Technology is a key resource for businesses. As technology managers, our job is to direct technology activities to serve the business and its customers. This requires coordination and integration of technology activities with all functional areas of the firm.

“The ultimate purpose of Strategy: a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining goals and results using the right amount of effort.”
—Integrated Strategy Development: Unsurpassable Advantage by Binnur

Technology strategy is shaped within the context of the business. Typically focused on the 3-5 year horizon, its goal is to capture the intent and behaviors for proper utilization and exploitation of technology for the long-term success of the organization. With that, here are the five essentials that need to be addressed in our technology strategy:

1. Technology is the root of the business: So say we All!
2. Technology operates as a system: Resistance is futile
3. We need habits and rituals: Life is a pilgrimage
4. Building our tribe, our ecosystem
5. And finally… Establish technology commandments

For additional ideas on developing technology strategy also check out Your 2011 Technology Development Agenda. 

Technology is the root of the business – So say we All!

Technology for technology sake does not work. Our technology strategy lays the foundation to support our business, and leads our products and customers. To do that, we need to understand what business we are in, and where and how we need to innovate.

What business are we in is an important question as it guides an organization in every facet of its decision making. Fundamentally, it orchestrates how the value is created and delivered, for the firm, its customers, employees and shareholders (Strategy 101: What business are you in.)

To understand where and how we need to innovate, we need to drill down to the profit equation (profits = revenue – cost) and analyze it in the context of technical areas (Innovation and Profitability.) And then, we need to take it a step further and look at how we are competing in the market within the scope of generic competitive strategies (differentiation, segmentation, low cost, fast follower, hybrid, etc.) These steps are important, as it answers not just the why, what and who but also how and when questions.

This analysis establishes the basis of our technology vision and mission: the role our technology will play in our overarching business vision (our inspiration), and the path we will follow to achieve our objectives (our purpose.) This is a starting point, a rough cut of our technology vision and mission. Next, we need to look at internal and external forces and continue to validate our vision and mission as new information emerges.

Technology operates as a system – Resistance is futile

We live in a world, where everything is interconnected, embedded in systems within systems with many connections and interaction points. With that, as our technologies evolve, our behaviors evolve; and as our behaviors evolve, our technologies evolve. Simply, as a closely coupled system, we coevolve: our technological capabilities, social norms, policies, standards and more.

As we work on our technology strategy, we need to acknowledge our technology as part of this larger ecosystem. This boils down to:

1. taking a stock of the technological competencies and capabilities of our firm;
2. analyzing key internal and external assets required for orchestration of its commercialization, realizing that business strategy influences technology vision (and vice versa);
3. modeling our technology as part of this larger ecosystem, and capturing major forces influencing and driving its evolution, including the STEEP forces (and vice versa).

This helps us establish the lay of the land, including a good understanding of the potential shifts, close couplings and gaps that exists. In summary, we answered key questions that are important for our success:

• what technologies are strategically important (core and enabling) with their lifecycle potential;
• how is the firm positioned to deliver with current assets, capabilities and resources, and what are the gaps;
• what are the opportunities and threats with existing and potential competitors and competing technologies;
• how to position the firm towards a given technology and competing technologies: standards, alliances, IP;
• how much to invest for what degree of market entry, performance levels and when;
• how to ready the organization, processes and partners for successful delivery;
• what are the risks and how best to mitigate and address them;
• how to accelerate technology adoption;

We now have our technology vision and mission fully formulated: the role our technology will play in our overarching business vision (our inspiration), and the path we will follow to achieve our objectives (our purpose.) Next, we need to focus on execution.

For more information, check out:

• How to identify forces impacting your innovation
• Strategy 101: What is your core competency
• Create value at every touch point
• Strategy 101: Spot technology expectation gaps via technology life cycle

We need habits and rituals: Life is a pilgrimage

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
—Aristotle

Technology strategy is a living system that constantly evolves with changing business environment, new opportunities and threats, processes and technologies. To top that, strategy is only as good as its execution.

“essence of strategy “is not doing something better than your competitors but doing something different – choosing a unique and reliable position that is rooted in systems of activity that are difficult for others to match.”
—Porter

So, our technology strategy needs to clearly articulate the intents and behaviors that will be developed and adhered to, specifically in the areas of:

• capabilities to develop and acquire;
• processes to integrate and adopt;
• operational aspects of implementation and follow thru.

Building our core competency and ensuring that we maintain sustained differentiation takes effort and focus. Using this triage of capabilities + processes + operations, we can design the optimum trade offs for key dimensions of our technology:

• cost
• availability
• quality
• functionality
• performance
• other factors: social, environmental and policies

As we create the rituals and habits to revisit and check our progress, we need stay flexible. Though we are outlining our intended strategy, given day to day changes that occur in the environment, we need to be sensitive to the emergent strategies. As a technology manager, our job is to deal with complex, dynamic, uncertain environments while continuing to focus on value creation and value capture for our organization. So, we need to evaluate and incorporate those emergent strategies back into the business.

For more information check out:

• Strategy 101 – Why building a successful strategy is hard
• Key factors for successful strategy execution
• Roadmaps and roadmapping: what and why
• Technology strategy 101: Competing technologies… Friend or foe

Building our tribe, our ecosystem

Technology as a single cell organism is not interesting, its commercialization is what brings value to the organization and the society. And, this requires support and collaboration of all functional areas and partners.

In simplistic terms, the ecosystem encapsulates the concept of a community of things and the environment in which they live. In the world of technology and business, this community includes organizations and individuals such as producers, suppliers, competitors, and other stakeholders contributing goods, knowledge, and other deliverables.

By building our ecosystem, we are enabling and encouraging everyone else to make our products better and more valuable. However, the “if you build it, they will come” strategy does not work. We need to not only ensure that we ourselves are successful, but also clearly articulate how our ecosystem partners will flourish. This includes sharing our vision and beliefs about the future, information about our customers, providing incentives and rewards that are financial and motivational, establishing communication channels; basically building an environment where we can all grow and prosper.

For more information on building ecosystems, check out Open the door and let me in.

And, finally… Establish technology commandments

Commandments basically boils down to all the shalls and shall nots of our technology platform. At the core, they reflect and identify our position and philosophy on specific technology related issues. Each of these should be captured as simple points, to ensure clear understanding by ALL parties involved (internal and external, including ecosystem developers). Some areas to consider as follows:

• privacy
• quality
• security
• usability
• sustainability
• performance
• development guidelines