Forecasting and Management of Technology, Second Edition

11.2 Implementation Issues

Beginning to implement the development of a new technology is a significant step for most organizations. Issues surrounding the implementation will vary, depending on the nature of the organization (i.e., whether it is a corporation, a government agency, or a nonprofit), the scope of the implementation (large or small, disruptive or incremental), the time frame, and the relationships with partner and/or competitive organizations. Typically, however, several major issue areas emerge. These include strategic planning, selecting alternative implementations of the technology, identifying participants in the process, scheduling implementation activities, managing the process, and effectively communicating with constituencies.

Many of these activities have been described in detail in earlier chapters. For instance, scheduling activities are covered in Section 3.5. Others, such as organizational and communications structures (Section 3.3), involve issues that are essentially shared by forecasting and implementation teams. The following sections begin to address remaining important issues.