Harvard Business Review on Managing High-Tech Industries (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series)

Rating:
Summary: Dynamics of the High Tech Industry
Review: The Harvard Business Review on Managing High Tech Industries is a collection of very interesting articles addressing the issues facing managers, engineers and all participants in the high tech industries of electronics and pharmaceuticals.

The core issues covered by these articles are:

* Building effective product development capabilities in the high tech industry to bring better products to the market faster.
*Building effective processes to translate R&D efforts into world class products.
*Economics of the High Tech Industry
*Ideas to transform High Tech companies to global organizations.

There are many examples from successful organizations who have developed a competetive advantage in the areas of product devlopment, manufacturing and management of global R&D networks. These can be adapted to one's own organization.

Overall a good book that helps a manager or an engineer to benchmark his or her company with the best and most sucessful companies (and ideas) in the high tech industry.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting only to a narrow set of 'high-tech' companies
Review: The individual articles themselves are all of high quality; however, this is most interesting for companies that have a large manufacturing effort that is separate from their research & development effort. For software companies, these articles are a bit less interesting, with the exception of the relationship to any broad research arm your company might have. Even then, though, the articles focus more on how you structure the company organizationally and how you handle operations than how a manager could change day-to-day operations to increase collaborations across the divisions.

Rating:
Summary: 8 of the best high-tech reprints from the HBR magazine.
Review: This book is a compilation of some of the best articles on the high-tech industries published in the 1990s. These articles can be read independently and there isn't a thread going through the book other than the fact that they are all related to managing high-tech industries connection.

The first article 'Technology Integration' is all about the role of selecting the right technologies in R&D efforts to ensure proper technology integration otherwise, the resulting products could be late in getting to market, hard to manufacture, or do not fulfill the envisioned purpose. This article is based on an ongoing study of R&D in various segments of the global computer industry by the authors.

The second article 'When is Virtual Virtuous?' is all about deciding when going virtual can be harmful to success from innovation and when it can be helpful. The authors present a framework to help managers decide when to go virtual, when to form alliances, and when to rely on internal development. This decision was extremely hard for managers during the Internet bubble years and billions of dollars were wasted by Fortune 500 companies that may have not applied a framework like this one.

In the third article 'The New Logic of High-Tech R&D', the authors present a compelling argument for why manufacturing shouldn't be outsourced completely and how it is necessary to excel at developing both new products and processes simultaneously.

In the fourth article 'Real-World R&D', the authors present a new R&D approach where a system focus and an integration team can incorporate new technologies into existing products and creates a continuity in generations of products saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the fifth article 'How Architecture Wins Technology Wars', the authors put forward a view that proprietary architecture is necessary to competitive success. I am not sure how successful this approach will prove in this era of open standards. This article was published in 1993. This is the only article in the book I had trouble accepting.

In the sixth article 'Increasing Returns and the New World of Business', the authors put forward the concept of 'increasing returns' which is similar to the old philosophy in real life 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer'. The authors show how there is a tendency for products that are ahead to go on and lock in the market and the products that are behind to lose advantage. There is an interesting discussion of the anti-trust case against Microsoft towards the end of the article.

In the seventh article 'Building Effective R&D Capabilities Abroad', the authors put forward ideas on how to take a global approach to R&D. I do not have enough background in this area to make any further comment.

In the eighth and last article 'Defining Next-Generation Products', the authors present the results of their valuable research involving 28 next-generation products in 14 leading high-tech companies. These best practices are the best part of this book. These best practices presented revolve around the product definition phase of all these projects.

Overall, this is a good book to read just like the other books in this series. I especially recommend that you don't miss reading the last article in the book. Good luck!