Glossary

Balanced portfolio
  A portfolio that takes account of the value, risks, strategic fit and timing of projects in an optimal manner based on explicit management judgements.
Benchmarking
  A process tool used to improve products, services or processes by analysing the best practices of other companies to determine standards of performance and how to achieve them.
  Source: IRI
Business strategy
  The strategy for how to build and strengthen the long-term competitive position of a single business.
Capability
  A property of an organisation manifested in its ability to reliably and predictably deploy specific knowledge and skills.
Competence, Core Competence
  A competence is a set of capabilities, that can include both explicit and tacit knowledge or skill, that enables the firm to provide superior value in its chosen markets. Core competences are those competences that enable the firm to outperform its competitors and are the basis of competitive advantage.
Competitive advantage
  The extent to which a firm is able to create value for its customers over and above the cost of creating it. This value creation is based on two generic strategies: cost reduction and differentiation. In the business planning process, firms adjust their scope and generic strategy so as to maximise their competitive advantage. This definition makes competitive advantage very similar to economist's concept of competitiveness.

  See also: generic strategy

Competitive position
  The relationship of a firm relative to others who are competing for the same customers or resources.
Cross-functional organisation
  Any generic organisation structure that brings together people from different functions on either a temporary (project team) or more regular basis (matrix structure).
Foresight
  Literally, an act of looking forward. Foresight is a process used to inform managers and others about perceived threats and opportunities in the medium term future. It can be organised at a national, regional, sectoral or technology level, or by a single enterprise. It can also usefully address multidisciplinary problems or issues such as transport in cities or sustainable development. It is not just the information outputs but also the discussion, networking and learning processes associated with the activity that are regarded as valuable.
Heavyweight project team
  A project team where the resources required to execute and deliver the project task are wholly, or very substantially, controlled directly by the project manager.
Generic strategy
  There are two types of generic strategy as proposed by Michael Porter: 1. Cost reduction: striving to be the low-cost producer in the industry 2. Differentiation or value enhancement: seeking to differentiate the firm's products from competitors. A derived third type of generic strategy, called focus, seeks to apply either cost reduction or value enhancement to a niche market.
Innovation
  A new idea, method or device. The act of creating a new product or process. The act includes invention as well as the work required to bring an idea or concept into final form.
  Source: PDMA
Innovation strategy
  The strategy for introducing new and improved products and services as a way of sustaining and enhancing competitive advantage.

  See also: competitive advantage

Lightweight project team
  A project team where the resources required to execute and deliver the project task are substantially drawn or seconded from outside the core project team and are therefore controlled indirectly by the project manager.
Matrix organisation
  A structure in which a firm's activities are organised along more than one dimension - normally functions and projects, although could also include a third dimension of geographically based activities.
Patent analysis
  The identification of clustering patterns ant regularities in patent codes, usually used to identify competitor actions and identify new lines of business.
Portfolio management
  A business process in which a business unit decides on the mix of active projects, staffing and budget allocated to each project.
  Source: PDMA
Product lifecycle
  The introduction phase is characterised by competing technologies and designs during wich a dominant design is established. After this growth is rapid with competition based around new functionality. As the product technology matures, competition becomes more centred on process technologies to reduce cost while maintaining or more modestly enhancing functionality. In the mature phase, the product is challenged by a new product generation and the old product is "harvested" by reducing or elimiating marketing and technology investment, so as to maximise cash flow for investment in the next generation product.
Product platforms
  Underlying structures or basic architectures which are common across a group of products or which will be the basis of a series of products commercialised over a number of years.
Product-technology roadmap
  A product-technology roadmap is the deliverable that is generated by the roadmapping process. It identifies (for a set of product needs) the critical system requirements, the product and process performance targets, and the technology alternatives and milestones for meeting those targets. A technology roadmap identifies alternate technology "roads" for meeting certain performance objectives. A single path may be selected and a plan developed. If there is high uncertainty or risk, then multiple paths may be selected and pursued concurrently. The roadmap identifies precise objectives and helps focus resources on the critical technologies that are needed to meet those objectives. This focusing is important because it allows increasingly limited R&D investments to be used more effectively.
Reverse engineering
  The process of analysing a subject system to identify the system's components and their interrelationships and create representations of the system in another form or at a higher level of abstraction.
  Source: Chikofsky and Cross.
Self-organisation
  The way in which systems or groups of entities (social organizations, biological entities, molecules etc) appear to determine their own form and process(es).
Stage-gate process
  A widely-employed product development process for managing product development that divides the effort into distinct time-sequenced stages separated by management decision gates. Multifunctional teams must successfully complete a prescribed set of related cross-functional tasks in each stage prior to obtaining management approval to proceed to the next stage of product development. The framework of the stage-gate process includes work-flow and decision-flow paths and defines the supporting systems and practices necessary to ensure the process's ongoing smooth operation.
  Source: PDMA.
Strategic cost analysis
  The process of comparing a firm's costs relative to key competitors activity by activity along the value chain from incoming materials to sales and product support.
Technology
  A defined body of knowledge relating to a specific domain, coupled with the skills and equipment necessary to apply that knowledge to relevant problems. More philosophical definitions of technology tend to draw a distinction between technology as 'artificial science' (knowledge that changes the world) and science or 'natural science' (knowledge that explains the world).
Technology audit
  The preparation of an inventory of a firm's technologies and an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. This requires identifying all the technologies and both classifying and evaluating them and their position in their lifecycle according to a competitive typology (base, pacing etc., clear leader, follower etc.).
Technology management
  The management of the technology-based enterprise and in particular the management of the innovation process, the management (acquisition and development) of technological resources as a strategic asset and the exploitation of technological resources through commercialisation in new products and services.
Technology portfolio
  The set of technologies that is the output of the technology strategy, classified according to a typology (base, pacing, etc.) and funded and programmed to support corporate and business objectives.
Technology strategy
  A technology strategy is a plan to develop and fund a set of technologies that meet the corporate needs for future technologies and the business needs for technologies to support present and future products as specified in the innovation strategy.

  See also business strategy and innovation strategy

Technology tree
  A diagrammatic representation of the logical hierarchical relationships between technologies.