Developing strategies to capture value from emerging technologies

The development of fundamentally new technology requires companies to carefully consider how they intend to profit from the commercialization of their ideas. Because companies pursuing disruptive innovations require new organizational capabilities and are often pushing into new markets with unproven technology, they must become masters in dealing with uncertainty. This thesis attempts to provide a holistic and rigorous process to systematically develop and evaluate options for profiting from the commercialization of disruptive technologies that are currently in the limited application stage of development. This thesis reviews the basic elements of technology commercialization, existing approaches to the value capture phase of technology strategy, the fundamental stages of the product development process, and the role of real options theory in addressing uncertainty. The author's experiences with the hydrogen industry provided further insight into the key difficulties in developing strategic options to capture value from the commercialization of disruptive technology. These difficulties include market and technical uncertainty, the infancy of the value chain, capabilities development, the development and valuation of specific strategic options, and the role of established processes, structure and culture of existing companies. This thesis describes a two part process to addressing these difficulties. The macro level process guides the company's strategy development process by emphasizing emergent strategy, the transition to complementary assets, and a focus on navigating the limited application phase of technology commercialization. The product specific strategy provides a rigorous process for exploring the value chain

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Herren, Steven M. (Steven Matthew), 1971-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Charlie Fine and David Hardt.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Mechanical Engineering.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34768

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34768