Communities of practice as technology breeders

  • Authors:

  • Harald Ackerlauer;Michael Heiss

  • Affiliations:

  • Innovation & Technology Management, Siemens Program and System Engineering, Vienna, Austria;Innovation & Technology Management, Siemens Program and System Engineering, Vienna, Austria

  • Venue:
  • ICCOMP'06 Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on Computers
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Conventional top-down driven technology management approaches have reached their limits when quick technology identification and broad technology portfolios are needed. This paper presents a more flexible bottom-up driven technology portfolio management method, the so-called Technology Breeding. Experts are encouraged to build communities of practice for the technologies they identify as relevant for future business. Through natural selection, based on the resources the community can bind within the company's breeding environment, it comes to a growth of the fittest. Technologies that do not attract enough interest are kept latently in the environment, waiting for their chance. The implementation of this method is currently being researched at a R&D division of Siemens AG Austria, having 6.200 engineers. The technology breeding method is also a driving force for cultural changes towards knowledge sharing, cooperation across borders of business units and countries, and opening top-down bottlenecks.