Chapter 2 Wharton
Chapter 2 of the Wharton book focuses on how companies can avoid the pitfalls of emerging technologies. The authors argue that many incumbent companies fail to create emerging technologies successfully when in fact, because of their size and resources; they should be leaders in such technologies.

The first section of the chapter is dedicated to describing the four pitfalls that many companies fall into when emerging technologies are concerned. Many times companies wait to participate in the technology to see how the market changes mostly because the technologies are easy to dismiss in their infancy and because they are framed as being for a narrow market that is not yet required by customers. The authors believe that, when creating emerging technologies, companies need to focus on the ultimate potential of the technology, not its immediate interaction with the market. Companies also suffer from sticking to the familiar and underestimating the potential payoffs of the technology. The third trap is a company’s reluctance to fully commit to an emerging technology. Many times existing customers’ requirements get more attention than new customer and the technology is lost. Last, the company may not be persistent enough when the technology hits the market and give up before true profits begin. The authors give sets of questions to ask in order to combat these pitfalls and they also give ways to better initiate an emerging technology.

While no one suggestion is a cure-all for a specific pitfall, the suggestions can work together to help better initiate emerging technologies. Companies should look past the initial results and functionality and application issues and focus on the wider vision by better projecting the performance potential of the technology. Companies should also support continuous learning by creating an environment that encourages openness and other ways of thinking, challenging the prevailing mindset, continually experimenting with new ideas, and keeping an open avenue of communication. Staying strategically flexible and, if need be, create a new company outside of the main company to focus on the emerging technology.

I find this chapter very interesting. It sounds to me as if the authors’ focus is on communication and flexibility. From what I know about organizational design, it seems that focus fits not just with companies that want to create and emerging technology successfully, but also companies that want to engage in any change management. So is it possible that companies that engage in emerging technologies successfully are also companies that have a healthy change management strategy and a healthy environment as a whole?

Update on technology: Bank One and wingspan.com
I really have been wanting to look up companies and see what has happened to them after the book was written. Most of them have proven successful as far as I can tell. But I found one that didn’t. Bank One’s Wingspan.com not only failed, but the bank itself was bought up in 2004. So was it the technique the company used for the emerging technology or just bad timing? Interestingly enough the article mentions NetBank.com as a company that succeded, but according to their profile, the company went under in 2004.

http://www.computerworld.com/industrytopics/financial/story/0,10801,51189,00.html