Forecasting and Management of Technology, Second Edition

10.4 Concluding the Focusing Phase

This book began by providing the background of management decision making about technology. In a dynamic and complex world, managers must plan for effective innovation. Planning requires that managers also have access to forecasting information. The TDS was presented as a way of framing the multiple dimensions to be forecast so that good decisions can be made. That framework emphasizes that the context of good planning extends well beyond the organization and its industry to include the world that will be impacted by the technology. Understanding this context is an ongoing process, and modifications will be made to the forecasts and plans as better information becomes available. In the end, all of this is meaningless if it does not lead to better decisions. Technology managers will never know as much as they would like, but their effectiveness depends upon their willingness to decide.

Chapters 4 through 6 continued an earlier theme of more expansive thinking to describe the various ways of gathering and using relevant information. These chapters described tools to help the technology manager explore the range of information that might be relevant and then analyze its implications. Chapter 7 shifted the emphasis to focusing the information and analysis for use in the important task of making decisions. Scenarios were shown to be a powerful way of bringing a lot of information and analyses together to project implications for the technology and ...