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UNIT I
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INTRODUCTION
Introduction In this knowledge management era with ever changing technology and emerging technologies it is mandatory to keep in tune with the change and changing policies. Be alert to leverage knowledge and know how world class organizations have succeeded. This unit provides insight into such issues. Learning Objectives To know about The principles of a Knowledge Leveraging Community Infrastructure Supporting Technologies Why should you be a Learning Organisation ? How to create a Learning Organisation Facets of World Class Organisation How to build a world class organisation
1.1 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY SYSTEMS Science and technology have profoundly influenced the course of human civilization. Science has provided us remarkable insights into the world we live in. The scientific revolutions of the 20th century have led to many technologies, which promise to herald wholly new eras in many fields. As we stand today at the beginning of a new century, we have to ensure fullest use of these developments for the well being of our people. Science and technology have been an integral part of Indian civilization and culture over the past several millennia. Few are aware that India was the fountainhead of important foundational scientific developments and approaches. These cover many great scientific discoveries and technological achievements in mathematics, astronomy, architecture, chemistry, metallurgy, medicine, natural philosophy and other areas. A great deal of this traveled outwards from India. Equally, India also assimilated scientific ideas and techniques from elsewhere, with open-mindedness and a rational attitude characteristic of a scientific ethos. Indias traditions have been founded on the principles of universal harmony, respect
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for all creation and an integrated holistic approach. This background is likely to provide valuable insights for future scientific advances. During the century prior to Independence, there was an awakening of modern science in India through the efforts of a number of outstanding scientists. They were responsible for great scientific advances of the highest international caliber. In the half century since Independence, India has been committed to the task of promoting the spread of science. The key role of technology as an important element of national development is also well recognised. The Scientific Policy Resolution of 1958 and the Technology Policy Statement of 1983 enunciated the principles on which the growth of science and technology in India has been based over the past several decades. These policies have emphasized self-reliance, as also sustainable and equitable development. They embody a vision and strategy that are applicable today, and would continue to inspire us in our endeavors. With the encouragement and support that has been provided, there is today a sound infrastructural base for science and technology. These include research laboratories, higher educational institutions and highly skilled human resource. Indian capabilities in science and technology cover an impressive range of diverse disciplines, areas of competence and of applications. Indias strength in basic research is recognized internationally. Successes in agriculture, health care, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, nuclear energy, astronomy and astrophysics, space technology and applications, defense research, biotechnology, electronics, information technology and oceanography are widely acknowledged. Major national achievements include very significant increase in food production, eradication or control of several diseases and increased life expectancy of our citizens. While these developments have been highly satisfying, one is also aware of the dramatic changes that have taken place, and continue to do so, in the practice of science, in technology development, and their relationships with, and impact on, society. Particularly striking is the rapidity with which science and technology is moving ahead. Science is becoming increasingly inter- and multi-disciplinary, and calls for multi-institutional and, in several cases, multi-country participation. Major experimental facilities, even in several areas of basic research, require very large material, human and intellectual resources. Science and technology have become so closely intertwined, and so reinforce each other that, to be effective, any policy needs to view them together. The continuing revolutions in the field of information and communication technology have had profound impact on the manner and speed with which scientific information becomes available, and scientific interactions take place. Science and technology have had unprecedented impact on economic growth and social development. Knowledge has become a source of economic might and power. This has led to increased restrictions on sharing of knowledge, to new norms of intellectual
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property rights, and to global trade and technology control regimes. Scientific and technological developments today also have deep ethical, legal and social implications. There are deep concerns in society about these. The ongoing globalisation and the intensely competitive environment have a significant impact on the production and services sectors. Because of all this, our science and technology system has to be infused with new vitality if it is to play a decisive and beneficial role in advancing the well being of all sections of our society. The nation continues to be firm in its resolve to support science and technology in all its facets. It recognizes its central role in raising the quality of life of the people of the country, particularly of the disadvantaged sections of society, in creating wealth for all, in making India globally competitive, in utilizing natural resources in a sustainable manner, in protecting the environment and ensuring national security. 1.2 POLICY OBJECTIVES Recognizing the changing context of the scientific enterprise, and to meet present national needs in the new era of globalisation, Government enunciates the following objectives of its Science and Technology Policy: To ensure that the message of science reaches every citizen of India, man and woman, young and old, so that we advance scientific temper, emerge as a progressive and enlightened society, and make it possible for all our people to participate fully in the development of science and technology and its application for human welfare. Indeed, science and technology will be fully integrated with all spheres of national activity. To ensure food, agricultural, nutritional, environmental, water, health and energy security of the people on a sustainable basis. To mount a direct and sustained effort on the alleviation of poverty, enhancing livelihood security, removal of hunger and malnutrition, reduction of drudgery and regional imbalances, both rural and urban, and generation of employment, by using scientific and technological capabilities along with our traditional knowledge pool. This will call for the generation and screening of all relevant technologies, their widespread dissemination through networking and support for the vast unorganized sector of our economy. To vigorously foster scientific research in universities and other academic, scientific and engineering institutions; and attract the brightest young persons to careers in science and technology, by conveying a sense of excitement concerning the advancing frontiers, and by creating suitable employment opportunities for them. Also to build and maintain centres of excellence, which will raise the level of work in selected areas to the highest international standards. To promote the empowerment of women in all science and technology activities and ensure their full and equal participation.
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To provide necessary autonomy and freedom of functioning for all academic and R&D institutions so that an ambience for truly creative work is encouraged, while ensuring at the same time that the science and technology enterprise in the country is fully committed to its social responsibilities and commitments. To use the full potential of modern science and technology to protect, preserve, evaluate, update, add value to, and utilize the extensive knowledge acquired over the long civilizational experience of India. To accomplish national strategic and security-related objectives, by using the latest advances in science and technology. To encourage research and innovation in areas of relevance for the economy and society, particularly by promoting close and productive interaction between private and public institutions in science and technology. Sectors such as agriculture (particularly soil and water management, human and animal nutrition, fisheries), water, health, education, industry, energy including renewable energy, communication and transportation would be accorded highest priority. Key leverage technologies such as information technology, biotechnology and materials science and technology would be given special importance. To substantially strengthen enabling mechanisms that relate to technology development, evaluation, absorption and upgradation from concept to utilization. To establish an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regime which maximises the incentives for the generation and protection of intellectual property by all types of inventors. The regime would also provide a strong, supportive and comprehensive policy environment for speedy and effective domestic commercialisation of such inventions so as to be maximal in the public interest. To ensure, in an era in which information is key to the development of science and technology, that all efforts are made to have high-speed access to information, both in quality and quantity, at affordable costs; and also create digitized, valid and usable content of Indian origin. To encourage research and application for forecasting, prevention and mitigation of natural hazards, particularly, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, drought and landslides. To promote international science and technology cooperation towards achieving the goals of national development and security, and make it a key element of our international relations. To integrate scientific knowledge with insights from other disciplines, and ensure fullest involvement of scientists and technologists in national governance so that the spirit and methods of scientific enquiry permeate deeply into all areas of public policy making.
It is recognized that these objectives will be best realized by a dynamic and flexible Science and Technology Policy, which can readily adapt to the rapidly changing world order. This Policy, reiterates Indias commitment to participate as an equal and vigorous global player in generating and harnessing advances in science and technology for the benefit of all humankind. 1.3 LEVERAGING KNOWLEDGE Knowledge evolves knowledge-leveraging practices with the communities that embody them. Knowledge-leveraging practices and communities where practitioners think and act together to transform information and experience into insights and insights into products, services and competencies enhance an organizations ability to live in change and thus, to continue to deliver value in the midst of uncertainty, paradox, complexity and the unknown. Knowledge-leveraging practices and communities engage the fullness of our human ability to learn, create, change. Thus, e-Knowledge adds value to knowledge-leveraging initiatives primarily by participating as co-learner and empathic provocateur in the journey of optimizing organizational performance. Specific services include: assessing an organizations knowledge base (its common sense shaping its decisions and practices); identifying and seeding communities that upgrade and leverage knowledge strategic to business strategy and core competencies; creating and implementing online collaboration environments to support communities of practice, e-learning, virtual teams; developing database-driven solutions to complement face-to-face services as well as administrative, fundraising, marketing and evaluative functions; offering the full range of Internet presence services: web hosting, domain name registration, e-commerce, SSL certificates, Internet marketing.
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Principles of a Knowledge Leveraging Community Infrastructure Community implies a common interest and it is the pursuit of this common interest that the knowledge-leveraging infrastructure must support. Whether the common interest is to deal with a situation, avoid something, maintain something, or accomplish something, the common interest serves as the basis for the purpose and vision of the community. A community, however, does not exist in isolation and is part of a larger body or system. The system is made up of the community and those with whom the community interacts. These participants in the system may be temporary or ongoing and are defined as follows: Community Members - Those individuals with a common interest who will benefit from employing the leveragable body of knowledge. It is expected that the community members are not entirely capable of creating the leveragable body of knowledge on their own.
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External Contributors - Those individuals outside the community who possess relevant knowledge that the could be leveraged by community members, and as such must become part of the leveragable body of knowledge. Community members must interact with external contributors to clarify and crystallize their purpose, vision, and values. The needs of the community members guide the external contributors. Facilitators - It is expected that neither the community members nor the external contributors have the capacity to manage the leveragable body of knowledge. Thus, facilitators are responsible for managing the interactions which create and maintain the leveragable body of knowledge and for maintaining the infrastructure interactions. The following figure 1 depicts the flow of interactions within the system. Note that there are no half-loops; every participant is able to interact with every other participant. The participants interact with each other and with the leveragable body of knowledge through various forms of input, and receive feedback produced by each of the other participants and by the system.
Figure 1 Interaction Principles The extent to which knowledge leveraging can occur within a community is dependent on the nature of the interactions within the community and within the larger system. Certain principles must be at the core of these interactions. These principles relate to the following aspects of knowledge leveraging. Geographic Distribution - Participants in the system are likely to be geographically distributed. This means face to face interactions will be difficult for most. The system must support multiple modes of interaction to accommodate the preferences and learning styles of the individual members. Purpose, Mission, Vision and Values - The community is not likely to begin with a clear and precise shared definition of its purpose, mission, vision, and values. You might say that the community knows only that it needs, but lacks clarity as to just what it needs. The
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infrastructure must facilitate interactions between members of the community, external contributors, and facilitators to develop a clear and consistent understanding of the purpose, mission, vision, and values of the community. Changing Participants - Community members, external contributors, and facilitators will change over time. New participants will enter and existing participants will depart. To help new participants ramp up to the current state of community evolution, the infrastructure must provide concise documentation of the agreements and decisions the community has made to date. This will allow new participants to ramp up without impeding seasoned participants from continuing to move forward. The intent is to avoid a continuous rehashing of past decisions because of issues raised by new participants who are unfamiliar with the decisions of the past and simply dont know what they dont know. Purpose Challenge - Once the community has established and documented its purpose, mission, vision and values, there must be a mechanism for challenging the established doctrines on a recurring basis. For the doctrine to remain valid and avoid becoming dogma, it must evolve over time. Personal Development - In order to support the evolution of the body of knowledge, individual members of the community must personally develop. The infrastructure must enable individuals to assess their capacity to contribute to the effort and provide a basis for personal development. This will enable individuals to develop their capacity to support the evolution of the leveragable body of knowledge. Roles and Responsibilities - Facilitated interaction between community members, facilitators, and external contributors serves as the basis for defining the roles and contributions of the facilitators and external contributors. These definitions also need to be documented for future reference by all participants in the infrastructure. Feedback - Community members interacting with the leveragable body of knowledge must be able to provide feedback in several critical areas and the feedback mechanism must be supported by the infrastructure. Content - Feedback on accessed knowledge must be submitted for review to the appropriate individuals to act on the feedback. This is a basis for continuing evolution of the leveragable body of knowledge. Participants - The value of facilitator and external contributor contributions must be evaluated by community members on an ongoing basis. Subgroups - Because it is expected that there will be subgroups of community members working in a project capacity, the community needs to provide feedback to the subgroup regarding the value of its contribution. Subgroups must evaluate their own perceptions of the value of their contributions as well as the level of contribution by their participating members.
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Return on Investment - Facilitators and external contributors must be able to continually reflect on their perceived return on investment from supporting the infrastructure. This provides a basis for determining whether alterations are appropriate to adjust the return on investment and the facilitators and external contributors interactions with the system. Support Facilities - Subgroups working together must have multiple support facilities to enhance their interactions. At present there is no known single technology that will accommodate the myriad of interactions required. Interactions of subgroups essentially represent a microcosm of the interactions of the whole system. The infrastructure must facilitate the establishment of subgroup objectives, facilitate their ongoing interactions, provide a repository for what the subgroup produces, enable the group to evaluate itself, and allow the community to evaluate the contributions of the subgroup. Supporting Technologies As stated, no single technology exists which will facilitate all the interactions required for a community to develop, maintain and evolve a leveragable body of knowledge. It is believed that there are sufficient technology components available, which, when integrated, will produce an infrastructure that will support the community in the manner described. Because there are multiple types of interactions with differing intended contributions, it seems best to describe the technologies from the perspective of the interactions they must support. In this manner it should then be possible to evaluate a technology based on its capacity to enable and deliver value to the interaction it is supposed to support. The following provides some perspectives on particular technology components and their role in the infrastructure. The Leveragable Body of Knowledge The leveragable body of knowledge is all the knowledge available to the community via all participants in the system. The repository for captured knowledge, the knowledgebase, must provide feedback in support of its own continued development and evolution. It must also support the following types of interactions from each of the participants within the system. Participant Feedback - All participants interacting with the body of knowledge must be able to provide feedback regarding the perceived quality of the knowledge they access. The most important dimensions are perceived to be: Findability - Was the user able to find what they were looking for in a timely manner? If what they were looking for didnt exist within the body of knowledge, it forms the basis for additional content development. If what the user was looking for existed, did they find it in an acceptable time-frame?
Usability - The extent to which the knowledge was able to be used to serve the users intent. Relevance - Was the knowledge found appropriate to what the user was looking for? Accuracy - Was the knowledge found correct and did it solve their problem? Precision - Was the knowledge found of the appropriate level of detail? Was it too general? Was it too specific? Was it just right? Content Evolution - All participants interacting with the leveragable body of knowledge must be able to provide foundations for additional content. This may be in terms of: Questions - Questions for which appropriate answers were not found in the knowledgebase should serve as the basis for the development of additional content by the facilitators and external contributors. Perspectives - As members of the community gain insights from employing facets of the leveragable body of knowledge, the infrastructure must provide a way for this to form the basis of new content for others to access. Contributions - As members develop new learning, it must serve as the basis for new contributions to the knowledgebase. System Feedback - All participants must receive feedback from the body of knowledge on an ongoing basis. This feedback serves as a basis for corrections to the modes and methods of interaction as well as for the continued development of the content of the body of knowledge. Some of the most relevant components of this feedback are: Value - Feedback must be established regarding the perceived quality or value of the body of knowledge. This feedback is based on some combination of the number and frequency of community member interactions with the body of knowledge, in conjunction with the feedback that participants have provided on the knowledge accessed. This feedback is considered valuable to community members, facilitators, and external contributors. Knowledge Quality - Based on the comments submitted by community members, feedback should be provided to the facilitators and external contributors as to the perceived quality of the content they have developed. This feedback also provides the basis for developing new content and revising existing content. Note that from a composite sense, feedback serves to establish the community members perceived value of the interactions by the facilitators and external contributors. The infrastructure should also support the community members qualitative evaluation of facilitators and external contributors via blind survey. The idea is to balance direct and indirect feedback about the value of interactions.
