Introduction

Strategic technology management, technological innovation, and product development play vital roles in developing solutions to social, economic, environmental and market-related problems and in creating new opportunities. They provide the means and mechanisms to fundamentally change the enterprise in its quest for achieving excellence.

“Technology” is a complex term that includes art, science, engineering, devices, methods, and know-how that are applied in a beneficial manner. It usually takes the form of products and processes (hardware and software) that can be used to create solutions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, technology was typically viewed as the application of science, engineering, and art for developing useful apparatuses with complementary and supporting devices. The automobile is a good example. Automobile technology provided the means to create a self-propelled vehicle based on the internal combustion engine technology that converted chemical fuels into mechanical propulsion. However, the automobile is actually the fusion of many technologies into a useful end-product. The related technical devices used in the automobile met functional requirements: for instance, mechanical brakes, though unrelated to the primary function of vehicular motion, were critical for stopping the automobile.

In the twenty-first century, our view of technology has expanded beyond what is embodied within the products and processes to include the theories, knowledge, concepts, and constructs for creating beneficial outcomes. The Internet is the prime example.