Energy for Sustainable Development 13 (2009) 280–286

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Energy for Sustainable Development

A framework for technology assessment: Case of a Thai building

material manufacturer
Tugrul U. Daim ⁎, Nuttavut Intarode
Dept. of Engineering and Technology Management, Portland State University, PO Box 751, Portland, OR, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Technology assessment is a critical process in managing technology. It is critical to select the right
Received 24 February 2009 technologies that would meet the needs of the organization acquiring the technology. This becomes even
Revised 9 October 2009 more challenging in an era of globalization and exponentially increasing emerging technologies. This paper
Accepted 10 October 2009
presents a framework to address this challenge and applies it in the case of a building manufacturer in
Thailand. The specific problem in this case is the acquisition of green technologies. The technologies
Keywords:
Technology assessment
evaluated in this paper are thin-film PV, printable ink thin-film PV, and a paint coating to provide additional
Multiple perspectives thermal insulation. Three different perspectives were used to evaluate the technologies: technological,
Green technologies organizational and marketing. Expert judgments were used to evaluate the technologies across these
Building materials perspectives using multiple criteria. Technology forecasting with patent analysis was used to enhance the
Thailand decision. As a result, paint insulation was identified as the right technology in this case.
© 2009 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction be neglected by companies. Technology assessment helps compa-

nies examine impacts of technological innovation, associated risks,
There are three categories of new products: breakthrough and other concerns that may result in problems. Moreover, the
innovation, product repositioning, or cost reduction (Crawford and assessment is done before the adoption of new technology and
Benedetto, 2008). Companies of our age survive by introducing new significant investment and, thus, reduces risk of ineffective
products to the markets. According to Cooper (2001), successful investment decision. Similar research resulting in alternative
companies get more than 49% of their profits from new products. One technology assessment framework was carried out for industries
of the strategies to differentiate a new product from others is by including manufacturing (Hewitt-Dundas, 2004), thermal cooling
incorporating new technologies. Souder and Bethay (1993) argue that (Gerdsri, 2007), energy (Phillips et al., 2007), and aerospace
technologies can create specific needs or support particular require- industry (Dissel et al., 2006).
ments of the potential customers. Yang and Yun (2005) and Millward This paper presents a framework to evaluate available technol-
et al. (2006) provided applications demonstrating the criticality of ogies for a building manufacturer in Thailand. An emphasis was
managing technology in new product development. Others such as placed on providing the evaluation from a multitude of perspec-
Frishammar (2005) and Herstatt and Kalogerakis (2005) pointed out tives. These included technological, organizational, and market
the value of information in new product development earlier in the perspectives. Expert judgment quantifications are accomplished
process. with experts from the case company, Silpakorn University, and
However, it is not enough to adopt new technologies or focus on National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) in
innovation as a single market strategy. When companies integrate Thailand, thus covering opinions from the industry, academia, and
new technologies, it is vital to consider the compatibility of the government.
technological changes with their organizational mission and The research team conducted interviews with the company's
objectives, internal and external business factors, as well as needs subject matter experts. These interviews identified the company's
and wants of the customers (Souder and Bethay, 1993). The needs/goals with respect to acquiring new technologies, and then
compatibility test may provide companies with the thorough allowed the experts to provide measurements of current company
understanding of the internal capability to handle new technology, capabilities. The company indicated a strong desire to incorporate
technological change, and innovation. Insufficient resources or lack green technologies into their existing product lines. Through
of capabilities may lead to devastating results instead of profits. analysis, it was concluded that the best broad target for the
Therefore, technology assessment and compatibility test should not technology addition was within the roof tile product line. With this
information, a gap analysis was conducted to determine potential
⁎ Corresponding author. targets for candidate technologies. The three candidates included
E-mail address: [email protected] (T.U. Daim). thin-film PV (generation 1), printable ink thin-film PV (generation

0973-0826/$ – see front matter © 2009 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.esd.2009.10.006
 T.U. Daim, N. Intarode / Energy for Sustainable Development 13 (2009) 280–286 281

