Managing the technological innovation process via a flexible S curve model

Innovativeness determines, to a large extent, the firm competition level. In order to properly manage technological processes, the company strategists need models for the analysis of the technological performance trend. In recent decades, the literature of technology management has proposed the S curve models as useful tools for the analysis of the life cycle of technological innovations in order to plan the company strategies and policies. As for many other models developed in the field of management, the scarce attention devoted to the analytical foundations has reduced the theoretical consistency of the S curves to model the technological innovation process, making it difficult to use these models as real strategic tools. In this work a flexible S curve model is examined in order to highlight the model suitability to analyse the technological innovation process. Specifically, the linearity properties of the model have been studied and a suitable re-parameterization has been proposed. In order to enable the management to strategically use the S curve model, approximate prediction intervals about the technological innovation level have been built to monitor the evolution of the performance of a given technology. The theoretical considerations are supported by the practical application of the proposed methodology to three data sets concerning three different technologies: piston aero-engines, jet-aero-engines and digital signal processors, respectively.