Commercializing New Technologies: Getting from Mind to Market - Hardcover

The key to understanding the commercialization process, says Vijay Jolly, a professor of strategy and technology management at Lausanne's International Institute for Management Development, lies in the dual recognition that a technology is not a product but a capability embodied within a specific set of products, and that there's a difference between innovation and value realization. The best mousetrap in the world won't help you if the market isn't interested in catching mice.

In dense, example-laden prose, Jolly thoroughly dissects the commercialization process, breaking it into five subprocesses: imagining, incubating, demonstrating, promoting and sustaining a new technology in the market. One of Jolly's most significant contributions to our understanding of technology commercialization is the notion that these subprocesses are linked by intermediate stages of stakeholder mobilization and that the stakeholders can change from one subprocess to the next.

Jolly also offers advice for large corporations hoping to improve the return on investment in their technology research. He suggests that they deploy specialized, semidetached R & D units within the company and grant them the limited autonomy necessary to pursue their goals. Keeping these research units in the loop once their findings are integrated into the company's commercial strategy will enable the company to generate new technologies more quickly, allowing the innovative subculture and the larger corporate environment to thrive. -- Upside, Ron Hogan