2), and a paint coating to provide additional thermal insulation. A complexity of candidate technologies and the accompanying
pair-wise comparison was conducted to determine appropriate uncertainty.
weighting factors for the selection criteria. These were then used in • Manufacturing difficulties or ease of technology adoption: The
a survey to measure and rank the candidate technologies. The adoption of new technology may result in manufacturing
resulting analysis concluded that adding paint insulation to the problems that impact production capability (Benson et al.,
product line would be the preferred technology addition. 1993).
• Acquisition channel: Technology acquisition channels include in-
Methodology house development, licensing, or sponsoring university research
(Daim and Kocaoglu, 2008). The choice of the channel deter-
Tran and Daim (2008) found that public and non-public mines the impact on the organization. This criterion is used
organizations employ different methodologies to assess technologies. because the company contemplates investment in innovative
Public organizations generally consider social and individual impacts technology but there is a lack of knowledge and expertise neces-
while non-public organizations widely rely on costs and profits in sary to conduct the preliminary research. Therefore, the channel
evaluation of technologies (Tran and Daim, 2008). There are three for technology acquisition is an imperative criterion that should
major groups of methods: analytical models (Loch et al., 2001), expert be evaluated.
judgment based models (Meade and Presley, 2002), and simulation
models (Wolstenholme, 2003). Daim and Kocaoglu (2008, 2009) Organizational perspective
indicated that financial methods are also used widely. There are also There are four key criteria under the organizational perspective:
several studies that integrated multiple approaches (Nakamura and employment stability, employee capability, compatibility with the
Tsuji, 2004; Georgakellos, 2005). current manufacturing process, and the cost and risk of investment.
Expert judgment quantification becomes very critical when there • Employment stability: The changes of technology should not affect
is very few objective data on emerging technologies. Prior research the job stability of current employees (Auer and Cazes, 2000).
has very good applications in areas including clean energy techno- • Employee capability: The company will have to provide adequate
logies (Daim et al., 2009a,b), information technologies (Daim et al., technology training and develop in-house experts for the applica-
2009a,b), aerospace technologies (Hallum and Daim, 2009), hard disk tion of the new technologies in the case of lack of required
drive technologies (Ploykitikoon and Daim, 2009), broadband capabilities. (Mayo, 2000).
technologies (Zhang et al., 2008), communication technologies • The compatibility with the current manufacturing process: The
(Chen and Daim, 2008), agriculture (Jordan and Daim, 2008), and applicable technology should fit the existing production processes
automotive technologies (Navam and Daim, 2007). without requiring any major modification (Pretorius and de Wet,
1999).
Evaluation criteria • Low cost and low risk of investment: The new selected technology
should be reasonable in both investment and return as well as
Linstone (1999) suggests that using multiple perspectives assists support the future needs of customers (Pretorius and de Wet,
companies or organizations to evaluate technologies. Multiple 1999).
perspectives included technological, organizational, and marketing
perspectives. This paper adopted these perspectives. The following Marketing perspective
sections present the evaluation criteria under each perspective. This Marketing perspective includes the requirements of customers
paper proposes 11 criteria on three perspectives consisting of and government policy. The success in bringing innovations to the
technological, organizational, and marketing perspectives. All crite- market through adoption of technological advances depends not
ria aim to assess candidate technologies that the company is only on the abilities of the companies to manufacture innovative
planning to acquire for their next generation of innovative products. products to support requirements of customers but also on
Technological perspectives are required to evaluate technology incentives from government bodies (Auer and Cazes, 2000). This
feasibility, while organizational perspectives are evaluated to paper uses three marketing criteria to evaluate the candidate
analyze a readiness of the company to absorb and implement technologies: customer skepticism, customer satisfaction, and legal
technology required. In addition, marketing perspectives are regulations.
assessed to measure factors influencing customers' preferences • Customer skepticism about a new innovative product: Customers
and government requirements. may not be impressed with improved performance or the
increased price of exiting products (Benson et al., 1993).
Technological perspective • Customer satisfaction: The most innovative technology may fail
Technological criteria are financial return, risks or uncertainty of because customers cannot or will not adjust their behavior to meet
technology, manufacturing difficulties, and acquisition channel. the requirements of technology (Benson et al., 1993). Thus,
innovation should be easy to use and to maintain by the end users.
• Financial return: Return On Investment (ROI), Payback period, • Legal regulations: Regulatory requirements can serve as both
and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) are the financial methods barriers and incentives to the technology adoption process
referred to by engineering managers to evaluate technologies (Benson et al., 1993). This criterion is used to identify the candidate
(Daim and Kocaoglu, 2008). ROI and payback period were used technologies that are likely to be supported and promoted by the
to capture the financial return in this case. Approximate costs government in Thailand.
and revenues that are expected to be generated from each
candidate technology were estimated to calculate ROI. The Evaluation methodology
highest ROI and shortest payback period reveal the best
candidate technology. A framework was constructed to be able to identify and evaluate
• Risks or uncertainty of technology: Maturity of technology in candidate technologies as shown in Fig. 1. The process starts with a
addition to the number of technologies involved in an innovation gap analysis to identify the technological requirements which leads
are factors that an analyst can apply to evaluate a technology to the choice of candidate technologies that are available for
(Benson et al., 1993). This criterion is applied to evaluate the licensing and adoption in building materials field.
282 T.U. Daim, N. Intarode / Energy for Sustainable Development 13 (2009) 280–286