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Facilitating Distributed Interaction It is assumed that, for the most part, the members of the community will be distributed worldwide. There may be small, co-located groups of community members, yet this will be the exception rather than the rule. In addition to being geographically distributed, it is expected that individual community members will have different preferences as to when and how to interact. Therefore, it is essential that the infrastructure facilitate the interaction dynamics in such a way as to accommodate the time and space differentials of community members. Personal Profiling - We seem to interact in a more comfortable fashion with individuals we think we know. We develop this sense of knowing from various interactions with individuals. The system must provide a profiling facility to develop a reference background for the participants. This should include personality types (Myers-Briggs, Adizes PAEI, Human Dynamics MEP, etc.), background, desires and aspirations, and special interests. Profiles must be developed online and be readily accessible to anyone that chooses to use them as a basis for better understanding those they are interacting with. Developmental Profiles - The foundation of the system is the common interest of the community, yet this cannot be pursued at the expense of individual aspirations. There is nothing more important to each of us than what we personally desire to accomplish. Therefore, the system must support individual development profiling in a manner which integrates individual development and community development. C - Strategy and Implementation Plan Keeping in view these broad objectives, it is essential to spell out an implementation strategy that will enable identification of specific plans, programmes and projects, with clearly defined tasks, estimates of necessary resources, and time targets. Some of the key elements of the implementation strategy will be as follows: 1. Science and Technology Governance and Investments Suitable mechanism will be evolved by which independent inputs on science and technology policy and planning are obtained on a continuous basis from a wide cross section of scientists and technologists. It will utilize the academies and specialized professional bodies for this purpose. These inputs will form an integral part of the planning and implementation of all programmes relating to science and technology, as also in government decision making and formulation of policies in socio-economic sectors. A greater integration of the programmes in socio-economic sectors with R&D activities will go a long way in ensuring a wider, more visible and tangible impact. This will call for a certain percentage of the overall allocation of each of the socio-economic ministries to be devoted for relevant programmes and activities in science and technology. The States will
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also be encouraged and assisted in the use of science and technology for developmental purposes through mechanisms set up for this, and in establishing linkages with national institutions for solving their regional and locale-specific problems. A concerted strategy is necessary to infuse a new sense of dynamism in our science and technology institutions. The science departments, agencies and other academic institutions, including universities i.e. the science and technology system as a whole, would be substantially strengthened, given full autonomy and flexibility, and de-bureaucratized. Mechanisms will be established to review on a continuous basis the academic and administrative structures and procedures in the science and technology system at all levels, so that reforms could be effected to meet the challenges of the changing needs. It will be ensured that all highly science-based Ministries/Departments of Government are run by scientists and technologists. All the major socio-economic Ministries will have high-level scientific advisory mechanisms. Government will ensure continued existence of an Apex S&T Advisory Body which will assist in formulating and implementing various programmes and policies. It will have appropriate representation of industry leaders, leading scientists and technologists and various scientific departments. Government will make necessary budgetary commitments for higher education and science and technology. It will, through its own resources and also through contribution by industry, raise the level of investment to at least 2% of GDP on science and technology by the end of the Tenth Plan. For this, it is essential for industry to steeply increase its investments in R&D. This will enable it to be competitive, achieve greater self-reliance and selfconfidence, and fulfill national goals. 2. Optimal Utilization of Existing Infrastructure and Competence Science and technology is advancing at a very fast pace, and obsolescence of physical infrastructure, as also of skills and competence, take place rapidly. Steps will be taken to network the existing infrastructure, investments and intellectual strengths, wherever they exist, to achieve effective and optimal utilization, and constantly upgrade them to meet changing needs. 3. Strengthening of the Infrastructure for Science and Technology in Academic Institutions A major initiative to modernize the infrastructure for science and engineering in academic institutions will be undertaken. It will be ensured that all middle and high schools, vocational and other colleges will have appropriately sized science laboratories. Science, engineering and medical departments in academic institutions and universities and colleges will be selected
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for special support to raise the standard of teaching and research. To begin with, a significant number of academic institutions, specially the universities, as also engineering and medical institutions, would be selected for this support to make an impact. Flexible mechanisms for induction of new faculty in key areas of science would be developed. Constancy of support and attention will be ensured over at least a ten-year period. 4. New Funding Mechanisms for Basic Research The setting up of more efficient funding mechanisms will be examined, either by creating new structures or by strengthening or restructuring the existing ones, for promotion of basic research in science, medical and engineering institutions. In particular, administrative and financial procedures will be simplified to permit efficient operation of research programmes in diverse institutions across the country. Creation of world class facilities in carefully selected and nationally relevant fields will be undertaken, to enhance our international competitiveness in areas where we have strengths, opportunities or natural advantages. Indigenous expertise will be used to the maximum extent possible. This would help in nurturing high quality talent and expertise in experimental science and engineering. 5. Human Resource Development The number of scientists and technologists, while being large in absolute numbers, is not commensurate with the requirements in quality and when measured on a per capita basis. The demand is bound to increase in the coming years with more intensive activities involving science and technology. There is need to progressively increase the rate of generation of high quality skilled human resource at all levels. This process would naturally entail reversing the present flow of talent away from science, by initiating new and innovative schemes to attract and nurture young talent with an aptitude for research, and by providing assured career opportunities in academia, industry, Government or other sectors.In order to encourage quality and productivity in science and technology, mobility of scientists and technologists between industry, academic institutions and research laboratories will be ensured. For building up the human resource base in relevant areas, the agencies and departments concerned with science and technology will make available substantial funding from their allocation. Flexible mechanisms will be put in place in academic and research institutions to enable researchers to change fields and bring new inputs into traditional disciplines, and also to develop inter-disciplinary areas. There will be emphasis on a continuing process of retraining and reskilling to keep pace with the rapid advances taking place. Wherever considered necessary, training abroad will be resorted to, so as to build up a skilled base rapidly.
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Women constitute almost half the population of the country. They must be provided significantly greater opportunities for higher education and skills that are needed to take up R&D as a career. For this, new procedures, and flexibility in rules and regulations, will be introduced to meet their special needs. New mechanisms would be instituted to facilitate the return of scientists and technologists of Indian origin to India, as also their networking, to contribute to Indian science and technology. Schemes for continuing education and training of university and college teachers in contemporary research techniques and in emerging areas of science will be strengthened and new innovative programmes started. It will also be ensured that higher education is available to the widest possible section of creative students, transcending social and economic barriers. 6. Technology Development, Transfer and Diffusion A strong base of science and engineering research provides a crucial foundation for a vibrant programme of technology development. Priority will be placed on the development of technologies which address the basic needs of the population; make Indian industries small, medium or large globally competitive; make the country economically strong; and address the security concerns of the nation. Special emphasis will be placed on equity in development, so that the benefits of technological growth reach the majority of the population, particularly the disadvantaged sections, leading to an improved quality of life for every citizen of the country. These aspects require technology foresight, which involves not only forecasting and assessment of technologies but also their social, economic and environmental consequences. The growth rate in productivity of the Indian economy has been below its true potential, and the contribution to it of technological factors is inadequate. Similarly, Indian exports today derive their comparative advantage through resource and labour rather than through the power of technological innovation. The transformation of new ideas into commercial successes is of vital importance to the nations ability to achieve high economic growth and global competitiveness. Accordingly, special emphasis will be given not only to R&D and the technological factors of innovation, but also to the other equally important social, institutional and market factors needed for adoption, diffusion and transfer of innovation to the productive sectors. Intensive efforts will be launched to develop innovative technologies of a breakthrough nature; and to increase our share of high-tech products. Aggressive international benchmarking will be carried out. Simultaneously, efforts will be made to strengthen traditional industry so as to meet the new requirements of competition through the use of appropriate science and technology. This industry is particularly important as it provides employment
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at lower per capita investment, involves low energy inputs, and carries with it unique civilizational traditions and culture. Value addition, and creation of wealth through reassessment, redistribution and repositioning of our intellectual, capital and material resource will be achieved through effective use of science and technology. Deriving value from technology-led exports and export of technologies will be facilitated through new policy initiatives, incentives and legislation. This will include intensive networking of capabilities and facilities within the country. Rigid Quality Standards, and Accreditation of testing and calibration laboratories according to international requirements, will be given an enhanced push to enable Indian industry to avoid non-tariff barriers in global trade. A comprehensive and well-orchestrated programme relating to education, R&D and training in all aspects of technology management will be launched. To begin with, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other selected institutions will be encouraged to initiate these programmes. 7. Promotion of Innovation Innovation will be supported in all its aspects. A comprehensive national system of innovation will be created covering science and technology as also legal, financial and other related aspects. There is need to change the ways in which society and economy performs, if innovation has to fructify. 8. Industry and Scientific R&D Every effort will be made to achieve synergy between industry and scientific research. Autonomous Technology Transfer Organizations will be created as associate organizations of universities and national laboratories to facilitate transfer of the know-how generated to industry. Increased encouragement will be given, and flexible mechanisms will be evolved to help, scientists and technologists to transfer the know-how generated by them to the industry and be a partner in receiving the financial returns. Industry will be encouraged to financially adopt or support educational and research institutions, fund courses of interest to them, create professional chairs etc. to help direct S&T endeavours towards tangible industrial goals. There has to be increased investments by industry in R&D in its own interest to achieve global competitiveness to be efficient and relevant. Efforts by industry to carry out R&D, either in-house or through outsourcing, will be supported by fiscal and other measures. To increase their investments in R&D, innovative mechanisms will be evolved. 9. Indigenous Resources and Traditional Knowledge Indigenous knowledge, based on our long and rich tradition, would be further developed and harnessed for the purpose of wealth and employment generation. Innovative systems to document, protect, evaluate and to learn from Indias rich heritage of traditional knowledge
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of the natural resources of land, water and bio-diversity will be strengthened and enlarged. Development of technologies that add value to Indias indigenous resources and which provide holistic and optimal solutions that are suited to Indian social-cultural-economic ethos will be developed. A concerted plan to intensify research on traditional systems of medicine, so as to contribute to fundamental advances in health care, and leading to commercialisation of effective products will be undertaken; appropriate norms of validation and standardization will be enforced. A purposeful programme to enhance the Indian share of the global herbal product market will be initiated. 10. Technologies for Mitigation and Management of Natural Hazards Science and technology has an important role in any general strategy to address the problems of mitigation and management of the impacts of natural hazards. A concerted action plan to enhance predictive capabilities and preparedness for meeting emergencies arising from floods, cyclones, earthquakes, drought, landslides and avalanches will be drawn up. Measures will be undertaken to promote research on natural phenomena that lead to disasters and human activities that aggravate them. This will be with a view to developing practical technological solutions for pre-disaster preparedness, and mitigation and management of post- disaster situations. 11. Generation and Management of Intellectual Property Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), have to be viewed, not as a self-contained and distinct domain, but rather as an effective policy instrument that would be relevant to wide ranging socio-economic, technological and political concepts. The generation and fullest protection of competitive intellectual property from Indian R&D programmes will be encouraged and promoted. The process of globalisation is leading to situations where the collective knowledge of societies normally used for common good is converted to proprietary knowledge for commercial profit of a few. Action will be taken to protect our indigenous knowledge systems, primarily through national policies, supplemented by supportive international action. For this purpose, IPR systems which specially protect scientific discoveries and technological innovations arising out of such traditional knowledge will be designed and effectively implemented. Our legislation with regard to Patents, Copyrights and other forms of Intellectual Property will ensure that maximum incentives are provided for individual inventors, and to our scientific and technological community, to undertake large scale and rapid commercialization, at home and abroad. The development of skills and competence to manage IPR and leveraging its influence will be given a major thrust. This is an area calling for significant technological insights and legal expertise and will be handled differently from the present, and with high priority.
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12. Public Awareness of Science and Technology There is growing need to enhance public awareness of the importance of science and technology in everyday life, and the directions where science and technology is taking us. People must be able to consider the implications of emerging science and technology options in areas which impinge directly upon their lives, including the ethical and moral, legal, social and economic aspects. In recent years, advances in biotechnology and information technology have dramatically increased public interest in technology options in wide ranging areas. Scientific work and policies arising from these have to be highly transparent and widely understood. Support for wide dissemination of scientific knowledge, through the support of science museums, planetaria, botanical gardens and the like, will be enhanced. Every effort will be made to convey to the young the excitement in scientific and technological advances and to instill scientific temper in the population at large. Special support will be provided for programmes that seek to popularize and promote science and technology in all parts of the country. Programmes will also be developed to promote learning and dissemination of science through the various national languages, to enable effective science communication at all levels. A closer interaction of those involved in the natural sciences and technology, social sciences, humanities and other scholarly pursuits will be facilitated to bring about mutual reinforcement, added value and impact. 13. International Science and Technology Cooperation Scientific research and technology development can benefit greatly by international cooperation and collaboration. Common goals can be effectively addressed by pooling both material and intellectual resources. International collaborative programmes, especially those contributing directly to our scientific development and security objectives, will be encouraged between academic institutions and national laboratories in India and their counterparts in all parts of the world, including participation in mega science projects as equal partners. Special emphasis will be placed on collaborations with other developing countries, and particularly neighbouring countries, with whom India shares many common problems. International collaboration in science and technology would be fully used to further national interests as an important component of foreign policy initiatives. 14. Fiscal Measures Innovative fiscal measures are critical to ensure successful implementation of the policy objectives. New methods are required for incentivising R&D activities, particularly in industry. New strategies have to be formulated for attracting higher levels of public and private investments in scientific and technological development. A series of both tax and non-tax fiscal instruments have to be evolved to ensure a leap-frogging process of development.
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The formulation of a focused strategy and the designing of new methods and instruments requires inputs from economists, financial experts and management experts and scientists. For this purpose, the apex S&T advisory body will constitute a dedicated task-force to suggest appropriate fiscal measures to subserve the policy objectives. 15. Monitoring Effective, expeditious, transparent and science-based monitoring and reviewing mechanisms will be significantly strengthened, and wherever not available will be put in place. It will be ensured that the scientific community is involved in, and responsible for, smooth and speedy implementation. 16. The New Vision To build a new and resurgent India that continues to maintain its strong democratic and spiritual traditions, that remains secure not only militarily but also socially and economically, it is important to draw on the many unique civilizational qualities that define the inner strength of India; this has been intrinsically based on an integrated and holistic view of nature and of life. The Science and Technology Policy 2003 will be implemented so as to be in harmony with our world view of the larger human family all around. It will ensure that science and technology truly uplifts the Indian people and indeed all of humanity. 1.4 LEARNING ORGANISATION The Learning Organisation is a concept that is becoming an increasingly widespread philosophy in modern companies, from the largest multinationals to the smallest ventures. What is achieved by this philosophy depends considerably on ones interpretation of it and commitment to it. The quote below gives a simple definition that we felt was the true ideology behind the Learning Organisation. A Learning Organisation is one in which people at all levels, individuals and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about. The Definition An organisation that learns and encourages learning among its people. It promotes exchange of information between employees hence creating a more knowledgable workforce. This produces a very flexible organisation where people will accept and adapt to new ideas and changes through a shared vision. Background and History The importance of learning was first put forward by a Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551 - 479 BC). He believed that everyone should benefit from learning.
