Category: Competitive positioning

What is “Technology Assessment”?

Technology Assessment is a process by which the commercial potential of applied science and engineering can be determined.

“Technology” includes products, processes, devices, services or other embodiments of applied science and engineering.

The process is analytic and systematic.

“Potential” is influenced by a number of identifiable factors:

  • Technical feasibility
  • Requirements for/barriers to implementation
  • Available markets
  • Competing technologies

Technology assessment is useful in situations where client management is uncertain about the commercial prospects for its technology.

The output from a well-planned and executed technology assessment: both qualitative and quantitative answers to fundamental questions in technology-based businesses, e.g.,

  • “This technology is available to us…should we invest in it?”
  • “There are several technologies available to us…which should we choose?”
  • “What is this technology worth?”
  • “We have this technology…what (else) can we do with it?”

We at Prakteka LLC developed our expertise planning and implementing technology assessments in the context of numerous and diverse client assignments, all focused on using technology to create business value. We are here to help you answer business-critical technology questions, too.

For a customized plan for your needs, contact us at https://www.prakteka.com/contact-us/

For more on technology assessment, see the expanded discussion on our Prakteka LLC website, https://www.prakteka.com/category/technology-assessment/

If Your Business Depends on Intellectual Property

If your business depends on intellectual property (IP), then “best practices” for your IP business activities are those that…

…support the business objectives of the company and

…increase company value.

For any high-performing business, there are 4 key building blocks: strategy, processes, resources and organization. Here are these building blocks applied to IP business practices:

  1. Strategy: Which invention concepts are we free to develop? Which are worth patenting? Can we/should we consider an Engineering-to-Own-the-SpaceSM innovation Strategy? 1
  2. Processes: Who decides how and where we should invest our development dollars?
  3. Resources: Can we accelerate our development or broaden our reach by bringing in technologies from the outside? If so, which ones, from where, and for how much?
  4. Organization: Do our IP development initiatives and outcomes have top management’s attention, understanding, and endorsement?

Adopting high performance IP  business practices can enable you to:

…strengthen and even shift the basis of your competition

…protect IP that delivers high value to your customers and end-users

…avoid product and/or technology obsolescence

We at Prakteka LLC developed our IP expertise in the context of numerous and diverse client assignments, all focused on using intellectual property to create and sustain business value. We are here to help you, too,  maximize the impact of your IP on business value.  For a plan customized to your needs, contact us at https://www.prakteka.com/contact-us/

  1. For more on the “Engineering-to-Own-the-Space” Innovation Strategy, follow this link to the SlideShare presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/mhastbacka/engineeringtoownthespace-innovation-strategy

Engineering-to-Own-the-Space is a service mark of Prakteka LLC.

Lessons Learned in Technology Assessment…Lesson 6…

This is the last of a series of six posts to share with you important lessons we’ve learned through our experiences working with numerous commercial clients in a variety of situations. On the path to your success in developing and commercializing technologies, they will help you avoid common pitfalls, unwarranted assumptions, and other sources of technical and commercial bias that could add up to business failures.

Lesson Six.

View Your Assessment as an Integrated Set of Findings to Establish Your Basis of Competition

Technical and market elements of a technology assessment should be considered together to determine the attractiveness and viability of candidate technologies within the realities of target addressable markets.

Lesson Six Case Study:

Client:  Global Chemicals and Materials Company

Situation:

  • Develop and introduce new products based on its proprietary nonwovens materials technologies, already successful in apparel insulation applications

Technology Assessment Need:  Develop and characterize the potential “product/market” roadmap that could be addressed by the client’s non-woven materials technologies

Our approach:

  • Identified acoustic (noise reduction) applications as promising high volume opportunity
  • Researched primary and secondary performance needs across an array of acoustic applications in commercial and industrial markets
  • Considering research findings holistically, identified and rank-ordered market opportunities which client could uniquely fill with its materials and technologies

Outcome: Acoustic applications with flame retardant functionality were identified as a segment in which our client could establish a basis of competition over other market participants. We segmented the market by level of flame and smoke performance requirements.

By understanding the market size of each applications and the associated flame/smoke performance requirements, our client could make sound judgments regarding the return on investment needed to develop application-specific non-woven products. In effect, the result was an array of short-, medium-, and long-range opportunities in acoustic applications.

For more on best practices in moving from lab-to-market, see https://www.prakteka.com/category/technology-assessment/

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Are you looking for new customers for your existing technologies and products?

Do you have excess manufacturing capacity you’d like to put to use?

Or are you launching a new product and need to understand which end-use applications are the most promising?

We’re ready and able to help you make your decisions with confidence. Contact us at https://www.prakteka.com/contact-us/

or via direct email at mah@prakteka.com