachine problem. In some cases, there the simpler systems and then apply them to the more complex. As the still may be only one queue yielding just one complex resource, The reviewer is with The Department of Mechanical Engineering, Univer- as in the case of parallel machines. The more interesting situations arise when there are interactions and dependencies from one machine sity of Texas, Austin, TX 78712-1063 USA. IEEE Log Number 9415980. to another. Exact methods are nearly helpless in these cases. For

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