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Without learning, the wise become foolish; by learning, the foolish become wise. Learn as if you could never have enough of learning, as if you might miss something. The underlying cause for recent emphasis on organisational learning is because of the increased pace of change. Classically, work has been thought of as being conservative and difficult to change. Learning was something divorced from work and innovation was seen as the necessary but disruptive way to change. The corporation which is able to quickly learn and then innovate their work will be able to change their work practices to perform better in the constantly changing environment. Change is now measured in terms of months not years as it was in the past. Business re-engineering used to concentrate on eliminating waste and not on working smarter and learning. History Major research into the art of learning did not actually start until the 1900s. In the 1950s, the concept of Systems Thinking was introduced but never implemented. GouldKreutzer Associates, Inc. defined Systems thinking as: A framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things; to see the forest and the trees. This means that organisations need to be aware of both the company as a whole as well as the individuals within the company. Up until the introduction of this concept, companies concentrated on their own needs not the needs of their workers. Systems Thinking tries to change the managerial view so that it includes the ambitions of the individual workers, not just the business goals. One of the systems used was called Decision Support Systems (DSS). This was for the use of corporate executives to help them make decisions for the future. It was in fact the building of the models, which defined the systems, that benefited the management rather than the systems operation. This was because the building of the model focused on what the business really was and the alternatives available for the future. One benefit of DSS was that it made implicit knowledge explicit. This makes extra knowledge available to the organisation and will tend to allow the organisation to learn better because explicit knowledge will tend to spread faster through an organisation. In this respect DSS can be considered as an additional method of communication in organisations. This systems tool was predicted to be necessary for every executives desktop. But this did not happened.
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In the 1970s, the same idea was renamed to Organisational Learning. One of the early researchers in this field was Chris Arygris from Harvard. He published a book on the subject in 1978. Even with this published information the concept still wasnt physically taken on by any companies. In the 1980s, companies discovered time as a new source of competitive advantage. This lead to capabilities-based competition which included the capability of learning. Many other people have continued along this line of research, such as Peter Senge - one of the modern day gurus. Information on the topic has been passed into various companies. These companies are now trying to become Learning Organisations. If the changeover to a Learning Organisation happens overnight, the environment around the workers will be complex and dynamic. There will be agitations and confusion which means learning may not take place because of the chaos caused. So it can only be introduced into a company that is prepared to reach a balance between change and stability, i.e. a balance between the old and the new. Organisations must interact with the environment around them, so the environment must be suitable for that interaction. Becoming a Learning Organisation seems a logical step for all companies to follow and hopefully this document will give a clear understanding why. Why a Learning Organisation ? A company that performs badly is easily recognisable. The signs you need to spot ar ? Do your employees seem unmotivated or uninterested in their work? Does your workforce lack the skill and knowledge to adjust to new jobs? Do you seem to be the only one to come up with all the ideas? And does your workforce simply follow orders? Do your teams argue constantly and lack real productivity? Or lack communication between each other? And when the guru is off do things get put on hold? Are you always the last to hear about problems? Or worst still the first to hear about customer complaints? And do the same problems occur over and over?
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Can you spot the signs? If any of these points sound familiar the answer for you could be a Learning Organisation.
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Creating a Learning Organisation Before a Learning Organisations can be implemented , a solid foundation can be made by taking into account the following : Awareness Environment Leadership Empowerment Learning
Awareness Organisations must be aware that learning is necessary before they can develop into a Learning Organisation. This may seem to be a strange statement but this learning must take place at all levels; not just the Management level. Once the company has excepted the need for change, it is then responsible for creating the appropriate environment for this change to occur in. Environment Centralised, mechanistic structures do not create a good environment. Individuals do not have a comprehensive picture of the whole organisation and its goals. This causes political and parochial systems to be set up which stifle the learning process. Therefore a more flexible, organic structure must be formed. By organic, we mean a flatter structure which encourages innovations. The flatter structure also promotes passing of information between workers and so creating a more informed work force. It is necessary for management to take on a new philosophy; to encourage openness, reflectivity and accept error and uncertainty. Members need to be able to question decisions without the fear of reprimand. This questioning can often highlight problems at an early stage and reduce time consuming errors. One way of over-coming this fear is to introduce anonymity so that questions can be asked or suggestions made but the source is not necessarily known. Leadership Leaders should foster the Systems Thinking concept and encourage learning to help both the individual and organisation in learning. It is the leaders responsibility to help restructure the individual views of team members. For example, they need to help the teams understand that competition is a form of learning; not a hostile act. Management must provide commitment for long-term learning in the form of resources. The amount of resources available (money, personnel and time) determines the quantity and quality of learning. This means that the organisation must be prepared to support this.
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Empowerment The locus of control shifts from managers to workers. This is where the term Empowerment is introduced. The workers become responsible for their actions; but the managers do not lose their involvement. They still need to encourage, enthuse and coordinate the workers. Equal participation must be allowed at all levels so that members can learn from each other simultaneously. This is unlike traditionally learning that involves a top-down structure (classroom-type example) which is time consuming. Learning Companies can learn to achieve these aims in Learning Labs. These are small-scale models of real-life settings where management teams learn how to learn together through simulation games. They need to find out what failure is like so that they can learn from their mistakes in the future. These managers are then responsible for setting up an open, flexible atmosphere in their organisations to encourage their workers to follow their learning example. Anonymity has already been mentioned and can be achieved through electronic conferencing. This type of conferencing can also encourage different sites to communicate and share knowledge, thus making a company truly a Learning Organisation. Implementation Strategies Any organisation that wants to implement a learning organisation philosophy requires an overall strategy with clear, well defined goals. Once these have been established, the tools needed to facilitate the strategy must be identified. It is clear that everyone has their own interpretation of the Learning Organisation idea, so to produce an action plan that will transform groups into Learning Organisations might seem impossible. However, it is possible to identify three generic strategies that highlight possible routes to developing Learning Organisations. The specific tools required to implement any of these depends on the strategy adopted, but the initiatives that they represent are generic throughout. The three strategies are: Accidental For many companies, adopting a learning organisation philosophy is the second step to achieving this Holy Grail. They may already be taking steps to achieve their business goals that, in hindsight, fit the framework for implementing a Learning Organisation. This is the accidental approach in that it was not initiated through awareness of the Learning Organisation concept. Subversive Once an organisation has discovered the Learning Organisation philosophy, they must make a decision as to how they want to proceed. This is a choice between a subversive and a declared strategy. The subversive strategy differs from an accidental one in the level
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of awareness; but it is not secretive! Thus, while not openly endorsing the Learning Organisation ideal, they are able to exploit the ideas and techniques. Declared The other option is the declared approach. This is self explanatory. The principles of Learning Organisations are adopted as part of the company ethos, become company speak and are manifest openly in all company initiatives. The Golden Rules As an organisation which learns and wants its people to learn, it must try to follow certain concepts in learning techniques and mould itself to accommodate for a number of specific attributes. In particular: Thrive on Change Encourage Experimentation Communicate Success and Failure Facilitate Learning from the Surrounding Environment Facilitate Learning from Employees Reward Learning A Proper Selfishness A Sense of Caring
Thrive on Change In a fast-paced, continually shifting environment resilience to change is often the single most important factor that distinguishes those who succeed from those who fail. - Tom Peters The crux of this idea is that for a Learning Organisation to be achieved many changes must be implemented. There can be no doubt that an organisation that enters such changes without a full commitment to them will not succeed. Hence it is constantly re-framing ; looking at problems from different angles or developing and exercising skills. In short, it is never static. To comply with this, the people in the organisation must continually adapt to changing circumstances. It is vital that the changing process be driven from the very top levels of the organisation: the managers must lead the changes with a positive attitude and have a clear vision of what is to be achieved. It is crucial that the management all agree to the strategy and believe in it so that they exude a sense of security and self-assurance.
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Encourage Experimentation Every change requires a certain degree of experimentation. To allow this experimentation is the central concept behind a Learning Organisation. Giving employees opportunities and responsibilities is a risk and can be costly in terms of resources. However for a company to learn it is a necessary risk, and approached in a positive manner, will bring many benefits. Innovation, after all, is what sets a company apart. A Learning Organisation needs to experiment by having both formal and informal ways of asking questions, seeking out theories, testing them, and reflecting upon them. It should try to predict events and plan to avoid mistakes be active rather than passive. One way to do this is to review their competitors work and progress and try to learn from their experiences. A Japanese strategy is to send their senior executives on study visits to other countries, raising questions and gathering ideas. They then review the visits and try to learn from them. Just like the changing process, the learning process has to start from the top of the organisation and finds its way throughout. However there is a danger in delegating the questions and theories to lower groups, as the senior executives could feel no ownership of the process and are unlikely to take risks with the conclusions. When John HarveyJones became chairman of ICI, he gave a lot of time and attention to creating space for the top executives to question, think and learn. Communicate Success and Failure It is important for a company to learn from its mistakes and also to appreciate its successes. Discussion and contribution in a team framework is vital, followed by assessment and planning. Each member should be encourage to self-assess their own performance.This requires continuous feedback and assessment which is easy to implement as a Learning Cycle which is shown in Figure 2:
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Figure 2
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The learning should not just stop at the team, however. Lateral spread of knowledge throughout the company can be implemented by a number of mechanisms. Oral, written and visual presentations; site visit and tours; personnel rotation programmes; education and training programmes will all encourage the spread of knowledge and experiences along with reduction of hierarchy and red tape present in many stagnant companies. To learn from ones mistakes, one must be able to accept failure, analyse the reasons for the failure and take action. Disappointment and mistakes are part of the changing process and essential to learning. A true Learning Organisation will treat mistakes as case studies for discussion, thus learning, and ensuring the same mistake does not happen again. For this to be done without blame, and with implied forgiveness, the learning has to be guided by a neutral mentor or coach. This figure may be from inside or outside the organisation, and need not necessarily possess much authority. It is often beneficial to an organisation to form a list of mentors, whose services they can rely on. If this is the case, then it is a pointer to the fact that the organisation has accepted the theory behind possessing negative capability. In order to keep a leading edge over its counterparts, the learning organisation has to keep abreast with the happenings in its internal and external environment. Technical and political issues which may exert pressure on the organisations current and future operations are identified and monitored. Internal sources of information can be work teams, departments or affiliated companies/ institutes within the organisation. Outside consultants, other players in the same field and even customers are potential external sources. Disseminating the value-added information in an efficient manner so that it is easily accessed by everyone within the organisation. One suggestion that stands out in the forecoming age of information highway is putting the computer database on the internet system with limited employee-only access. Joint-ventures provide precious opportunities of actively observing how others systems are run. In such cases, learning objectives should be clearly stated in the contractual agreements between the allies to avoid any future misunderstandings. Accusations of corporate spying are serious matter hence everything should be brought out in the open right from the start and nothing should be done on the sly. Customers represent the best research and development source as they know exactly what they and the market in general want. Moreover, this invaluable resource is free! Hence, it is worthwhile to try to involve the customers in product/ service design.
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Facilitate Learning from Employees Some of the most effective consultants your organisation could ever hire are already working for you. - Jim Clemmer (Firing on all Cylinders) Employees themselves, more often than not, know what needs to be done to improve operations. Kanter, Moss (The Change Masters) The above quotes are very true, however it could also be said that in the past a companys employees were there most under-rated and under-used consultants. The importance of this point cannot be overemphasised. The financial implications of learning from within are an obvious long term bonus. It is estimated that only 20% of an employees skills are utilised. This inefficiency can easily be overcome by training and multi-skilling. Reward Learning A learning culture rewards breakthroughs and initiative. Al Flood (The Learning Organisation) The performance appraisal is meant to reflect the organisations commitment to create a learning culture, that is, to promote acquisition of new skills, teamwork as well as individual effort, openness and objectivity and continuous personal development. The fragile human ego yearns for acknowledgement from superiors and fellow colleagues for ones work, in some form of reward or, simply, feedback. Everyone wants to feel that he or she is doing a real job and actively contributing to the proper functioning of the organisation. Caution should be taken when defining benchmarks for performance appraisal. No self-conscious member in the organisation should be left feeling neglected. When individuals lose confidence or give up hope, the learning organisation has failed. Therefore, the efforts put in and learning gained throughout the process should be recognised as well as the endresult. In addition, considerations taken in the performance appraisal should be incorporated into criteria for hiring new employees and promoting current staff. Annual performance reviews for pay-raise and promotion serve well for long term feedback and reward. However, it is also very important to have feedback and reward on a short term basis such as having ones mistake pointed out on-the-spot, and receiving appreciation and recognition there and then. Sometimes, being able to witness the overall accomplishment of ones work is self rewarding.
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A Proper Selfishness If the Learning Organisation is properly selfish, it is clear about its role, its goals, its future, and is determined to reach them. This may sound extremely obvious, but does to make profits really suffice ? Rather it should be asking: What are the strengths, talents and weaknesses of the organisation? What sort of organisation does it want to be? What does it want to be known for? How will its success be measured, and by whom? How does it plan to achieve it?
The answers for most organisations must start with the customer or client who are they? What do they really want and need ? . This is really the essence of the phrase a proper selfishness it is right that the organisation think of itself in the ways outlined above, but it must remember why it is there. It is there for the sole purpose of serving customers and clients (otherwise how could it exist?). If an organisation neglects this fact, it is exhibiting improper selfishness , and is ultimately set for failure. A Sense of Caring Learning Organisations want everyone to learn and they go to great effort to make that possible. Apart from the points developed above, there are other initiatives: Tuition reimbursement schemes (as found in many American companies) Opportunities to sit in higher level management meetings (as in Japan) Projects to encourage personal development Horizontal careers to open up new possibilities Brainstorming parties around new problems Rewards tied to output, not to status; to performance, not age Public encouragement of questions at all levels The encouragement of initiative Constant celebration of achievement
These points can all be summed up into one phrase care for the individual. People do not take risks with those that they do not trust or genuinely care for. It then follows that organisations which possess a friendly and trustworthy working environment are more likely to succeed in todays climate of change, when calculated risk taking is part of getting ahead of the field.
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People Behaviour Behaviour to Encourage There are five disciplines (as described by Peter Senge) which are essential to a learning organisation and should be encouraged at all times. These are: Team Learning Shared Visions Mental Models Personal Mastery Systems Thinking
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Team Learning Virtually all important decisions occur in groups. Teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning units. Unless a team can learn, the organisation cannot learn. Team learning focusses on the learning ability of the group. Adults learn best from each other, by reflecting on how they are addressing problems, questioning assumptions, and receiving feedback from their team and from their results. With team learning, the learning ability of the group becomes greater than the learning ability of any individual in the group. Shared Visions To create a shared vision, large numbers of people within the organisation must draft it, empowering them to create a single image of the future. All members of the organisation must understand, share and contribute to the vision for it to become reality. With a shared vision, people will do things because they want to, not because they have to. Mental Models Each individual has an internal image of the world, with deeply ingrained assumptions. Individuals will act according to the true mental model that they subconsciously hold, not according to the theories which they claim to believe. If team members can constructively challenge each others ideas and assumptions, they can begin to perceive their mental models, and to change these to create a shared mental model for the team. This is important as the individuals mental model will control what they think can or cannot be done. Personal Mastery Personal mastery is the process of continually clarifying and deepening an individuals personal vision. This is a matter of personal choice for the individual and involves continually assessing the gap between their current and desired proficiencies in an objective manner, and practising and refining skills until they are internalised. This develops self esteem and creates the confidence to tackle new challenges.
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The Fifth Discipline - Systems Thinking The cornerstone of any learning organisation is the fifth discipline - systems thinking. This is the ability to see the bigger picture, to look at the interrelationships of a system as opposed to simple cause-effect chains; allowing continuous processes to be studied rather than single snapshots. The fifth discipline shows us that the essential properties of a system are not determined by the sum of its parts but by the process of interactions between those parts. This is the reason systems thinking is fundamental to any learning organisation; it is the discipline used to implement the disciplines. Without systems thinking each of the disciplines would be isolated and therefore not achieve their objective. The fifth discipline integrates them to form the whole system, a system whose properties exceed the sum of its parts. However, the converse is also true - systems thinking cannot be achieved without the other core disciplines: personal mastery, team learning, mental models and shared vision. All of these disciplines are needed to successfully implement systems thinking, again illustrating the principal of the fifth discipline: systems should be viewed as interrelationships rather than isolated parts. The Laws of the Fifth Discipline Todays problems come from yesterdays solutions. Solutions shift problems from one part of a system to another. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. Compensating feedback: well intentioned interventions which eventually make matters worse. Behaviour grows better before it grows worse. The short-term benefits of compensating feedback are seen before the long-term disbenefits. The easy way out usually leads back in. Familiar solutions which are easy to implement usually do not solve the problem. The cure can be worse than the disease. Familiar solutions can not only be ineffective; sometimes they are addictive and dangerous. Faster is slower. The optimal rate of growth is much slower than the fastest growth possible. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. The area of a system which is generating the problems is usually distant to the area showing the symptoms. Small changes can produce big results-but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. Problems can be solved by making small changes to an apparently unrelated part of the system.