The outlined methodology is suitable for this research because

experts can compare the candidate technologies to be acquired by
the company for the purpose of development of new products. This
method was used to score each technology according to each
criterion. The experts received information about each candidate
technology and the survey questions based on the criteria. The
survey provided the specific direction on how to score the tech-
nology in accordance to each criterion. The score range was from 1
to 5. A score of 5 indicates that the candidate technology is the
most possible and reasonable to be adopted in accordance to
criteria. On the other hand, if experts think a technology is not
appropriate, the rate of 1 is assigned to the technology candidate.
To calculate the final result, scores of each technology belonging to
the assigned criteria are multiplied by the weight of criteria.

Forecasting candidate technologies

Technology forecasting is used by companies to evaluate R&D
projects and to make a decision regarding the adoption of technology
for the new product (Zhu and Porter, 2002). This uses patent analysis
which helps companies predict the future of new technologies that
are being integrated into new products (Porter and Cunningham,
2005). This paper uses the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
database. Patent analysis is a forecasting model of methodology. This
method measures the growth number of patents in a specific
technology in order to determine the trend of that particular
technology (Daim et al., 2006). Analyzing patents assists the company
with planning their growth strategies and researching for the
innovation (Wu and Lee, 2007).

Fig. 1. The framework of technology assessment for green technologies.

Case analysis

The case company investigated in this paper has a manufacturing

U.S. National Laboratories and universities have been used as base in Thailand and five main products: roof tiles (65% of
sources of existing and emerging technologies. The next step is the production), wall and floor ceramic tiles (25%), paving blocks (5%),
assessment of candidate technologies. This research follows Linsto- faucets (3%), and sanitary wares (2%). Although the company is the
ne's model with the focus on multiple perspectives (Technological, leading company in national building materials market, it is currently
Organizational, and Marketing). The weights of each criterion are facing several internal and external challenges. These challenges are
found using pair-wise comparisons. Then the technologies were summarized in Table 1.
evaluated using the scoring method. Finally, patent analysis is used The opportunity to integrate green technology into existing
to forecast the technologies and have an insight into future potential product lines would enable the company to create a new market of
of these technologies. An expert panel with members from the case consumers who are concerned over the environmental impact of the
company, a local university, and the National Science and Technol- products. The company contemplated a wide range of possible
ogy Development Agency (NSTDA) were used to do the assessments. technologies and innovations; however, the application of relevant
Fig. 1 summarizes the conceptual framework of the research. technologies has been postponed because there was no match
between the needs of customers and business requirements. Until
Pair-wise comparisons now, no consensus among the company executives on green tech-
Pair-wise comparisons are a part of the analytic hierarchy nology application in building material business has been achieved.
process (AHP) model that is applied to prioritize and to select the
best solution by considering indicators or criteria separately and Gap analysis and assessment criteria
against each other. AHP has several hierarchical levels and pair-
wise comparisons are used to rate the weight of each criteria level Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) were contacted within the com-
in AHP (Erensal and Albayrak, 2008). The process measures the pany to gather information about and summarize their company's
preference and/or the importance of one criterion in comparison
to another one (Uzoka and Ijatuyi, 2005). In this research, criteria
weights are determined with this method. Table 1
External and internal challenges of the company.

