This thesis presents exploratory research on the technology management. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of project types and organizational capability factors on the performance of technology development projects in growing and matured industries. It is based on the survey data on one hundred eighteen product/process development projects undertaken by four Korean companies. This thesis is mainly focused on the following research questions:
1) What are the influencing factors that affect the technological and commercial performance of technology development projects?
2) How do project types and organizational capability factors interact to determine the performance of technology development projects?
This thesis adopts a four-step approach of statistical analysis to examine the research questions. The first step is to analyze the effect of project types, such as product maturity, the level of product/process innovation and product specialization/variety on performance of project. Regression results show that product maturity plays a major role in determining the performance. In addition, the level of product innovation affects on technology performance, however, the level of process innovation can be linked to the commercial performance.
At the second step, it presents a model of organizational capability factors such as, strategic focus, market and technology familiarity, organizational integrity and degree of difficulty of entire project process. The technology performance relies on strategic focus. But, technology familiarity negatively affected the technology performance because of the high level of expectancy.
Third, the integrated model of project types and organizational capability factors shows that the strategic focus is heavily related to technology performance but market familiarity impacts on commercial performance in a sense of practical project implementation.
Finally, it explores a two-way interaction model between project types and organizational capability factors. Mutual interaction effects can largely be ignored in determining the technology performance, but interactions between project types and a project management level should be considered as a tool for increasing the commercial success level.