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You can have your cake and eat it too - but not at once. Problems viewed from a systems point of view, as opposed to a single snapshot, can turn out not to be problems at all. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants. A systems properties depend on the whole. There is no blame. The individual and the cause of their problems are part of a single system. Behaviour to Discourage An organisation which is not a learning one also displays behaviours, however these should definitely not be encouraged. Rosabeth Moss Kanter studied a range of large Americam corporations and came up with rules for stifling initiative : Regard any new idea from below with suspicion because it is new and because it is from below Express criticisms freely and withhold praise (that keeps people on their toes). Let them know they can be fired at any time Treat problems as a sign of failure Make decisions to reorganise or change policies in secret and spring them on people unexpectedly (that also keeps people on their toes) Above all, never forget that you, the higher-ups, already know everything important about business. These rules are expanded in her book The Change Masters. The Learning Organisation needs to break every one of these rules frequently. Why Learning Organisations Work The People Develop A Learning Organisation encourages its members to improve their personal skills and qualities, so that they can learn and develop. They benefit from their own and other peoples experience, whether it be positive or negative. Greater motivation People are appreciated for their own skills, values and work. All opinions are treated equally and with respect. By being aware of their role and importance in the whole organisation, the workers are more motivated to add their bit. This encourages creativity and free-thinking, hence leading to novel solutions to problems. All in all there is an increase in job satisfaction.
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The workforce is more flexible People learn skills and acquire knowledge beyond their specific job requirements. This enables them to appreciate or perform other roles and tasks. Flexibility allows workers to move freely within the organisation, whilst at the same time it removes the barriers associated with a rigidly structured company. It also ensures that any individual will be able to cope rapidly with a changing environment, such as those that exist in modern times. People are more creative There are more opportunities to be creative in a learning organisation. There is also room for trying out new ideas without having to worry about mistakes. Employees creative contribution is recognised and new ideas are free to flourish. Improved social interaction Learning requires social interaction and interpersonal communication skills. An organisation based on learning will ensure members become better at these activities. Teams will work better as a result. Teams and Groups Work Better Learning Organisations provide the perfect environment for high performing teams to learn, grow and develop. On the other hand these teams will perform efficiently for the organisation to produce positive results. Knowledge sharing Openness Creates Trust A team is composed of highly specialised members who can not and are not expected to know everything about a job. In this case the sharing of common knowledge is quite important for the completion of a job. Within learning organisations in general, and teams in particular, information and knowledge flows around more freely. This makes for higher productivity within teams and between teams as they build on each others strengths. Trust between team members increases and hence they value each others opinions more. Interdependency In any organisation people depend on each other for the completion of their jobs. Learning Organisations will increase this awareness, and improve relations between people at a personal level. By knowing more about other peoples roles, needs and tasks, members can manage their time better and plan their work more efficiently. This dependency is decreased as learning is enhanced, letting people get on with their own job better as they rely less on others.
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The Company Benefits An active learning organisation will have at its heart the concept of continuous learning. Therefore it will always be improving in its techniques, methods and technology. Breakdown of traditional communication barriers The old hierarchical communication barrier between manager-worker has devolved into more of a coach-team member scenario. Leaders support the team, not dictate to it. The team appreciates this which in turn helps them to be highly motivated. All workers have an increased awareness of the companys status, and all that goes on in other departments. Communication between and across all layers of the company gives a sense of coherence, making each individual a vital part of the whole system. Workers perform better as they feel more a part of the company; they are not just pawns in a game. Customer relations A companys first priority is its customers needs. A Learning Organisation cuts the excess bureaucracy normally involved with customer relations allowing greater contact between the two. If the customers requirements change, learning organisations can adapt faster and cope more efficiently with this change. Information resources Over time a company builds up a pool of learning, in the form of libraries, and human expertice. This pool of knowledge within learning organisations is larger than average. New problems and challenges can be met faster using this increased resource. Innovation and creativity As more people in every level of a company engage in continual learning a valid contribution can come from any member of the company, and from any part of the company. Being innovative and creative is the responsability of the whole workforce and allows learning organisations to adapt to changes in the state of the market, technology and competition efficiently. Moreover, this creativity gives rise to an increased synergy.The interaction between high performing teams produces a result which is higher than was planned or expected of them. Facets of World Class Organisation Attitude Our attitude with respect to our work and environment, and our attitude toward our built in individual biases. How do we perceive our organization and its relevance to the ISU mission?
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To develop attitudes for a world-class culture: Be Knowledgeable Share Network Collaborate Improve Products Be Flexible Be Innovative Change Your Orientation Keep the Proper Balance Process The processes within our individual unit function. Seek methodologies to adapt to meet changes, to speed delivery of our services, and to meet future challenges. Conduct internal benchmarking and transfer skill and knowledge to our people. Internal Benchmarking is the process of identifying the Best Practices developed within an organization and creating a business case for their implementation. Transferring Skill and Knowledge means the process of identifying, demonstrating, and transferring a successfully demonstrated process or practice to other units. Tools What tools help us to do our jobs better, faster, and easier within budget and on time (quality, speed, cost, and delivery)? Seek both low-tech and high-tech solutions. Embrace technology and adopt new skills through training and continuous improvement. World Class Organisations To achieve world-class status, an organization must stimulate creative thinking, encourage dialogue and introspection and promote understanding and new actions. Most important, it must give people - inside and outside the organization - something to care about. When people think of world-class organizations, chances are widely admired companies such as General Electric, Microsoft, British Airways, Hewlett-Packard, CocaCola and Disney spring to mind. Yet what elevates these and other companies from merely successful to the more desired status of world-class? A closer look at the best of the best reveals several shared characteristics. Besides being the premier organization in their industries, world-class companies have talented
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people, the latest technology, the best products and services, consistent high-quality, a high stock price, and a truckload of awards and accolades acknowledging their greatness. Dig deeper and youll also find that communication is practiced as a strategic process within these companies thats woven into their business planning, decision-making and organization-wide priorities. It defines their cultures by encouraging dialogue, feedback, interpretation and understanding. The Secret Behind World Class Something else also distinguishes world-class companies from all the others. Worldclass companies give people - their customers, employees, suppliers, even the people in the communities in which they operate - something to care about. While it may sound simple, a closer look at some of the worlds most respected and most successful companies indicates its true. Look at Disney, for example. Beginning with CEO Michael Eisner, everyone at Disney gives people a reason to care about the company because everyone there takes great pains to make their guests believe in make-believe. All new hires at Disney experience a multi-step training program where they quickly learn the language: Employees are cast members, customers are guests, a crowd is an audience, a work shift is a performance, a job is a part, a job description is a script, a uniform is a costume, the personnel department is casting, being on duty is being on stage, and being off duty is backstage. The special language along with the complete immersion into the companys history and mythology, reinforces the Disney frame of mind, starting with its new employees. All this acts to strengthen the sense of purpose and cult-like unity, ultimately intensifying the underlying ideology: To make people happy. These things, including unity of purpose and preservation of image and ideology, work together to make Disney world-class. Building a World Class Organisation Building Block One: Loyal Customers Becoming a world-class organization starts by determining what kind of experience you want your customers to have. How would you like customers to be treated as they interact with every part of your company? Now compare your vision of ideal customer service to what is currently happening in your organization. Look and see where things dont quite match up. If your organization is like most, it will have quite a few bumps and warts that you will want to address. You will also want to consider your companys consistency factor. Delivering your product or service properly time after time after time without fail is the foundation of creating loyal customers. Consistency is critical because consistency creates credibility. Consistency is the key to creating loyal customers.
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The worst thing you can do is meet expectations one time, fall short another, and exceed every now and then. That will not only drive your customers crazy, but also send them running into the hands of your competition the first chance they get. Building Block Two: Engaged Employees It takes excited and passionate people to create a customer-focused culture. You cannot treat your people poorly and expect them to take good care of your customers. Empowering your people and permitting them to act as owners is essential. There are three things you can do to getand keeppeople excited about their jobs: Worthwhile workPeople want to know that the work they are doing is important and makes a difference. Make sure that everyone understands the significance of their particular role in achieving the companys overall vision. Remind people of their significance on a regular basis. In control of achieving the goalLet people have a say in how they do their jobs. It is increasingly important to place the responsibility for decision making directly on employees themselves. The good news is that employees are more motivated when they know they are being counted on to use their own judgment versus simply carrying out policies that allow for little, if any, individual discretion. Cheer each other onEveryone loves to be recognized for a job well done. Create a collaborative climate where milestones and other measures of improvement are celebrated and people feel acknowledged. Reward and recognition focused on catching people doing things right is one of the best ways to positively reinforce a motivating work environment. Building Block Three: Great Managers Great managers hold everything together. They know that leadership is not about them; it is about serving the vision and the people who make it come alive. Great managers realize that they cannot do it all themselves, so they empower people to make decisions and then support them all the way. Todays manager must be a coach, facilitator and cheerleader for the employees they support. To be world-class, make sure your managers support their direct reports in four ways: Provide access to information and training that gives people the right start and helps them to grow. Lets employees know why what they do is important to your company and how it provides value to your customers. Use performance management as a way to give people the direction and support they needwhen they need itso employees can accomplish their goals and the organization can succeed.
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Provide recognition frequently and celebrate performance over time. Catch direct reports doing things right instead of wrong to keep them inspired and focused on whats important. Keep employees growing through ongoing career planning. Give direct reports the opportunity to develop skills that will make them more valuable employees. The process of building a world-class organization takes time, energy, and commitment. It all starts by developing a shared vision that is focused on the customer and the experience you want your customers to have when they interact with your company. It continues with engaged employees who are passionate about delivering that experience and understand how their role fits into the overall picture. Finally, it is held together by great managers and leaders who recognize that their goal is to have the right people, in the right roles, fully engaged and growing if their organization is going to succeed in the long term. At The Ken Blanchard Companies we dont think organizations set a goal for themselves to be no worse than the competition. Instead, we think that people and organizations want to be world-class. Its the job of leaders to bring out that magnificence in people and create the environment in which employees feel safe, supported, and ready to do the best job possible in accomplishing key goals on behalf of their organization. 1.5 DUAL-USE TECHNOLOGY Dual-use is a term often used in politics and diplomacy to refer to technology which can be used for both peaceful and military aims. It usually refers to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but that of bioweapons is a growing concern. Many types of nuclear reactors produce fissile material, such as plutonium, as a byproduct, which could be used in the development of a nuclear weapon. However, nuclear reactors can also be used for peaceful, civilian purposes: providing electricity to a city, for example. As such, a nation which wanted to develop a nuclear weapon could build a reactor, claiming it would be used for civilian purposes, and then use its plutonium to build a nuclear weapon. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union spent billions of dollars developing rocket technology which could carry humans into space (and even eventually to the moon). The knowledge gained from this peaceful rocket technology also served in the development of intercontinental ballistic missile technology as well. The International Atomic Energy Agency attempts to monitor dual-use technology in countries who are signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to make sure that fissile material is not diverted to military functions. In recent events, both Iran and North Korea have been accused of having nuclear weapons programs based on dual-use technology.
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Lax biosecurity at laboratories is worrying researchers and regulators that potential select agents may fall into the hands of malevolent parties. It may have been instrumental to the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, and unintentional SARS virus leaks led to lethal outbreaks in China, Taiwan and Singapore over 2003 and 2004. Universities may flaunt regulations, complacent of the dangers in doing so. Though the majority of breaches are benign, the hybridization of Hepatitis C and dengue-fever viruses at Imperial College London in 1997 resulted in a fine when health and safety rules were not observed.A research program at Texas A&M was shut down when Brucella and Coxiella infections were not reported. That the July 2007 terrorist attacks in central London and at Glasgow airport may have involved medical professionals was a recent wake-up call that screening people with access to pathogens may be necessary. The challenge remains to maintain security without impairing the contributions to progress afforded by research. Most industrial countries have export controls on certain types of designated dualuse technologies, and they are required by a number of treaties as well. These controls restrict the export of certain commodities and technologies without the permission of the government. The principal agency for dual use export controls in the United States is the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security. More generally speaking, dual-use can also refer to any technology which can satisfy more than one goal at any given time. Thus, expensive technologies which would otherwise only serve military purposes can also be utilized to benefit civilian commercial interests when not otherwise engaged such as the Global Positioning System. 1.6 ROAD MAP TO TECHNICAL PLANNING Overview of the Roadmapping process
The Technology Roadmapping Process conducts 3 phases (see figure 3): preliminary activities, the development of the roadmap and the follow-up activities phase. Because the process is too big for one model the phases are modeled separately. Only the first two phases are considered. In the models no different roles are made, this is because everything is done by the participants as a group. Phase 1: Preliminary phase The first phase, the preliminary phase, consists of 3 steps: satisfy essential conditions, provide leadership / sponsorship and define the scope and boundaries for the technology roadmap. In this phase the key decision makers must identify that they have a problem and that technology roadmapping can help them in solving the problem. Satisfy essential conditions In this step it must become clear what the conditions are (they have to be identified) and if they are not met that somebody will take the actions necessary to meet the unmet conditions. These conditions include for example the following: there must be a need for the technology roadmap, input and participation from several different parts of the organization (e.g. marketing, R&D, the Strategic Business Units ) with different planning horizons and different perspectives and the process should be needs driven. All the conditions should be satisfied (or someone is going to take the actions necessary) in order to continue to the next step. The participants can have zero or more conditions of their own. It applies to all the conditions that they have the attribute to be met or not. Insert non-formatted text here Provide leadership / sponsorship Committed leadership is needed because time and effort is involved in creating the technology roadmap. Additionally the leadership should come from one of the participants, one of them provides leadership / sponsorship. This means that the line organization must drive the process and use the roadmap to make resource allocation decisions. Define the scope and boundaries for the technology roadmap In this step the context for the roadmap will be specified. In the company a vision should exist and it must be clear that the roadmap can support that vision. If the vision does not exist one should be developed and clearly stated. When that is done the boundaries and the scope of the roadmap should be specified. Furthermore the planning horizon and the level of details should be set. The scope can be further divided into the technology scope and the participation scope.
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In table 1. all the different sub-activities of the preliminary activity phase can be seen. All the sub-activities have concepts as end products, these are marked in uppercase. These concepts are the actual meta-data model , which is an adjusted class diagram . Table 1 Activity table for the preliminary activity phase.
Activity Satisfy essential conditions Sub-Activity Description
Identify essential conditions When all the participants come together essential conditions, like what groups should be involved, what are the key customers and what are the key suppliers, can be identified. Take action to satisfy conditions For Technology Roadmapping to succeed conditions from the participants must be satisfied.
