ABSTRACT VIEW
PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT PRIORITIES EVALUATION FOR TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
S.F. Wong, H.C. Tsang
Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HONG KONG)
Effective innovation and technology management is a critical success factor of a company that intents to nurture competitive advantages in new products and new processes. To survive in the highly competitive technology market, a company needs to develop its capability of identifying weaknesses in the features of its product for effective and efficient improvement. These product feature weaknesses are often gleaned from analyzing the voice of customers or data collected from market surveys. This paper addresses the problems in Innovation and Technology Management associated with identifying the most significant technologies that will leverage the competitiveness of a company in pursuit of eliminating the critical weaknesses of its new products. A model that involves the use of the “Competitiveness Improvement Priorities” (CIP) indicator to assess the competitiveness of the technological features of a high-tech product is proposed. When embedded in a suitable Innovation Management Software package, the proposed model will enable a company to improve the competitiveness of its new products effectively. Besides using it to identify the most significant product features that are in need of improvement, the assessment method in the model also helps to suggest alternative options of design improvement. An example that uses data collected from 3G cellular phones in the market is presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed model and the CIP indicators for evaluation of product technological features.