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The idea of technology brokering is to span multiple, otherwise disconnected industries, to see how existing technologies could be used to create breakthrough innovations in other markets. Technology brokering requires companies to be strong in two areas.〔Hargadon, A. (2003, November/December). Retooling R&D: Technology brokering and the pursuit of innovation. Ivey Business Journal. Retrieved April 18, 2009, from http://andrewhargadon.com/Release/Hargadon_Ivey_Retooling.pdf〕 As Andrew Hargadon, technology brokering’s founder, summarized: "Firstly, the company must have the ability to bridge distant communities, usually when a company can move easily across a range of different markets they have a better view of how technologies can be used in new ways. Secondly, technology brokering involves creating new markets and industries from innovative combinations of existing technology. These two strengths are difficult to have simultaneously because the strong ties the companies have with customers and supplies in one industry prevent the company from moving easily into other markets and experimenting with new ideas."〔 Yet, when a company is able to combine these two strengths it can result in being the first to experience technological advances. Technology brokering can teach firms how to effectively shift the focus of traditional R&D teams from trying to invent completely new products to combining previous innovations. New ideas for observation based research pull R&D scientists out of the lab and place them into direct consumer observation to allow them to diagnose problems with products and identify the needs of the customer more accurately.〔 The technology brokering process intertwines with the idea of empathic design, which is basically understanding products from a customers’ point of view and then designing them to fit needs and issues. The advantage of empathic design, especially when combined with technology brokering firms, is that it leads to innovative products that suit the particular problems of the customer. Another perk of empathic design is including marketing and manufacturing people in the product design to get diverse opinions of product success and practicality. ==History== The first examples of technology brokering can be found as early as 1876 with Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park laboratory. In six years, this lab procured over 400 patents.〔 Menlo Park laboratory was such a successful ‘invention factory’ because Thomas Edison had a firm belief in recombinant innovation. There were no inventions from Menlo Park that were truly invented from nothing – each one had some basis that was pulled from another field of technology. Edison and his team worked in many different fields in conjunction with many different companies, in addition to working on individual experiments. All of these projects enabled the team to use their knowledge of various fields to be innovative in creating new solutions for different organizations. Because knowledge of technology across differing fields was disconnected, Edison was able to exploit this and create new solutions from areas of past projects. Henry Ford is another great inventor in history who understood the power of combining past solutions to create a new one. He is famous for the model T automobile and the assembly line, but Ford himself stated that:
The knowledge of recombinant innovation is alive and thriving today. Companies such as IDEO can easily have their processes compared to Edison’s operations of the Menlo Park laboratory. IDEO is arguably one of the largest and most successful design firms of the current times. Since its founding in 1978, it has created 3,000 new products in over 40 industries.〔 Working amidst several different industries is a large factor of success in technology brokering. The more industries that firms are involved in, the broader their understanding of different technologies will be. CEO of IDEO David Kelley has this to say about working in many different fields:
Many companies today are restructuring their R&D departments and they are finding the structure of technology brokering to be very successful and cost-effective for innovation. Not only is technology brokering a business foundation for design firms, it can also be used inside large corporations in order to achieve inter-departmental innovations. Andrew Hargadon was really the first person to coin the term ‘technology brokering’ and advocate to industry its advantages. He did this in the late 1980s, early 1990s, now the concept of technology brokering is fairly common. The Hargadon Group currently advises businesses ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups about how to integrate a technology brokering system into their innovation process. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Technology brokering」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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