The
part
of
Leadership
drive the Roadmapping process and use the roadmap to make resource allocation decisions. Define the scope and boundaries for the technology roadmap Define scope Develop vision Clearly state vision The already existing vision has to be clear The vision is developed and stated clearly. The scope of the project can further define the set of needs, planning horizion and level of detail. The scope can be further divided into the Technology Scope and the participation scope Define boundaries Also the boundaries should be included
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Phase 2: Development phase The second phase, the development of the technology roadmap phase , consists of 7 steps: identify the product that will be the focus of the roadmap, identify the critical system requirements and their targets, specify the major technology areas, specify the technology drivers and their targets, identify technology alternatives and their timelines, recommend the technology alternatives that should be pursued and create the technology roadmap report. These steps create the actual roadmap. Identify the product that will be the focus of the roadmap In this step the common product needs are identified and should be agreed on by all the participants. This is important to get the acceptance of all groups for the process. In case of uncertainty of the product needs scenario-based planning can be used to determine the common product needs. It can be seen that the participants and possibly the scenariobased planning provide the common product needs. Identify the critical system requirements and their targets Once it is decided what needs to be roadmapped the critical system requirements can be identified, they provide the overall framework for the technology roadmap. The requirements can have targets (as an attribute in figure 3) like reliability and costs. Specify the major technology areas These are the areas which can help achieve the critical system requirements. For each technology area several technologies can be found. Example technology areas are: Market assessment, Crosscutting technology, Component development and System development. Specify the technology drivers and their targets In this step the critical system requirements from step Identify the critical system requirements and their targets are transformed into technology drivers (with targets) for the specific technology area. These drivers are the critical variables that will determine which technology alternatives are selected. The drivers depend on the technology areas but they relate to how the technology addresses the critical system requirements. Identify Technology alternatives and their timelines At this point the technology drivers and their targets are specified and the technology alternatives that can satisfy those targets should be specified. For each of the alternatives a timeline should be estimated for how it will mature with respect to the technology driver targets.
NOTES
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Time This factor can be adapted suitable for the particular situation. The time horizons for E-commerce and software related sectors are usually short. Other distinctions can be made on scale and intervals. Recommend the technology alternatives that should be pursued Because the alternatives may differ in costs, timeline etc. a selection has to be made of the alternatives. These will be the alternatives to be pursued in figure 3. In this step a lot of trade-off has to be made between different alternatives for different targets, performance over costs and even target over target. Create the technology roadmap report At this point the technology roadmap is finished. It can be seen that the technology roadmap report consists of 5 parts: the identification and description of each technology area, critical factors in the roadmap, unaddressed areas, implementation recommendations and technical recommendations. The report can also include additional information. In table 2. all the different sub-activities of the development phase can be seen. Table 2 Activity table for the Development phase.
Activity Identify the product that will be the focus of the roadmap Sub-Activity Identify needs Description This critical step is to get the participants to identify and agree on the common product needs. This is important to get their buy-in and acceptance. If there is major uncertainty about the common product needs scenariobased planning can be used. Each scenario must be reasonable, internally consistent and comparable with the other scenarios. These are the needs for the product. The critical system requirements provide the overall framework for the roadmap and are high-level dimensions to which the technologies relate. These include things like reliability and costs. For each of the system requirements targets have to be defined.
State needs Define critical system Identify the critical system requirements requirements and their targets Define targets
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Identify technology alternatives and their timelines Recommend the technology alternatives that should be pursued Create the technology roadmap report
Transform requirements The major technology areas should be into technology oriented specified to help achieve the critical drivers system requirements for the product. The critical system requirements are then transformed into technology drivers for the specific technology areas. Select technology Technology drivers and their targets alternatives with their are set based on the critical SYSTEM targets requirement targets. It specifies how viable technology alternatives must be to perform by a certain date. From the available technology alternatives a selection has to be made. Identify alternatives and The technology alternatives that can their timelines satisfy the TARGETS must be identified. Next to this the TIMELINE from each alternative has to be identified. Select subset of Determine which technology technology alternatives alternative to pursue and when to to be pursued shift to a different TECHNOLOGY. Consolidate the best information and develop consensus from many experts. Create the report Here the actual technology roadmap report is created. This report includes: identification and description the technology, critical factor, unaddressed area, And implementation recommendation and technical recommendation.
NOTES
Phase 3: Follow-up activity phase This is the moment when the roadmap must be critiqued, validated and hopefully accepted by the group that will be involved in any implementation. For this a plan needs to be developed using the technology roadmap. Next there must be a periodical review and update point, because the needs from the participants and the technologies are evolving. Planning and Business Development Context for Technology Roadmapping. The process of technology roadmapping fits into corporate strategy, corporate strategic planning , technology planning and the business development context. 3 critical elements should be connected: needs, products and technology.
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Knowledge and skills required Consultant with skills In order to create a technology roadmap it is required to have a certain set of knowledge and skills. This means that some of the participants must know the process of technology roadmapping. Next to this group-process and interpersonal skills are required since the process includes a lot of discussions and finding out what the common need is. If the amount of participants is really large there might be need for a consultant or facilitator. The variety in technology Roadmapping The purpose of technology Roadmapping Product planning: This is the most common type of a technology roadmap; linking the insertion of technologies into products. This can overlap between generations. Programme planning: This type is more directed to the implementation of strategy and related to project planning. Figure 5 shows the relationships between technology development phases, programme phases and milestones. The formats of technology Roadmapping Bars Almost all the roadmaps are (partly) expressed in bars for each layer. This makes the roadmaps very simple and unified, which makes the communication and integration easier. Graphs Also a technology roadmap can be expressed as a graph, usually one for each of the sub layers. Summary This unit gave some insight into the policies of technology management systems, methods to build and maintian a learinging and a world class organisation and the dual use technology alogwith a road map to technical planning. Questions Have you understood? 1. Are policies a boon or a bane to technology management? 2. Why and how can knowledge be leveraged? 3. Elaborate on the steps in creating a learing organisation. 4. How can you differentiate a world class organisation from a medoicare organisation? 5. Prepare a road map towards techinal planning for a project of your choice.
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2.1 TOTAL FLEXIBILITY MANAGEMENT Total flexibility management is a managerial approach for developing flexible resources. An extensive variety of management tools and approaches are available to achieve business success in todays competitive global environment. Management approaches such as justin-time manufacturing (JIT), employee involvement, activity-based management, time-based competition and total quality management (TQM) all attempt to meet the needs of the customer cheaper, faster and better. However, many world-class companies are realizing that success in the future will go to the organization with the strategic advantage of flexibility. The flexibility of a resource, or the degree to which it may be used in multiple ways or as a substitute for other, less plentiful resources, is a crucial attribute of all resources. Today, a token effort given to improve flexibility may be as futile as many initial halfhearted quality programs were in the early 1970s. The company-wide focus crucial to successful TQM programs is also needed in developing total organizational flexibility.
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Flexibility is an important characteristic of all types of resources, not just materials or machine tools. These include traditional resources, such as people and machines as well as less traditional resources, such as the organizations structure, information flows, culture and decision making processes. Furthermore, a resource with a high degree of flexibility has increased utility as a potential substitute for other resources. By leveraging this characteristic, effective companies achieve more with less. Defining resources and flexibility Viewed broadly, a resource may be defined as anything, tangible or intangible, that is under an organizations control and that may be used in pursuit of its mission. Some obvious examples of resources include plant and equipment, raw materials, employees and financial resources. Within the above definition, a manufacturers customers are not a resource. Although they do contribute to the accomplishment of the firms mission, they are not under its control. However, the firms relationships with its customers are under its control, at least in part. Thus, a comprehensive view of resource management must include the intangible possessions of the organization. These include its relationships (reputation, standing agreements, etc.), its existing knowledge or experience base and the possibly undiscovered and unused talents of its work force. Flexibility management is also gaining importance due to the changes in the demand management strategies. Fig. 2 shows various demand management strategies adopted by firms to meet the demands of dynamic markets for products/services. Companies operating in a make-to-stock environment produce the items and stock them based on the demand forecast, and the focus of the management will be on maintaining the optimum level of the stock. The next level is an assemble-to-order environment where the products are stocked in a ready-to-assemble condition and assembled to meet the orders. This environment provides certain flexibility to build a limited and known variety of products using highly standardised and modular designs. Beyond this, the items will have to be produced using the available designs. This will lead to a make-to-order situation. The emerging environment is leading towards an Engineer-to-Order (ETO) situation where new products are engineered to order by modifying the existing designs. The fundamental assumption of this approach is that the designs are readily available and variety can be accomplished simply by building flexibility into the manufacturing systems. However, the real competence for customisation lies beyond this, that is, in the ability to quickly and efficiently design new products using available competencies and development of new competencies wherever required. We call this as an Innovate-to-Order (ITO) environment. The future organisations are required to operate and compete in this new environment. As we move from make-to-stock situation towards the innovate-to-order level, the requirements for flexibility increases and there will be greater need for flexibility management.
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Emergence of Flexibility The concept of flexibility in the operations of the firm seems to have been originated in the later part of 1930s in economics literature and ever since attracting growing attention from industry as well as academic researchers. However, in spite of intense research efforts and large number of publications, especially during the last two decades, flexibility remained a conundrum, a confusing puzzle, defying even a universally accepted definitions. Flexibility is recognized as a complex, multi-dimensional and polymorphous concept, which means different things to different people and is highly context specific. Several attempts are being made in literature to comprehend this complex concept and capture its essence with the help of unified frameworks, taxonomy, models and measures. However, in spite of all these efforts, there are so many gaps in understanding the concept of flexibility, especially from a practitioners point of view. It was observed that, beyond the intuitive and rudimentary perception of the importance of flexibility, there exists little understanding of its nature, and of its effect on manufacturing performance. Other observations have been that, while the potential benefits of flexibility are familiar, the concept of flexibility itself is not well understood. There are many questions in the minds of the practitioners, such as, what is flexibility? Why do we need it ? How does it matter for business performance ? How it is created and exploited, etc.? Hence, there is a need to advance the current understanding of the flexibility and this paper is a step in this direction. There are three areas that are encompassed under the umbrella of Management Flexibility which allow both supervisors and employees to accomplish their goals, improve operating efficiency, take care of personal needs, and adapt to the changing needs of the University and the individual. Those areas are Flexible Scheduling, Telecommuting, and Internal Promotion of Employees. 2.2 CHANGE MANAGEMENT The change management process in systems engineering is the process of requesting, determining attainability, planning, implementing and evaluation of changes to a system. It has two main goals : supporting the processing of changes which is mainly discussed here and enabling traceability of changes, which should be possible through proper execution of the process described here. There is considerable overlap and confusion between change management, change control and configuration management. Change management is an important process, because it can deliver vast benefits (by improving the system and thereby satisfying customer needs), but also enormous problems (by ruining the system and/or mixing up the change administration). Furthermore, at least for the Information Technology domain, more funds and work are put into system maintenance (which involves change management) than to the initial creation of a system. Typical investment by organizations during initial implementation of large ERP systems is 15-20% of overall budget.
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In the same vein, Hinley describes two of Lehmans laws of software evolution: the law of continuing change (i.e. systems that are used must change or automatically become less useful) and the law of increasing complexity (i.e. through changes the structure of a system becomes ever more complex and more resources are needed to simplify it). The field of manufacturing is nowadays also confronted with many changes due to increasing and worldwide competition, technological advances and demanding customers. Therefore, (efficient and effective) change management is also of great importance in this area. It is not unthinkable that the above statements are true for other domains as well, because usually, systems tend to change and evolve as they are used. Below, a generic change management process and its deliverables are discussed, followed by some examples of instances of this process. The process and its deliverables For the description of the change management process, the meta-modeling technique is used. Activities There are six main activities, which jointly form the change management process. They are: Identify potential change, Analyze change request, Evaluate change, Plan change, Implement change and Review and close change. These activities are executed by four different roles, which are discussed in Table 1. The activities (or their sub-activities, if applicable) themselves are described in Table 2.
Table 1 Role descriptions for the change management process Role Customer Description The customer is the role that requests a change due to problems encountered or new functionality requirements; this can be a person or an organizational entity and can be in- or external to the company that is asked to implement the change. The project manager is the owner of the project that the CHANGE REQUEST concerns. In some cases there is a distinct change manager, who in that case takes on this role. The change committee decides whether a CHANGE REQUEST will be implemented or not. Sometimes this task is performed by the project manager as well. The change builder is the person who plans and implements the change; it could be argued that the planning component is (partially) taken on by the project manager.
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Require new A customer desires new functionality and formulates functionality a REQUIREMENT. Encounter problem Request change A customer encounters a problem (e.g. a bug) in the system and this leads to a PROBLEM REPORT. A customer proposes a change through creation of a CHANGE REQUEST. The project manager determines the technical feasibility of the proposed CHANGE REQUEST, leading to a CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY.
The project manager determines the costs and benefits of the proposed CHANGE REQUEST, resulting in Determine CHANGE COSTS AND BENEFITS. This and the costs and above sub-activity can be done in any order and they benefits are independent of each other, hence the modeling as unordered activities. Based on the CHANGE REQUEST, its CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY and CHANGE COSTS AND BENEFITS, the change committee makes the go/no-go decision. This is modeled as a separate activity because it is an important process step and has another role performing it. It is modeled as a subactivity (without any activity containing it) as recommended by Remko Helms (personal communication). The extent of the change (i.e. what other items the change effects) is determined in a CHANGE IMPACT ANALYSIS. It could be argued that this Analyze activity leads to another go/no-go decision, or that it change impact even forms a part of the Analyze change request activity. It is modeled here as a planning task for the change builder because of its relationship with the activity Propagate change.
Evaluate change
Plan change
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Create planning
A CHANGE PLANNING is created for the implementation of the change. Some process descriptions (e.g. Mkrinen, 2000) illustrate that is also possible to save changes and process them later in a batch. This activity could be viewed as a good point to do this. The change is programmed; this activity has a strong relationship with Propagate change, because sometimes the change has to be adapted to other parts of the system (or even other systems) as well. The changes resulting from Execute change have to be propagated to other system parts that are influenced by it. Because this and the above subactivity are highly dependent on each other, they have been modeled as concurrent activities. The change builder tests whether what (s)he has built actually works and satisfies the CHANGE REQUEST. As depicted in the diagram, this can result in an iterative process together with the above two sub-activities.
Implement change
Execute change
Propagate change
Test change
Update The DOCUMENTATION is updated to reflect the documentation applied changes. Release change A new SYSTEM RELEASE, which reflects the applied change, is made public.
The implementation of the change in the new SYSTEM RELEASE is verified for the last time, now by the project manager. Maybe this has to Review and Verify change happen before the release, but due to conflicting close literature sources and diagram complexity change considerations it was chosen to model it this way and include this issue. Close change This change cycle is completed, i.e. the CHANGE LOG ENTRY is wrapped up.
Deliverables esides activities, the process-data diagram also shows the deliverables of each activity, i.e. the data. These deliverables or concepts are described in Table 3; in this context, the most important concepts are: change request and change log entry. few concepts are defined by the author (i.e. lack a reference), because either no (good) definitions could be found, or they are the obvious result of an activity. These concepts are marked with an asterisk (*). Properties of concepts have been left out of
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the model, because most of them are trivial and the diagram could otherwise quickly become too complex. Furthermore, some concepts (e.g. CHANGE REQUEST, SYSTEM RELEASE) lend themselves for the versioning approach as proposed by Weerd [6], but this has also been left out due to diagram complexity constraints.
Table 3 Concept descriptions for the change management process Concept REQUIREMENT Description A required functionality of a component (or item; NASA, 2005). Document describing a problem that cannot be solved by a level 1 help desk employee; contains items like date, contact info of person reporting the problem, what is causing the problem, location and description of the problem, action taken and disposition, but this is not depicted in the diagram (Dennis, et al., 2002). Document that describes the requested change and why it is important; can originate from PROBLEM REPORTS, system enhancements, other projects, changes in underlying systems and senior management, here summarized as REQUIREMENTS (Dennis, et al., 2002). Important attribute: go/no-go decision, i.e. is the change going to be executed or not? Distinct entry in the collection of all changes (e.g. for a project); consists of a CHANGE REQUEST, CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY, CHANGE COSTS AND LOG BENEFITS, CHANGE IMPACT ANALYSIS, CHANGE PLANNING, TEST REPORT and CHANGE VERIFICATION. Not all these have to be included if the process is terminated earlier (i.e. if the change is not implemented). Concept that indicates whether or not reliable hardware and software, technical resources capable of meeting the needs of a proposed system [i.e. change request] can be acquired or developed by an organization in the required time (Vogl, 2004).
