How Implementing New Technology

For every dollar that US companies spend on Rand D, there is often a persistent and troubling gap between the intrinsic value of the technology they develop and their ability to operate effectively. In times of fierce global competition, the gap between technical promises and actual achievements is a particularly big problem. Drawing on their extensive research on the difficulties faced by managers in bridging this gap, the authors outline half a dozen key challenges that managers responsible for adopting new technologies must overcome: their necessarily dual roles, the multiplicity of domestic markets they serve, legitimate resistance to change, the right rate of promotion, the choice of place of implementation and the need for one person to take overall responsibility. Bringing technological change into an organization presents different management challenges than competent project management. Often, however, the managers responsible for the routine adoption of a technical innovation are much better prepared by training and experience to guide the development of the innovation than to implement it. The following pages describe some of the challenges managers must overcome if companies are to effectively adopt new technologies. We also suggest strategies that managers can use to address these issues. Although our examples are all computer-based and come from the experiences of large manufacturers, the topics raised and the strategies suggested are equally applicable to small businesses and service operations—in fact, to any organization where technological innovation thrives. Our results are based on our combined research and consulting experience with more than 20 large multinational companies and approximately 70 General Electric organizations. We focus on in-house developed technologies; But as suppliers of advanced manufacturing equipment have discovered in implementing their sales systems, new technologies, regardless of their origin, present special challenges for managers. Dual role Those who lead technological change often have to act as technical developers and implementers. Typically, one organization develops the technology and then transfers it to users who are less technically capable but have a good understanding of their application area. In practice, however, the user organization is often unwilling - or unable - to take responsibility for the technology in the development phase where the development team wants to hand it over. The person responsible for the application—whether in the developer organization, the user organization, or some intermediary—must design the transmission to be nearly invisible. So the runners would have had to run side by side for quite some time before the baton changes hands. The application manager must integrate the perspectives and needs of both developers and users. Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish this task is to think of execution as internal marketing rather than sales. This difference is important because sales begin with the finished product. Marketing and research on user needs and preferences. Marketing managers are concerned with how their product stacks up against all competing products, as well as the distribution channels and infrastructure needed to support product usage. Adopting a marketing perspective encourages application managers to seek user involvement in: (1) early identification and improvement of the fit between product and user needs, (2) preparing the user organization to embrace innovation, and (3) change. About the "ownership" of the update to users. We will deal with the first two of these questions in this section of the article; we will discuss the third later. Marketing perspective It is well known that user involvement in the development phase of a new technology increases user satisfaction, but the appropriate scope, timing, and type of user involvement varies greatly from company to company. For example, developers at an electronic office equipment company established a user design team to work with developers on strategically important application software while the program was still in the prototype stage. Potential users can test the software on the same computer used by the software developers. An extremely tight communication chain enabled daily feedback from users to designers about their preferences and concerns. This directness may be unusual, but managers almost always receive information from potential users that improves product design. A marketing perspective also helps prepare an organization to adopt new technology. Many implementation attempts fail because someone underestimated the extent or importance of such preparation. Indeed, organizational hills are full of managers who believe that the technical superiority and strategic importance of an innovation guarantee acceptance. As a result, they spend a lot of resources to acquire or develop technology, but very little to implement it. However, experience shows that successful implementation requires not only large investments by developers in the initial phase of the project, but also a continuous investment in the resources of user organizations. A very promising implementation at a large communications and computing company was derailed for several months due to insufficient infrastructure in the user organization. The new computerized processing control unit was ready to ship to potential users who eagerly awaited its arrival, but the interlocking software was not in place. Disputes arose over who should pay for this small but critical part of the system. Equally, troubling was the lack of resources for training, as developers did not see providing these resources as part of their normal responsibility. None of the user organizations paved the way for the update, so the developers had no one to pass it on to. Data frame Just as marketing managers carefully plan the research through which they gather critical product information, implementation managers must also develop an iterative, near-harmonious framework that guides decisions about when and how to gather the necessary information from all groups affected by the innovation. We say "uncomfortable" because the process necessarily involves searching for information, pausing to digest it, and then another period of active searching — cycle after cycle. What information is there