Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies Book

"Gene therapy, electronic commerce, intelligent sensors, digital imaging, micromachines, superconductivity and other emerging technologies have the potential to remake entire industries and obsolete established strategies," write George S Day and Paul JH Schoemaker in the opening to Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies. Their book is a comprehensive look at the high-tech future facing existing firms and the ways they must weigh and accommodate its impacts in order to compete in the future. Based on six years of research with Charles Schwab, Amazon.com and other techno pioneers, Day and Schoemaker present "insights, tools and frameworks" developed by Wharton's Emerging Technologies Management Research Programme for managers who want guidance in this fluid, new arena. For example, in demonstrating how the upstart PalmPilot solidly captured its market despite established competition, they identify the traps that stymied rival products from Apple, IBM, Sony and Microsoft as "delayed participation, sticking with the familiar, reluctance to fully commit, and lack of persistence". They then detail solutions that, in this case, are characterised as "widening peripheral vision, creating a learning culture, staying flexible in strategic ways, and providing organisation autonomy". Other similarly specific yet universal sections address public policy, financing and alliances. --Howard Rothman, Amazon.comRead More