NOTES
PROBLEM REPORT
CHANGE REQUEST
CHANGE ENTRY*
The expected effort required to implement and the CHANGE COSTS advantages (e.g. cost savings, increased revenue) gained by implementing the change. Also named economic AND BENEFITS feasibility CHANGE IMPACT An assessment of the extent of the change ANALYSIS
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Besides just changes, one can also distinguish deviations and waivers. A deviation is an authorization (or a request for it) to depart from a requirement of an item, prior to the creation of it. A waiver is essentially the same, but than during or after creation of the item. These two approaches can be viewed as minimalistic change management (i.e. no real solution to the problem at hand). Examples A good example of the change management process in action can be found in software development. Often users report bugs or desire new functionality from their software programs, which leads to a change request. The product software company then looks into the technical and economical feasibility of implementing this change and consequently it decides whether the change will actually be realized. If that indeed is the case, the change has to be planned, for example through the usage of function points. The actual execution of the change leads to the creation and/or alteration of software code and when this change is propagated it probably causes other code fragments to change as well. After the initial test results seem satisfactory, the documentation can be brought up to date and be released, together with the software. Finally, the project manager verifies the change and closes this entry in the change log. Another typical area for change management in the way it is treated here, is the manufacturing domain. Take for instance the design and production of a car. If for example the vehicles air bags are found to automatically fill with air after driving long distances, this will without a doubt lead to customer complaints (or hopefully problem reports during the testing phase). In turn, these produce a change request (see Figure 2 on the right), which will probably justify a change. Nevertheless, a most likely simplistic cost and benefit analysis has to be done, after which the change request can be approved. Following an analysis of the impact on the car design and production schedules, the planning for the implementation of the change can be created. According to this planning, the change can actually be realized, after which the new version of the car is hopefully thoroughly tested before it is released to the market. Change management in industrial plants Since complex processes can be very sensitive to even small changes, proper management of change to industrial facilities and processes is recognized as critical to safety. In the US, OSHA has regulations that govern how changes are to be made and documented. The main requirement is that a thorough review of a proposed change be performed by a multi-disciplinary team to ensure that as many possible viewpoints are used as possible to minimize the chances of missing a hazard. In this context, change management is known as Management of Change, or MOC. It is just one of many components of Process Safety Management, section 1910.119(l).1
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Change Management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. The current definition of Change Management includes both organizational change management processes and individual change management models, which together are used to manage the people side of change. Individual change management A number of models are available for understanding the transitioning of individuals through the phases of change. Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze An early model of change developed by Kurt Lewin described change as a threestage process[1]. The first stage he called unfreezing. It involved overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing mindset. Defense mechanisms have to be bypassed. In the second stage the change occurs. This is typically a period of confusion and transition. We are aware that the old ways are being challenged but we do not have a clear picture to replace them with yet. The third and final stage he called freezing (often called refreezing by others). The new mindset is crystallizing and ones comfort level is returning to previous levels. Rosch (2002) argues that this often quoted three-stage version of Lewins approach is an oversimplification and that his theory was actually more complex and owed more to physics than behavioural science. Later theorists have however remained resolute in their interpretation of the force field model. This three-stage approach to change is also adopted by Hughes (1991) who makes reference to: exit (departing from an existing state), transit (crossing unknown territory), and entry (attaining a new equilibrium). Tannenbaum & Hanna (1985) suggest a change process where movement is from homeostasis and holding on, through dying and letting go to rebirth and moving on. Although elaborating the process to five stages, Judson (1991) still proposes a linear, staged model of implementing a change: (a) analysing and planning the change; (b) communicating the change; (c) gaining acceptance of new behaviours; (d) changing from the status quo to a desired state, and (e) consolidating and institutionalising the new state. Kbler-Ross Some change theories are based on derivatives of the Kbler-Ross model from Elizabeth Kubler-Rosss book, On Death and Dying. The stages of Kubler-Rosss model describe the personal and emotional states that a person typically encounters when dealing with loss of a loved one. Derivatives of her model applied in other settings such as the workplace show that similar emotional states are encountered as individuals are confronted with change. Formula for Change A Formula for Change was developed by Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher and is sometimes referred to as Gleichers Formula. The Formula illustrates that the combination of organisational dissatisfaction, vision for the future and the possibility of
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immediate, tactical action must be stronger than the resistance within the organisation in order for meaningful changes to occur. ADKAR The ADKAR model for individual change management was developed by Prosci with input from more than 1000 organizations from 59 countries. This model describes five required building blocks for change to be realized successfully on an individual level. The building blocks of the ADKAR Model include: 1. Awareness of why the change is needed 2. Desire to support and participate in the change 3. Knowledge of how to change 4. Ability to implement new skills and behaviors 5. Reinforcement to sustain the change Organizational change management Organizational change management includes processes and tools for managing the people side of the change at an organizational level. These tools include a structured approach that can be used to effectively transition groups or organizations through change. When combined with an understanding of individual change management, these tools provide a framework for managing the people side of change. People who are confronted by change will experience a form of culture-shock as established patterns of corporate life are altered, or viewed by people as being threatened. Employees will typically experience a form of grief or loss. Dynamic conservatism This mode by Donald Schn explores the inherent nature of organisations to be conservative and protect themselves from constant change. Schn recognises the increasing need, due to the increasing pace of change for this process to become far more flexible. This process being one of learning. Very early on Schn recognised the need for what is now termed the learning organization. These ideas are further expanded on within his frame work of reflection-in-action the mapping of a process by which this constant change could be coped with. The role of the management Managements responsibility (and that of administration in case of political changes) is to detect trends in the macroenvironment as well as in the microenvironment so as to be able to identify changes and initiate programs. It is also important to estimate what impact a change will likely have on employee behaviour patterns, work processes, technological requirements, and motivation. Management must assess what employee reactions will be
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and craft a change program that will provide support as workers go through the process of accepting change. The program must then be implemented, disseminated throughout the organization, monitored for effectiveness, and adjusted where necessary. Organizations exist within a dynamic environment that is subject to change due to the impact of various change triggers, such as evolving technologies. To continue to operate effectively within this environmental turbulence, organizations must be able to change themselves in response to internally and externally initiated change. However, change will also impact upon the individuals within the organization. Effective change management requires an understanding of the possible effects of change upon people, and how to manage potential sources of resistance to that change. Change can be said to occur where there is an imbalance between the current state and the environment. Other Approaches to Managing Change Appreciative Inquiry, one of the most frequently applied approaches to organizational change, is partly based on the assumption that change in a system is instantaneous (Change at the Speed of Imagination) Scenario Planning: Scenario planning provides a platform for doing so by asking management and employees to consider different future market possibilities in which their organizations might find themselves. Theory U of Otto Scharmer who describes a process in which change strategies are based on the emerging future rather than on lesson from the past. 2.3 CHOICE OF TECHNOLOGY Technology choice has important implications for growth and productivity in industry. The use of technology is always tied to an objective. Because various types of technologies can be used to achieve an organizations objectives, the issue of choice arises. The concept of technology choice assumes access to information on alternative technologies and the ability to evaluate these effectively. Moustafa (1990) asserted that effective choice is based on pre-selected criteria for a technologys meeting specified needs. Further, it depends on the ability to identify and recognize opportunities in different technologies. The expected outcome is that the firm will select the most suitable or appropriate technology (AT) in its circumstances. The concept of AT has been a subject of debate for many years. Stewart (1987) contrasted two general views. First, welfare economics defines AT as a set of techniques for making optimum use of available resources in a given environment. Second, social scientists and those working in AT institutions associate AT with a specific set of characteristics. According to Stewart, the characteristics defining AT normally include more labour-using, less capital-using, less skill-using, making more use of local materials and resources, and smaller in scale.
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It is also sometimes emphasized that AT should not affect the environment negatively and that it should fit in with the socioeconomic structures of the community. The suggested characteristics are too numerous, which implies that a technology can be appropriate in some ways and inappropriate in others. Kaplinsky examined the trade-offs involved in the choice of technology and found that mechanized production can, at times, turn out an inexpensive, higher quality product for consumers, whereas normal production of a lower quality and higher cost product generates more employment (ATI 1987). This illustrates the dilemma involved in evaluating technology and raises the question, Appropriate for whom? This article is concerned with the gaps in knowledge, skills, or resources that hinder effective choice of technology at the enterprise level. In this context, the term appropriate is used loosely to mean technology that is most advantageous to the enterprises purpose and circumstances. Small enterprises The heterogeneity of the SSE sector complicates the problem defining it. The concept is defined in different ways, depending on the purpose of classifying firms as micro, small, medium sized, or large. Technologically, the sector is said to use low-level inputs and skills, to have much greater labour intensity, to produce lower priced products, and to operate on a small scale. The study on which this article is based focused on enterprises in the carpentry and hair-care subsectors employing fewer than 20 employees. It covered micro and small enterprises operating at various levels along the formalityinformality continuum. The Private Sector Diagnosis Survey (USAID 1989) found that most small enterprises in Kenya had fewer than 20 employees. Choice of Technology in SSEs Private-sector development as a suitable alternative for promoting sustainable and balanced growth in India has attracted considerable attention. Many governments and development organizations have focused on the promotion of small-scale enterprises (SSEs) as a way of encouraging broader participation in the private sector. The promotion of SSEs and, especially, of those in the informal sector is viewed as a viable approach to sustainable development because it suits the resources in India. A number of factors have helped to direct the attention of development agencies to the merits of SSEs. For instance, at the peak of the economic crisis in the early 1980s, the SSE sector grew tremendously and exhibited unique strengths in the face of recession. The sector continued to grow, despite hostile economic, regulatory, and political environments. The entrepreneurs in this sector came to be regarded as highly opportunistic and innovative. They emerged spontaneously to take advantage of opportunities that arose in the changing business environment. Moreover, they demonstrated great creativity in starting enterprises with minimal resources.
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SSEs have characteristics that justify promoting them in a development strategy. They create employment at low levels of investment per job, lead to increased participation of indigenous people in the economy, use mainly local resources, promote the creation and use of local technologies, and provide skills training at a low cost to society (ILO 1989). It is generally recognized that SSEs face unique problems, which affect their growth and profitability and, hence, diminish their ability to contribute effectively to sustainable development. Many of the problems cited have implications for technology choice. These problems include lack of access to credit, inadequate managerial and technical skills, low levels of education, poor market information, inhibitive regulatory environments, and lack of access to technology. Factors influencing the choice of technology by SSEs Entrepreneurs decide at the enterprise level which technologies to use. The main factors influencing their choice of technology include the objectives of the firm, the resources available, the nature of the market, and their knowledge of available technologies (Stewart 1987). Moreover, the entrepreneurs need technical and managerial skills to choose, adapt, and effectively use technology. Additionally, one would be in a better position to choose a technology if one were able to assess the demand for the firms products, estimate the rate of change in the market that may call for change in technology, gather information about alternative technologies, and estimate the potential return on investment for each alternative. However, many entrepreneurs in this sector lack the education, training, management experience, and other competencies needed to respond to these issues. Because of their economic and organizational characteristics, many SSEs lack information about technologies and have no way of gauging the appropriateness of those they are aware of (Neck and Nelson 1987). Macropolicies also affect technology choice at the firm level through the overall socioeconomic, political, and legal forces. It has been suggested that general socioeconomic environment, industry-specific regulations, taxes, subsidies, trade and financing policies, science and technology research, and dissemination policies tend to favour large-scale enterprises (ATI 1987). Problems hindering the effective choice of technology by SSEs The literature indicates that SSEs face unique constraints that hinder the effective choice of technology. Many SSE owners or managers lack managerial training and experience. The typical owner or managers of small businesses develop their own approach to management, through a process of trial and error. As a result, their management style is likely to be more intuitive than analytical, more concerned with day-to-day operations than long-term issues, and more opportunistic than strategic in its concept (Hill 1987). Although
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this attitude is the key strength at the start-up stage of the enterprise because it provides the creativity needed, it may present problems when complex decisions have to be made. A consequence of poor managerial ability is that SSE owners are ill prepared to face changes in the business environment and to plan appropriate changes in technology. Lack of information is a key problem affecting SSEs access to technology. Harper (1987) suggested that technologies used by SSEs in developing countries may be inappropriate because their choice is based on insufficient information and ineffective evaluation. Neck and Nelson (1987) suggested that ignorance is a key constraint affecting the choice of technology by SSEs. Further, level of education is relevant, as it may determine the entrepreneurs access to information. Generally, the ability to read and write, exposure to a broader world, and training in the sciences enhance ones ability to understand, respond to, use, and control technologies (Anderson 1985). Lack of access to credit is almost universally indicated as a key problem for SSEs. This affects technology choice by limiting the number of alternatives that can be considered. Many SSEs may use an inappropriate technology because it is the only one they can afford. In some cases, even where credit is available, the entrepreneur may lack freedom of choice because the lending conditions may force the purchase of heavy, immovable equipment that can serve as collateral for the loan. Another related problem is the lack of suitable premises and other infrastructure. The national policy and regulatory environment has an important impact on technology decisions at the enterprise level. The structural adjustment programs (SAPs) currently implemented in many African countries are aimed at removing heavy policy distortions, which have been viewed as detrimental to the growth of the private sector. However, much as these policies may in principle favour SSE growth in the long run, concern has been shown about the ability of the SSE sector to increase production and create more jobs under conditions of declining demand (Henk et al. 1991). SAPs tend to severely affect vulnerable groups in the short run and have been associated with the worsening living conditions in many African countries (USAID 1991). Furthermore, severe cutbacks in government services, such as health and education, force many small-business owners to draw more money from their businesses to meet these needs, thus hindering investment in technology and business expansion. In addition, the resulting reduction in employment and real wages leaves many potential customers without the ability to buy, thus reducing demand. Some evidence from the field This section highlights the findings of a study carried out on the SSE sector in Kenya. The survey used a random sample of 140 SSEs operating in the carpentry and hair-care subsectors in Kenya. The two subsectors are largely dominated by small and micro enterprises. Interviews were conducted with owner and managers of SSEs. The literature
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survey included a review of policy documents outlining government policy objectives for SSE development and technology issues in Kenya (for a detailed report of this study, see Ngahu [1992]). The findings of the study correspond to those in the literature. Most of the SSE (78%) were individually owned, and the others were partnerships. The SSEs had not grown much over the years. More than 51% had fewer than 5 workers, and only 22% had more than 10 employees. Sixty-three percent of the owners surveyed had secondary education. More than 60% had some kind of training in a technical area of business, but only 13 and 12% had any training in general business management and marketing, respectively. Most tools and equipment used in the two subsectors were imported from Europe or Asia. In some cases, even simple tools, such as brushes, hammers, and tape measures, were imported. In the hair-care subsector, the chemicals, materials, and equipment were mainly imported. The tendency to rely on foreign sources and the large-scale industrial sector for supply of equipment sometimes led to an incompatibility of the needs and capacities of the SSEs. Wangwe (1993) suggested that SSEs are trying to avoid risk by avoiding unproven technologies. To get information about products, tools, equipment, and processes to use in business, many SSEs rely heavily on friends, competitors, and training courses. More than 64% of the respondents indicated that friends were their main source of information on available technologies. Other sources include training courses, magazines, and sales people. The high reliance on friends as a source of information may explain the similarities among products and services from this sector. Both subsectors serve markets that are clearly segmented, and technologies in enterprises serving the same market were very similar. The key method for technology choice in these enterprises seemed to be simple imitation based on observation. Although imitation strategies have unique merits for small firms because they serve to minimize risks, imitation can be risky in the absence of adequate market information. Many SSEs lack information about consumer demand and competition. Moreover, they lack the skills and resources to conduct market research. As a result, many imitators find themselves in a congested market. The similarity of their products, coupled with the tendency to serve the same market segments, erodes any competitive advantage. This forces them to compete by reducing prices, which in turn reduces profits and opportunities for growth. Most SSE owners were influenced by customer expectations and tastes, current trends, and the technology that competitors were using. Generally, the technologies adopted in both subsectors were labour intensive. Most respondents expressed concern about high prices, inability to determine quality, lack of information about serviceability, and lack of alternatives. They also raised the issue of inadequate infrastructure, high taxation on equipment, lack of access to credit, and lack of appropriate training courses.
