Value roadmapping: A structured approach for early stage technology investment decisions

Deciding to invest in early stage technologies is one of the most important tasks of technology management and arguably also the most uncertain. It assumes a particular significance in the rise of technology companies in emerging economies, which have to make appropriate investment decisions. Technology managers already have a wide range of methods and tools at their disposal, but these are mostly focussed on quantitative measures such as discounted cash flow and real options techniques. However, in the early stages of technology development there seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction with these techniques as there appears to be a lack of accuracy with respect to the underlying assumptions that these models require. In order to complement these models this paper will discuss an alternative approach that we call value road-mapping. By adapting roadmapping techniques the potential value streams of early stages technologies can be plotted and hence a clearer consensus based picture of the future potential of new technologies emerges. Roadmapping is a workshop-based process bringing together multifunctional perspectives, and supporting communication in particular between technical and commercial groups. The study is work in progress and is based on a growing number of cases. (c) 2006 PICMET.

The double dance of agency: a socio-theoretic account of how machines and humans interact

The nature of the relationship between information technology (IT) and organizations has been a long-standing debate in the Information Systems literature. Does IT shape organizations, or do people in organisations control how IT is used? To formulate the question a little differently: does agency (the capacity to make a difference) lie predominantly with machines (computer systems) or humans (organisational actors)? Many proposals for a middle way between the extremes of technological and social determinism have been put advanced; in recent years researchers oriented towards social theories have focused on structuration theory and (lately) actor network theory. These two theories, however, adopt different and incompatible views of agency. Thus, structuration theory sees agency as exclusively a property of humans, whereas the principle of general symmetry in actor network theory implies that machines may also be agents. Drawing on critiques of both structuration theory and actor network theory, this paper develops a theoretical account of the interaction between human and machine agency: the double dance of agency. The account seeks to contribute to theorisation of the relationship between technology and organisation by recognizing both the different character of human and machine agency, and the emergent properties of their interplay.