An Expert System for Strategic Technology Management

Abstract

Selecting the most promising technologies or research projects is an important step in innovation management. Portfolio technique is a mean to select the right projects. A critical issue in applying the portfolio technique is defining the appropriate criteria for the portfolio axis named potential and position compared to the competitor. These criteria have to be appropriate to e.g. the structures of the branche or the strategy of the company. It is very useful to show the weakness and strengh of the projects to be selected in a profile. To be able to draw an objective profile the projects have to be analyzed very thoroughly. The expert system supports this analysis and takes the certainty of the results into account. There are advantages in using the system, e.g. objectivity of the results, shortening the time of analysis or the flexibility of data update. But the use of a computer-based system also causes some problems.