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The government policy on the use of technology in the production of goods and services is to encourage the application of technologies that minimize wastes and exhibit recycling possibilities; the use of local and renewable materials; the use of local talents and inputs wherever possible; and the active development of innovations and inventions (Government of Kenya 1989). Although the policy objectives appear explicit, it is not clear which policy measures or government interventions have been intended to affect the process of technology choice by SSEs. Policy implications SSEs are obviously incapable of sourcing, evaluating, and adapting technologies effectively. The government policy should, therefore, aim to develop these capabilities in SSEs through supportive institutions. Policy can encourage the development of assistance programs to facilitate SSEs access to resources, information, training, and technology. Further, policy should promote the development of technologies appropriate for SSEs. Although it is possible to develop policies designed to improve the circumstances of SSEs, it may be more feasible to support the development of technologies compatible with the SSEs circumstances. Policies should aim to encourage and promote the development of local technologies. Emphasis should be on the promotion of the local tool industry to reduce reliance on imports. SSEs are said to face a liability of smallness. Because of their size and resource limitations, they are unable to develop new technologies or to make vital changes in existing ones. Still, there is evidence that SSEs have the potential to initiate minor technological innovations to suit their circumstances. However, for SSEs to fully develop and use this potential, they need specific policy measures to ensure that technology services and infrastructure are provided. Further, research and development institutions that are publicly funded should be encouraged to target the technology needs of SSE. The problem of access to information may be attributed to the inadequacy of SSE support institutions. This points to the need for a supportive policy to encourage the establishment of documentation centres and information networks to provide information to SSEs at an affordable price. Market characteristics significantly influence technology choice. The government can facilitate the SSEs choice of technology by creating an environment that is conducive to fair competition. The crucial focus of policy should be an enabling environment for technology decisions at the enterprise level. There is a need to go beyond statements of policy objectives and to take specific and consistent measures to ensure that the policy objectives will be achieved. There is a need to address the overall policy framework to ensure that the policy instruments are consistent with key objectives. In some cases, there appears to be an obvious contradiction between policy and implementation.
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2.4 TECHNOLOGY SOURCING Todays global competition, forces manufacturing companies to re-evaluate their existing processes and technologies in order to focus on strategic activities. This issue has created an awareness of the importance of the make-or-buy decision and its long-term impact on the organisation. Undertaking make-or-buy decisions requires an analysis of in-house and outside manufacturing technologies and capabilities. Therefore, companies should be able to understand and identify the way the technology portfolio should be built in order to balance in-house and outsourced technologies. This paper discusses the different options for technology sourcing resulting from the importance/competitiveness matrix. This matrix indicates a range of sourcing options as a result of technology process analysis in terms of: importance of the technology to the business. The ability to influence the business key success factors; and competitiveness with which the technology is deployed. This involves assessing the companys level of performance in the use of technology against potential suppliers or competitors. In particular, a critical dimension for technology sourcing, the technology life cycle, is presented, emphasising the importance of understanding and monitoring the life cycle of technologies. This paper particularly shows the critical importance of technology life cycle consideration in the choice of technology sourcing options 2.5 MANAGING UNCERTAINTY (RISK MANAGEMENT) Managing change particularly in the context of Extended Services often requires school change teams to rely on other things falling into place and other people playing their part. In these situations, that is, when the outcome is not entirely under your control, you are faced with uncertainty and the risks that arise. Rather than make an assumption and hope it all works out OK, change managers can use this tool to help reduce and eliminate the risks involved in their change projects by proactively and systematically managing the uncertainty from which all risks stem. The tool, Managing uncertainty (risk management), differs from customary risk management methods in that it focuses attention on the underlying uncertainty rather than the risk, and it proposes a way of effectively tracking the impact of actions taken so that you avoid managing a crisis! What is it? Managing uncertainty (risk management) is a form-driven tool to ensure you identify the uncertainties that present risks to the success of your change project The tool helps the team to understand the assumptions they have made in putting their project plan together It enables you to raise confidence in assumptions, reduce uncertainty and, hence, reduce or eliminate risk to successful change
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Are there any rules? Use it always when planning your implementation As action is taken, revisit and reappraise confidence in assumptions and criticality of risks
2.6 COMPLEXITY MANAGEMENT Managing complexity A content management system (CMS) requires contributions from many different skill sets and coordination across diverse departments and roles. A CMS project can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars and require months or years to design and implement. Because of the high planning, purchasing, and design costs, there is a need to effectively manage the complexity of CMS projects. Here are ten lessons in managing complexity gleaned from real-world, successful CMS projects. Ideally youll consider these at the beginning of a project when they can have the most impact: 1. Keep the team small.
A big team usually requires a lot of coordination and communication, especially if it is spread across different departments, offices, or cities. This coordination increases the points of failure and quickly reaches a level of diminishing returns for systems that need close collaboration to be designed well. To overcome this problem, one financial services firm formed a multidisciplinary team of only five experienced people to create their content management system. The team included people who both had skills to contribute and could make executive decisions. This team consulted with additional, specialized staff only when needed. In the end they succeeded in building a system in a few months in a company where other efforts typically spent several months and failed. 2. Dont try to fix everything at once.
A CMS alone is complex enough; combining that effort with a site redesign, new workflow, new content, and more may be asking for trouble. An international retailer decided to expand their content management system in a way that required multiple new software packages. To reduce complexity, they swapped in the new CMS without changing the design of either their online or print catalogs.
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3.
Its important to remember the main benefit of content management systems is efficiency. Anything done with a CMS can be done without a CMS by people with the right skills, albeit in much less efficient ways. Websites often use content management when there is a large volume of content, frequent content updates, content distributed across several media, and so on, tasks that would be arduous when done manually. But if more effort is needed to implement a CMS than to manage the content manually, the return on investment is quickly lost. The potential features of CM software spiral out in all directions, so discipline is needed to decide which features are needed most. At the beginning of a project we can examine which features bring us the most benefit compared with how difficult it is to implement those features, and choose the features with the most value. A new media group at a bank took this approach and built the absolute simplest CMS that would serve their needs, and then gradually added one feature at a time as the need became clear. 4. Create an efficient information architecture. A content management system with a different template for every published page would not be very efficient. And if efficiency is the main benefit of a content management system, then it makes sense to use fewer templates. As designers, we must be very clever about how to arrange diverse information into a small number of templates while still retaining some flexibility in the presentation. A large technology company achieved this efficiency by creating templates as well as reusable modules of informationsuch as a list of related linksthat fit inside those templates. By creating rules that determined how templates could use certain modules the company struck a balance of CMS efficiency with display flexibility. 5. Show your content some love. Of all tasks in a content management project, the creation, editing, and migration of content are probably the most frequently underestimated on the project plan. The survey above reveals this void as the biggest problem with CMS. Amid much sexier design and technology issues, the creation and/or re-formatting of content can be delayed until this eventual necessity delays the project. To counter this problem, one non-profit organization settled on an article layout at the beginning of a project so it could start preparing the content earlier, then continued the content work in parallel with the design and technology work. 6. Hire bouncers as project managers. Perhaps this is going a little too far, but you do need rigorous project managers that understand CM issues who will babysit the team to make sure every little task is getting done. These project managers must do more than make sure documents are delivered on time, they must help connect the work that all team members do.
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One large retail firm took this to heart by using two project managers: one to oversee the business and user interface issues and another to oversee the technology issues. 7. Tightly integrate design and technology.
Content management software involves certain components, such as content entry screens, that require a combination of interaction design, information architecture, writing, and database programming skills. Few people do all these things well, and having different people or groups design these components in isolation risks poor quality and consistency. My smoothest experience designing these components was when my desk was located right next to the programmers desk and we constantly discussed the design as it evolved. 8. Buy the right size.
In the survey cited above, the number one problem with software is the expense. You might think the solution to this problem is to buy a less expensive software package, but I think a better solution is the buy the right size software package. Tips for choosing the right software Buy small software if youre a small organization. Organizations like Boxes and Arrows, the Asilomar Institute of Information Architecture, and Adaptive Path all use Movable Type to manage content, which was originally designed for weblogs. As content management software, it doesnt provide many basic functions, but it simplifies the publishing process enough for occasional publishing needs. Buy big software if youre a large organization. One big CMS can actually be more efficient than many different, smaller packages. One financial services firm employs a federated model of CMS by using one software platform to publish many websites, avoiding the extra training and technical work needed to work with several different software packages. Buy no software at all if you really dont need it. In the decision to buy vs. build, we can also avoid software all together.
9.
Design faster than business can change. You must design and implement your system faster than your organization can change.
For example, a large computer networking company found that it required three years to roll out a new website design across all its departments and websites. Before they could finish, the organization had undergone significant changes that needed to be reflected in a new site design. Designing fast may mean keeping the scope small, but it can also mean finding innovative approaches to problems rather than simply following conventional methods. Building a Metadata-Based Website is an example that speeds design of very large sites by focusing management on the business concepts instead of the content.
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10. Get a second opinion. Content management is an elaborate, dynamic field and there are several solutions to any problem. Just as in medicine, its sometime necessary to get a second or third opinion to hear approaches that arise from different philosophies. One international retail company brought in a CMS expert to consult to the team without doing any of the work herself. As an expert who didnt work for the company or any of the contracted vendors, she was in a good position to provide impartial guidance. As a disinterested third-party, the expert can help smooth interaction within the team while leveraging experience from previous projects. Now you have a list of problems others have had and ten ways to address the complexity of content management. Will following this advice solve your CMS problems? Not entirely. If youve only heard the hype from software vendors, you may have very high expectations that need to be reconciled with reality. Content management systems are not a silver bullet, but they can make your most onerous tasks more efficient if you actively manage the inherent complexity. 2.7 WHAT IS CHAOS AND COMPLEXITY? 1. What is Chaos? - The first concept comes from Chaos, which is defined as the irregular, unpredictable behavior of deterministic, non-linear dynamical systems. Chaos is fast replacing bureaucracy as the new science of organizations. The relevant generalization here is that we live in an uncertain and turbulent environment and, even with massive amounts of available information, it has become increasingly difficult for us to choose appropriate organizational survival behaviors. No one seems to disagree with the assertion that human systems exhibit chaotic behavior. However, management theorists have yet to acknowledge that the deterministic element of chaos can be beneficial in forming viable survival strategies. They have focused almost exclusively on preparing the organization to react quickly to changes in the external environment. What is Chaos Management? The translation of Chaos Theory into management practice is, at best, a loose analogy that has been built upon three generalizations of scientific concepts: Chaos, Complexity Theory, and Complex Adaptive Systems. It has always been somewhat problematic to apply a scientific theory - one that was intended to explain natural phenomena - to explain the affairs of human organizational systems. The relatively new science of chaos is one such application that has made inroads into the realm of management and organizational behavior. Summary Point: Chaos has positive and negative features. 2. What is Complexity? The second concept comes from Complexity Theory, which states that critically interacting components self-organize to form potentially evolving structures exhibiting a hierarchy of emergent system properties. A system normally has two choices of operational modes: stability or instability. In the stable mode, a disturbance will eventually converge back toward the systems initial
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conditions. In the unstable mode, a disturbance will cause a progressive divergence away from initial conditions. Self-organizing systems operate in a third mode - between stability and instability - where optimal system performance can be achieved in a turbulent environment. This transition zone is known as the edge of chaos, a region of bounded instability in which there is unpredictability of specific behavior within a predictable general structure of behavior. The relevant generalization here is that for a human social system to become selforganizing, it must become a learning organization. That is, survival strategies are developed continuously in response to changing environmental conditions. Recognition of rudimentary deterministic environmental patterns allows the organization to move beyond mere survival to the possibility of a thriving existence. What is the Positive and Negative Side of Chaos? Positive Side of Chaos - The new theory of organizations is how to create what is called edge of chaos patterns of organizing. In this approach individuals and units are given more flexibility and local control and terms are expected to self-organize under the assumption that it is possible to achieve greater adaptability to the customer demands and other environmental shifts and flows. Daryl Conner, author of Managing at the Speed of Change and Leading at the Edge of Chaos: How to Create the Nimble Organization, asserts. Change now breeds itself, he says, so the challenge is, how do we deal with perpetual unrest? The concept of the nimble organization is key to Conners work. In fact, the first line in his book Leading at the Edge of Chaos reads: the focal point for this book is leaderships role in building resilient, nimble organizations. Organizations that are not nimble, Conner says, are constrained. To build nimble organizations, he explains, leaders must bring to the human side of change the same level of rigor and discipline that are applied to the organizations financial assets. As Conner (2000: 18) puts it: Running a corporation that survives and thrives at the edge of chaos has become almost a full-time job. Mergers and acquisitions are creating strange bedfellows, the market is becoming more sophisticated, and the very nature of our businesses is shifting. Some leaders are questioning their abilities to remain competitive in a market where disruption is the norm. Negative Side of Chaos - In its popular usage, chaos is a negative. People say I hate chaos, lets get organized. While the theorists give us fractal, strange attractor, and edge of chaos metaphors, we have to work in the chaos soup. Of concern here, is how does it feel to stare into the abyss, or worse to work in a chaos abyss? One definition of Chaos Narrative comes from Frank (1995) It is the story we tell when we are unable to tell a story; it is the anti-narrative of time without sequence, telling without mediation, and speaking about oneself without being fully able to reflect on oneself.
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There is an obvious need to balance theories of chaos management with how people experience chaos as the void of buzzing confusion and being out of control. How are Chaos and Complexity inter-related? What are Complex Adaptive Systems? The third concept is a characterization of the only known type of system that is capable of thriving at the edge of chaos. A Complex Adaptive System is defined as a system of individual agents, who have the freedom to act in ways that are not always totally predictable, and whose actions are interconnected such that one agents actions changes the context for other agents. The relevant generalization here is that to optimize system performance, managerial control must be loosened enough to allow uninhibited communication and interaction among all members of the organization. Creative and adaptive solutions to external constraints will emerge as the learning organization gains the mobility and freedom to actively navigate through uncertainty and turbulence. The behavior of a mature complex adaptive organization can even move into the realm of predictability. How to Control Chaos? Control chaos by applying these basic office management principles: 1. Establish office management routines and stick to them. Routine tasks need routine procedures if you want to stay organized and keep things running smoothly. Set up routines for handling paperwork and office systems. For instance, every piece of paper that comes into your office should be handled once, acted upon, and filed not haphazardly piled on a desk. Office systems, such as computers, will need both administration and what I call panic mode procedures. When the system crashes or a computer-related piece of equipment fails, everyone in your office needs to know who to call and what not to do (such as try to fix the problem themselves). These data management articles provide helpful tips for everything from office filing systems through computer backup procedures. 2. Set up clearly delineated responsibilities. Good office management depends on people knowing who is responsible for what its people who are accountable who get things done. What would happen, for example, if the purchasing for your small business was done by whoever whenever? Would you be able to find a paper clip when you wanted one? Or print off a report when you needed to? Putting one person in charge of ordering all equipment and supplies solves the problem and keeps things running smoothly. Its the same with (computer) systems administration. You need to have one person responsible for the security of your computer system and keeping track of things such as accounts, passwords and software. Otherwise, chaos will proliferate.
