International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology
MenuISSN ONLINE(2319-8753)PRINT(2347-6710)
ISSN ONLINE(2319-8753)PRINT(2347-6710)
Ratchakrit Klongpayabal1, NatchaThawesaengskulthai2
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The limitation of resources, expertise, time and the lack of capabilities to create in-house technology forces firms especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to focus on selecting or acquiring new technology from external sources. One of the important external sources that firms can acquire and select is technology or knowledge from science and technology research which developed in university. Due to the need of new knowledge, many researchers and practitioners proposed or presented methods to select or evaluate technology for decision makers can enhance decision making performance in the technology selection process. The characteristics of technology to the firm is one of many factors to recipient firms to make decision in early stage of technology selection processbecause of the limitation of disclosure information of new technology from researcher inlicensing negotiation stage. Firm must make a decision to the uncertainty of technology from technology characteristics of selected university research for NPD success. Therefore, this study aims to present the impact of technology characteristics from selected university research to new product development (NPD) successesfrom five SMEs firms in Thailand that selected university research to develop new innovative products.
Keywords |
| Technology selection, Technology characteristics, Newproduct development (NPD),University research, Small and medium enterprise (SME) |
INTRODUCTION |
| New technology becomes a main driver for innovation and hence successful innovation leads to sustainable business growth. Therefore the need of new knowledge or new technology acquisition by firms or industries to create the competitive advantages from innovation is vital. The limitation of resources, expertise, time and the lack of capabilities to create in-house technology forces firms especially Thai SMEs to focus on selecting or acquiring new technology from external sources. One of the important external sources that firms can acquire and select is technology or knowledge from science and technology research which developed in university which involve a rich mix of science discovery, beta testing, prototype development, and industry linkage to university-based research are demonstrated to be complementary to firm’s R&D[1]. The advantage of university research in Thailand is researchers can create ideas based on their interest without administrative procedure. While the disadvantages are in the research process, inadequate funding, lack of knowledge base, and missing response to the market needs [2]. Most technologies from science and technology research in Thai universities are created from new theory or new science discovery requirement of researchers, and roughly or uncertainty goals for technology commercialization. University researcher do not generally possess the complementary assets necessary to bring the early-stage research results through development into a commercialized product that is marketed and distributed to consumers. The researchers tend to specialize in the creation of knowledge assets, the commercialization of which is typically left to firms [3].In order to use external technology efficiently for NPD process, firms usually incorporates external technology through projects. Time, cost, and technical performance are three considered components to the effectiveness measurement [4]. |
| Thus, this paper reveals the impacts of technology characteristics from selected university research and NPD process successesin the firms. In addition, this study sets out to provide a better understanding of technology characteristic factors in technology selection methodology. |
II. LITERATURE REVIEW |
| A. Technology Selection and Technology Characteristics Technology selection becomes one of the important tasks in technology management, especially technology that not created inside firm. In technology selection process, firms must evaluate many involved factors before making a final decision to adopt new technology. A right or an appropriate technology may differ depending on the context of each firm. Therefore, one technology that fit for one firm may not be the right technology for the others. Furthermore, selecting a right or an appropriate technology that achieves goals and objectives for new product development (NPD) success is a difficult task.Technology characteristics from candidate or selected university research are critical factors for decision making in the early-stage of the technology selection process because of the uncertainty of technology from the limitation of disclosinginformation abouttechnologyfrom a researcherin licensing negotiation stage.Firm must make a decision to the uncertainty of technology from technology characteristics of selected university research for NPD success. Therefore, this study aims to present the impact of technology characteristics from selected university research to NPDprocess and NPD success opportunities. Many researchers have used different criteria and methods for the technology selection framework and methods. The uncertainty of technology from technology characteristics is one of many criteria factors in technology selection and external technology integration process [5-8]. Table I shows the operational definition of these technology characteristics that are used in this study. |
