Discuss the view that the importance of technology for organisations Essay

Discuss the view that the importance of technology for organisations lies not so much in the technology itself as the ability to - Essay Example A distinguished characteristic of these opportunities is the fact that they are temporary that is, the organization that discovers them needs to exploit the technological opportunity swiftly before it gets to the organization’s competitors (Andersen, 2011: p54). They also need to do this because the opportunity could be quickly replaced by a technology that is more advanced. The organization, therefore, must hurry before the opportunity window ends. Research has shown that organizations, which come up with technological discoveries, in most cases, do not have the resources required to exploit them quickly. In this case, the organization is encouraged to collaborate as an efficient means of accessing complementary or additional information that could help speed up the exploitation process. The importance of exploiting these opportunities as fast as possible as opposed to simply being in their possession cannot be overemphasized. The importance of technological opportunities lie s in the ability to exploit it rather than the technology itself. Collaboration in Exploitation of Technological Opportunities Beginning in the mid 70s, the biotechnological industry has seen tremendous growth with increased innovations and new technologies. Several hundred firms with intensive Research and Development programs have entered the industry in the last forty or so years. Pharmaceutical companies have also been highly involved in the pursuit of biotechnological opportunities, for instance, through entering into collaborations on biotechnological advances with the new organizations. These collaborations are meant to exploit the opportunities in biotechnology that were discovered previously by the new biotechnological organizations (Archibugi & Michie, 2012: p34). An interesting feature in the exploitation of these collaborations is that their set up is widely varied in whether these opportunities are utilized at all and at what stage their utilization takes place, if at a ll. The timing of collaboration to exploit the biotechnological opportunity between the discoverer and the pharmaceutical firm is vital. Studies have shown that new biotechnological organizations vary in when they time their collaborations to exploit their opportunities when compared to pharmaceutical firms (Antonelli, 2010: p21). Biotechnological organizations that have rigid research and development programs that apply for patents in their projects or that possess earlier experience in research and development, exploit their opportunities sooner through collaboration. Collaboration is also accelerated by the establishment of industry infrastructure, for instance, national biotechnological centers, as well as increased protection of intellectual property. It was found that the project’s characteristics do not have a profound effect on the collaboration’s timing. While many biotechnological opportunities were initially focused on the phase of discovery, the exploitatio n phase has become more important as new technologies are discovered that replace previous ones (European Commission, 2010: p149). Identification of opportunity is now viewed as only being necessary, but not adequate for the actual technological exploitation. Because most of the start-up biotechnological firms do not have the required capital to exploit these opportunities, it is vital that they collaborate, with larger organizations, to make the most out of the