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3. Keep records and keep your business records updated. Keeping records sounds like the easiest part of good office management until you consider the need to keep those records both accessible and updated. But my first rule for controlling chaos will help you get a grip on this; make updating records an office routine. When you get a new customer or client, for instance, it only takes a moment to enter him into your contacts database. Then it will only take another moment or two to update the record after youve spoken to him on the phone. Note that records of customer permissions will have to be kept and customers need to have access to their records. 4. Take a walk through your office and have a sit. Is your office an example of space management or space mis-management? When you walk through the office, do you have to detour around obstacles or run the risk of tripping over something? When you sit down at a desk, could you actually work comfortably there? Are things logically arranged so that the things that you would use most at the desk are closest to hand? There are a lot of things crammed into offices nowadays, from printer stands through filing cabinets. For good office management, you need to be sure that all the things in the office are arranged for maximum efficiency and maximum safety. The Basics of Small or Home Office Design provides tips for safely meeting the power, lighting and ventilation needs of your office space. 5. Schedule the scut work. Its too easy to put off things that you dont like doing, and I dont know very many people that enjoy scut work. Unfortunately, an office, like a kitchen, wont function well without a certain amount of scut work being done. If you are a small business owner whos in the position of not being able to assign whatever you view as scut work to someone else, force yourself to get to it regularly by scheduling time each week for it. Take a morning or afternoon, for instance, and spend it making the cold calls or catching up on the accounting (or updating the records). 6. Delegate and outsource. In a perfect world, everyone would only be doing what he or she had time to do and did well. As the world is not perfect, instead a lot of people are doing things that they dont have the time or talent to do well. Delegating and outsourcing can not only improve your small businesss office management, but free you to focus on your talents as well, thereby improving your bottom line. Virtual assistants can handle many of your office or administrative tasks. For more on delegating, see Decide to Delegate. 7. Make business planning a priority. Many small business owners spend their days acting and reacting and then wonder why they seem to be spinning their wheels. Business planning is an important component of good office management and needs to be part of your regular office management routine.
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Successful small business owners spend time every week on business planning, and many use daily business planning sessions as a tool for goal setting and growth. If you have staff, involve them in business planning, either formally or informally. Dont let chaos interfere with doing business. Once you start applying these seven principles of good office management, youll be amazed at the difference good office management makes and how much more business you do. 2.8 R & D PRODUCTIVITY In recent years, both economists and policymakers have focused increased attention on the role that R and D plays in promoting economic growth. Despite the fact that R and D activities exist in many countries, only a handful of nations consistently create leading edge technologies, from communication advances to biomedical revolutions. American scientists, engineers, and other highly skilled professionals are tops in generating new-tothe-world technologies; only Switzerland had a per capita patenting rate comparable to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Japan, Germany, and Sweden did join the top tier in the 1980s. Why do some nations excel at technological breakthroughs while others lag behind? Put somewhat differently, why does location matter for innovation when ideas easily cross borders, because of global communications networks, relatively open capital markets, and consistently increasing international trade in goods and services? The answers are more than intellectually intriguing. Governments and policymakers are concerned about which resources and policies are likely to be effective in improving their science and technology infrastructures. A better grasp of the complex links between broad public policies and a nations ability to produce genuine high-tech innovations could lead to more effective strategies for improving economic growth. These are the ambitious issues motivating The Determinants of National Innovative Capacity (NBER Working Paper No. 7876) by Scott Stern, Michael Porter, and Jeffrey Furman, which evaluates the factors driving variation in R and D productivity among a sample of 17 OECD countries between 1973 and 1996. The key concept framing their analysis is national innovative capacity, defined by the authors as the ability of a country as both a political and economic entity to produce and commercialize a flow of innovative technology over the long-term. The national innovative capacity concept is built on three distinct scholarly strands. First are the theories of ideas-driven growth, closely associated with the work of Paul Romer. Then there are the microeconomic models of national competitive advantage based on an understanding of industry clusters, a research agenda largely identified with Porter. Finally, the authors draw upon the rich national innovation systems literature among whose most notable authors is Richard Nelson. The national innovative capacity framework
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highlights three factors that drive a nations ability to innovate at the worlds technological frontier: 1) a common innovation infrastructure, which includes support for basic research and higher education, as well as a countrys cumulative stock of technological knowledge; 2) the extent to which the conditions of a nations industry clusters promote innovationbased competition; and, 3) linkages between the common innovation infrastructure and the industry clusters that allow the resources broadly available for innovation in the economy to flow to their most competitive use. The productivity of a strong national innovation infrastructure is higher when specific mechanisms or institutions, such as a strong domestic university system and funding mechanisms for new ventures, migrate ideas from the common infrastructure into commercial practice, write the authors. Porter, Stern, and Furmans quantitative analysis concentrates on uncovering the relationship between international patenting (patenting by foreign countries in the United States) and the variables making up the innovative capacity framework. Their results suggest that a number of factors are especially important in determining a nations overall level of innovative outputs, including national policies, such as international patent protection and openness to international trade, and factors describing the composition of R and D effort in the economy, such as the share of research performed by the academic sector and the share funded by the private sector. In expanding their analysis to examine the relationship between innovativeness and competitiveness, the authors find that a countrys level of national innovative capacity also has a substantial impact on commercial success in hightech markets at home and abroad. The authors document a striking convergence in innovative capacity among the OECD countries over the past two decades. Whereas the United States and Switzerland had been the world leaders with respect to R and D productivity in the mid-1970s, Japan, Germany, and Sweden have become their peers in the innovation marketplace. The second tier of innovator nations also has expanded with Denmark, Finland, and other countries making genuine strides in improving their commercial exploitation of frontier technologies. The trend toward convergence also may reflect a lessening of Americas traditional dominance. Since the passing of the Cold War, the United States has been increasing its investments in its national innovation infrastructure at a lower rate. Consequently, the authors speculate, as a wider set of countries continue to invest substantial resources in national innovative capacity, we may see that the commercial development of emerging technologies becomes less geographically concentrated in the next few decades than it was in the 50 years of the post-World War II era. 2.9 BUSINESS APPRAISAL OF TECHNOLOGY POTENTIALS Aims To provide manufacturing (and other) companies with the means to assess systematically, the benefit of new technologies to their business. The objectives and outputs are:
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To review the tools and techniques currently available to managers in industry for the assessment of technology for business purposes. To identify the gaps and limitations related to the use of these tools and techniques. To develop selected new approaches which integrate and complement existing tools and techniques, filling significant gaps. To apply the developing tools in selected case examples. To provide guidance to potential users in the application of these new approaches.
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Background The issue of assessing technology for business application remains a foremost concern for managers in industry. Companies are pushed towards diversifying their portfolio of technology as well as accelerating commercial exploitation. They do this by increasing resources directed towards growth and by acquiring developed or developing technologies. This has increased the trading of technology between firms, and these technologies must be valued. Other reasons to value technology include obtaining finance and valuation for tax purposes. In practice, many managers know that there is something unsatisfactory about the standard use of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) techniques, particularly when there is high uncertainty and flexibility. In recent years much progress has been made, however many key questions remain, in particular that of estimating the value of a particular technology to a particular organisation, now and in the future. This is of central concern in the choice of development projects, and when considering the acquisition of technology external to the firm. Valuing technology is more of an art than a science and methods have been developed from tools used to value tangible assets, and thus there is still a huge amount of scope for research in this area. Recent advances in options and hybrid-model thinking have opened up new paths, but the application of these ideas in practice is very limited. Research approach Initial interviews in a range of companies to determine issues, current practice and future requirements. Multi-company workshops to firm up concepts for further development. Case studies or collaborative projects in companies to develop new techniques.
Deliverables Review of literature & practice, based on working papers and company interviews & cases Framework principles for technology evaluation T-VAL cd to raise awareness of integrated nature of technology evaluation concepts, techniques and resources
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Value roadmapping guide to support the evaluation of early stage technologies Decision tree software tool to support more enlightened use of quantitative approaches, supported by two management guides (Beyond DCF and Get better estimates for input into quantitative models)
2.10 DESIGN MANAGEMENT Design management refers to an approach whereby organizations make designrelevant decisions in a market and customer-oriented way as well as optimizing designrelevant (enterprise-)processes. It is a long-continuous comprehensive activity on all levels of business performance. Design management acts in the interface of management and design and functions as link between the platforms of technology, design, design thinking, management and marketing at internal and external interfaces of the enterprise. Historical development of design management The roots of design management go back into the 1920s with and the 1950s and 1940s with. For a long time design management was used as a term, but thereby not understood correctly, since it could be attributed neither directly to the design nor the management. 1940s Design is a function within corporations, or as independent consultancies have not always collaborated well with business. Clients and the market have traditionally viewed design as an expressive and production function, rather than a strategic asset. Designers have focused their skills and knowledge in the creation of designed artifacts, and indirectly addressed larger issues within this creative process. Designers have been uneasy about articulating their value to business in terms that business could understand. There were moves to bridge this gap. In England, the British Design Council was founded in 1944 by the British wartime government as the Council of Industrial Design, with the objective to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry. 1950s Chicago industrialist Walter Paepcke of the Container Corporation of America founded the Aspen Design Conference in the United States after World War II as a way of bringing business and designers together to the benefit of both. In 1951, the first conference topic, Design as a function of management, was chosen to ensure the participation of the business community. After several years, however, business leaders stopped attending because the increased participation of designers changed the dialogue, focusing it not on the need for collaboration between business and design, but rather on the business communitys failure to understand the value of design. While designers were trying to
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make connections to the business community, there were business people that were trying to make connections to the design community. Individuals from both communities began making connections between the goals of business and how design could be a subject in the management suite. Design managements foundations are European in nature and one of the strongest early advocates was Peter Gorb, former Director of the London Business Schools Centre for design management. 1960s to 1970s In 1966 the term design management was mentioned in the Anglo-American literature by Farr. Design management focused on how to define design as a business function and provide the language and method of how to effectively manage it. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s Gorb and others began to write articles that were drafted to designers to learn about business, and to business professionals to understand the untapped potential of design as a critical business function. And what designers need to learn, and this is the most important thing, is the language of the business world. Only by learning that language can you effectively voice the arguments for design. (Peter Gorb) In 1975 the Design Management Institute was founded in Boston and developed following the Harvard Business School. The DMI is an international nonprofit organization that seeks to heighten awareness of design as an essential part of business strategy and become the leading resource and international authority on design management. Economical faculties used the possibility first (after some books regarding this topic were published) of establishing economical courses of studies for design management. Slowly also design faculties followed to take up studies for design management into their academical curricula. Apart from the economical and design-oriented courses there are today also pure master courses in design management (the Westminster university was one of the first in Europe) as well as co-operation programmes, like the International Design Business Management Programme in Helsinki (co-operation programme of universities from design, technology and management). In the late 1970s design management refers to the movement in Great Britain, Europe and America, which focusses on design resources in corporate business. 1980s to today In the beginning, design management was seen by many only as short-lived fashion, but over time it has proved its worth (Design Council 2004), supported by the increasing role of design within the development of social, economic, ecological, technological and cultural processes. And design management grew in importance [...] through the change from a strategy of cost leadership, over the quality leadership to the strategy of performance leadership (Koppelmann 1993). Today, one has to understand design in its entire, contemporary spectrum and thereby not be reduced on linear areas (product design,
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communication design, industrial design, etc.). Any adjustment of design to certain fields of work would not deal fairly with the social and economic task of design in any way. Design management intervenes here, organizes, mediates and structures in an increasing more complex enterprise and economic world. 1986 saw the launch of the leading periodical devoted to design: Design week. Views on design management Different views on design management Design management is no model that can be projected on any enterprise, no application with linear functionalities and no specific way that leads to success. Rather design management processes are accomplished by humans with different authorities and trainings, who work in different fields of enterprises with different sizes, traditions and industries and they have very different target groups and markets to serve. Design management is multifarious and like that are their different opinions about design management. The design management topics show an overview of the spectrum what design managers deal with. Many agencies are limited to subranges and supplement thereby their classical applied design range (see hand-on-design). Design management and marketing Design management and marketing have many common intersections. In the marketing, which was developed in the 1960s, design became ever more important. In the beginning, design was understood as a marketing instrument, it further developed itself and today it can be seen on the same level as management. Todays management theories speak of an equal partnership between marketing management, product management and design management. Design management versus design leadership In the every-day-business design managers often operate in the area of design leadership. But design management and design leadership are not interchangeable. Like the differences between management and leadership they differ in their objectives, achievements of objectives, accomplishment and outcomes. Design leadership is pro-active it leads from a vision, over the communication, the convey of meaning and collaboration through motivation, enthusiasm and attaining of needs, to changes, innovations and creative solutions. Thereby it describes the futures needs and chooses a direction in order to get to that described future. In contrast, design management is re-active and is responding to a given business situation by using specific skills, tools, methods and techniques. Design management and design leadership depend on each other, design management needs design leadership to know where to go and design leadership needs design management to know how to go there.
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Ranges of design management Design management can be divided by its different fields of application into the three ranges operational design management, tactical design management and strategic design management. By Borja de Mozota design management was divided additionally into the levels of strategy, planning, structure, finances, human resources, information, communication and research & development. Operational design management The goal of operational design management is to achieve the objectives set in the strategic design management part. It deals with personal leadership, emotional intelligence and the co-operation with and management of internal communications. The following list in Table 4 shows what the operational design management is coping with: Table 4 Function Level Application
function level strategy
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application Translation of visions into strategies Defining the role design plays in the brand. Translation of strategies into a design brief. Decisions about product quality and consumer experiences. Defining policies for design, products, communication and brands. Selection of external design agencies/individuals Creation of alliances. Defining of design teams and people who are in touch with designers. Creation of an atmosphere for leadership and creativity. Managing of design project budgets Estimating of design costs. Reducing of designcosts, resp. shift of investments from cold-spots to hot-spots. developing of competences Advising of product managers and CEO's. Creating of symbioses between universities and other companies. Creating of an understanding of companies goals among designers. Creation of design criteria and standards of valuation for design.
planning
structure
operational finances
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Tactical design management The goal of tactical design management is to create a structure for design in the company. It includes the managing of design departments and fills the gap between operational and strategic design management tasks. The following list in Table 5 shows what the tactical design management is coping with: Table 5
Function Level
Application Coordination of the design strategy with the departments of marketing, communication and innovation. Defining quality policy. Structure of design(-management) tools and language Introducing and improving general design processes. Adaption of design processes to innovation processes. Implementation of a design in-house service. Stabilization of the role of design in the innovation process. Managing to meet the budgetplans. Creation of an understanding of design among the company partners. Creation of marketing, design and production plans. Organization of the design language across all design disciplines. Creation of an understanding of and attention on conscious decisions on all levels of the enterprise. Transformation of design theories into practical research tools.
strategy
planning
Strategic design management The goal of strategic design management is to support and strengthen the corporate strategy, to create a relationship between design, strategy and the identity/culture of the company. It controls the consistency of design in the company, allows design to interact with the needs of corporate management and focuses on designs long-term capabilities. The following list in Table 6 shows what the strategic design management is coping with:
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Table 6
Function Level
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Application Definition of a business strategy which includes design goals. Definition of design strategies which are linked to the enterprise strategy. Managing of design projects Creation of design standards. Creation of an atmosphere for leadership, design and creativity. Support of the corporate strategy with design tools. Securing a budget, high enough to be able to apply the design strategy Influencing the hiring and the managing of designers Informing about the design mission/vision in the company. Implementing design thinking in the top management level. Articulation of explicit and implicit communications, which reflect the enterprise values. Planning, introduction and improvement of means of communication on all channels to the figuration of the total brand experience towards the customer. Creating links between technology-development and design strategy
planning structure
communication
Commercializing and Managing Innovations
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