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| B. New Product Development (NPD) New product development (NPD) has received a great deal of study in strategic literature, and serves as a means as a key factor to success in an increasingly competitive advantage of the firms. Many researchers have studied and proposed NPD model or NPD stage on knowledge and creativity management, communication and information transfer in any NPD process. Most of the studies related to industrial products and focused towards NPD success studies. Thereis a gap between NPD research and NPD practice by investigating thoroughly whether the proposed practices deserve recognition for all kinds of industries and their implications for different organizations [9]. Furthermore, manyresearchers have studied and proposed success factors of NPD process in many dimensions [10-11].In this study Market success, financial success, technical success, and performance success are major dimensions in terms of NPD process success. Table II shows the operational definition of seven NPD process stages that are used in this study. The measurement of NPD process successes is shown in Table III. |
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| A conceptual framework to study is proposed to consider the impacts of technology characteristics to NPD process success. The proposed framework is inspired from technology selection frameworks in the literature and aims to develop a simple and efficient framework which is easy to understand, covers all areas regarding to technology characteristics of university research and real-world activities of NPD process in Thai SMEs. This framework takes into account not only the views of the experts or managers of the firm but also gives due consideration to the university’s stakeholders involved to university knowledge transfer. This helps in understanding the dynamics of the NPD process as shown in the figure I. |
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III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY |
| The study has been conducted five manufacturing SMEs firms in Thailand that selectednew technology from university research to develop commercialize product as case studies. In this qualitative study, purposive sampling technique is used to select case study firms because of the requirement for long period data collection. Action research (AR) which suitable for researcher role as business consultant is used as research methodologies. Data collection is conducted from June 2011 to August 2013. Five managers who selected new technology or decision makers are in-depth interviewed by semi-structure questionnaires about objectives, criteria, and methods of technology selection. Technology characteristics from selected university research; technology novelty, technology complexity, technology feasibility, and technology interrelationthat implied by firms were the critical factors to observe and analysedby observation and thematic content analysis. Furthermore NPD process to develop new product and is observed and analysedby researcher to measure the success of NPD process of firms.Overview of case studies is shown in Table IV. |
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| A. Technology Characteristics of Selected Research to Firms Technology characteristics of selected university research to firm context are shown in Table V. The degree of relation between characteristics to firm context is divided to five levels from very high, high, moderate, low, and very low. |
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| C. TheSuccess of NPD Process The success of NPD process from case studies is shown in Table VII. The degree of success is divided to five levels from very high, high, moderate, low, and very low. |
| B. TheImpacts of Technology Characteristics to NPD Process The impacts of technology characteristics to NPD process from the study are shown in Table VI. The degree of impacts is divided to three levels from positive impact, moderate impact, and negative impact. |
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V. FINDINGS |
| ïÃâ÷ Technology novelty and technology complexity are two factors which have negative impacts to early-stage of NPD processwhilst technology feasibility and technology interrelationship are two factors which have positive impacts to early-stage of NPD process. ïÃâ÷ The negative impacts have significant affects to time, cost, resources, and product performance of new products in NPD process whilst the positive impacts have significant affects for controlling time, cost, resources, and product performance according to NPD process ïÃâ÷ Technology characteristicshave no significant impacts to NPD process success especially in market and financial success but have impacts to technical and performance success. |
VI. CONCLUSION |
| Through the exploratory study, we draw the conclusions: firstly, to select a right or appropriate technology from university research firms must aware and consider the fit or match between technological characteristics to firm’s context. Secondly, the fit or match between their technological characteristics and stage of NPD will help firm implementing NPD process efficientlythat reduce the risks of time and cost investment to develop their new products. Thirdly, the success of new commercialize products or NPD successes do not only depend to the right or appropriate technology that selected by firms but depended to the way firms market and distribute new products to customers.In addition, this study sets out to provide a better understanding of technology characteristic factors in technology selection methodology for early-stage or incomplete technology to commercialize. |
References |
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