Technology capability: Identification and assessment of technology and market specific exploitation options

Diminishing product and technology lifecycles are compelling companies to exploit their technology potential to the full and pursue an appropriate technology exploitation strategy in order to thrive in the current environment. The aim of this paper is to extend the existing decision model for technology exploitation, which takes all relevant factors of the commercialization situation into account. In particular it focuses on the diversification potential of a technology, on how to generate new areas of application out of it and to evaluate these in terms of their market potential. This will give companies an opportunity to evaluate different exploitation options in the context of company-specific objectives and situation-specific factors in order to derive a suitable exploitation option. T he model is validated on the basis of a case study conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology.