Revealing the disruptive potential of new technologies at early stages in the innovation process

Abstract

Technology is key. The current digital era is characterised by the unique coevolution of disruptive technologies, fostering the incredible pace of change in information system and in algorithm-driven decision-making. The intelligent integration of emerging technologies to new technologies through open innovation will collectively remove obstacles of adoption and induce striking paradigm shifts in nearly every business by generating disruptive innovations in form of highly competitive products, processes, services, or the development of new markets reinventing the rules of business of centennial industry sectors. The present thesis puts the development of a conceptual integrated process framework for the strategic and early detection of new technologies in the form of technically feasible, sufficiently mature and superior product concepts with high disruption potential centre stage. These novel technologies are assumed to emerge from the smart recombination or unification of promising technologies. A taxonomy based on the interaction of technologies, defined as bundles of value chains, allows the designing of subprocesses in this New Product Development Process. The proposed framework incorporates (a) tools for strategic market opportunity identification (Technological Competence Leveraging, the Technology-Push Lead User Concept, and the Method for Technology-Push Roadmapping), (b) tools for the conceptualization and strategic solution of technical systems and ignition of creativity in the problemsolving process, and (c) Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality methodologies for enhancing the preceding techniques and the communication in collaboration processes in order to account for the peoples global dispersion due to increased mobility. The presented framework intends to contribute to the theory of technological innovation management by providing a clearly structured and technologically powerful procedure for steering a companys future technological landscape with regard to optimally placed technological investments. It aims to primarily address SMEs and independent research centres due to its strong orientation towards technology-push concepts and pronounced involvement of strategic collaboration networks, although strong market-pull aspects are included to synthesize respective advantages of both approaches. As the thesis remains on a conceptional level, empirical validation of the process framework through implementation in distinct organisational structures is indicated. Moreover, its application needs to be seen and discussed in a broader context through the inclusion of relevant key enablers of innovation like organisational structure, company culture or innovation promoters of the focal company which is recommended to be subject of further research.