12
Technology Management
12.1 Introduction
In the mobile telecom ecosystem we just can’t only talk about technologies, standards and networks. We also do need to discuss how to manage the technological enhancements and how to align these enhancements with the needs of the network and business. Thus, we have two key terms to look into i.e., Technology and Management and their brief definitions are as follows:
Merriam-Webster defines the technology as ‘the practical application of knowledge’ or ‘a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge’.
Merriam-Webster defines management ‘as a judicious means to accomplish an end.’
The combination of these terms is called Technology Management and that’s the focus of this chapter. For the last few years, the principles of Technology Management (TM) or Management of Technology (MoT) have been used by companies to address these challenges. TM or MoT is one of the essential components of today’s high tech world. It was incepted in the early 1980s and since then a lot of literature has been produced on it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is no formal definition of TM, but it has been widely recognized that it should have three major components, namely leadership, human capital and appropriate management of resources (tangible and non tangible).1 The goal of TM is to create a synergy among all the factors (i.e., research, development, planning, engineering, machines, software, etc.) and to make ...