Scoring method External challenges Internal challenges

Scoring is one of the qualitative methodologies used to select 1. The company operates in a highly 1. The company does not apply
and prioritize projects or activities in R&D management (Bitman competitive market with little advanced technology into its
and Sharif, 2008; Schoemaker, 1995). Scoring is a simple tool to rate differentiation among products offered products.
by rivals.
and compare the preferences. Also, it is easy to calculate the data
2. There is increasing awareness among 2. Technological changes are
and interpret the results of evaluation (Wen and Shin, 2008). The consumers on environmental issues and incremental and without complete
scoring model uses the number with the highest value to rate the more buyers consider the environmental redesign of current manufacturing
most important criterion and the lowest number to rate the least impact of the products they buy. and operating processes.
important one (Robert and Sharif, 2008; Schoemaker, 1995; Wen 3. There is a consumer trend to become
less dependent on energy usage.
and Shin, 2008).
 T.U. Daim, N. Intarode / Energy for Sustainable Development 13 (2009) 280–286 283

needs and capabilities. These needs and capabilities were then used to Candidate technologies
determine the company's gaps. The details of these interviews are
shown as follows: Green technology is one of the top ten technologies in 2008
according to the Institute for Global Futures (Canton James, 2008).
Company's needs This technology encompasses a set of developing techniques and
Responses about the company's needs were separated into six materials from generating energy to non-toxic cleaning products
categories. These were the following: (http://www.green-technology.org/what.htm). At present, most
businesses try to exploit this technology to create new opportunities
a) Create market opportunities by investigating new products that
for their innovative products to the emerging markets.
will satisfy consumers' demands. The technology assessment process continued with the selection
b) Identify emerging technologies that will improve the long-term of the area of green technologies that have the potential benefits for
Return on Investment. the Company's innovative products (see Fig. 2). After that, the criteria
c) Apply technology that can help to differentiate its products from of technological, organizational, and market perspectives based on the
the competitors—Create new opportunities for niche segment Company's challenges are defined by the research team and the
markets with advance product features. company's experts. Finally, the candidate technologies composed of
d) Produce new products that can address the customer require- thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) amorphous silicon, thin-film photovol-
ments such as technologies that could support energy inde- taic (TFPV) printable solar ink, and paint insulation are evaluated by
using the methodology described earlier.
pendence, with a low incremental price increase, yet maintain a
reasonable level of reliability.
Thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) amorphous silicon
e) Promote innovation in the company by acquiring new tech- Amorphous silicon technology is the first generation of TFPV and
nology that creates new value for the products based on existing the most mature form of thin-film technology. Amorphous silicon is a
manufacturing process. non-crystallized silicon and most frequently chosen for deposition
f) Protect existing market and new emerging market from new because it is a strong absorber of light. It can absorb solar radiation 40
entrants and new substituted products. times more efficiently than single crystal silicon and can work even at
low light levels. The efficiency of this technology depends on a
Next, the existing capabilities of the company were observed.
number of a-Si junctions (Hecht, 2009). There are 3 types of this
Current capabilities technology: single junction, double junction, and triple junction. The
After reviewing the Company's capabilities, several distinct production efficiency of this technology from laboratory records is
findings were identified. There is minor or no differentiation 12.7% which is lower than other types of PV. Despite its low efficiency,
between competing products. A roof tile from Company A looks it can be applied with both rigid and flexible substrates which are very
and behaves very similar to a roof tile from Company B. Top thin. One company, Power Film Solar, can produce thin film of
executives within the organization openly support adapting any 0.025 mm thickness. (NASA, 2008a).
technology that addresses environmental concerns. It was also There are two techniques for creating TFPV. Some manufacturers
determined that the Company has highly skilled employees with have developed a roll to roll manufacturing technique on flexible
significant experience in the area of manufacturing cement-based substrates such as stainless steel or plastic film, but most of them use a
construction materials. deposition technique at relatively low temperatures (less than 300 °C)
Under the existing market conditions, the Company's needs can be to produce this TFPV. These manufacturing processes have proven the
separated into two sections: a high-end market and general market. In effectiveness for many years and are used by large companies that are
the high-end market, the behavior of customers depends upon the engaged in this research and have become experts in this area.
market trends. Therefore, the purchasing decision is not based on Furthermore, research also mentions that this technology has the
price but is influenced by the level of benefits received from owning lowest manufacturing cost/unit around $1.5/W(peak) (Grana, 2007).
particular products. The company's current capabilities include the In application, this TFPV is applied to the top surface of roof tile.
following: However, the company has to develop a product that is able to apply
to this TFPV and also find a process to attach this TFPV to the roof tile.
a) They manufacture the lowest cost and most reliable ceramic At this moment, there is a company in Thailand that produces thin-
tiles. film amorphous silicon: “Bangkok solar.” Furthermore, this company
b) Have a sophisticated engineering and manufacturing expertise uses glass for a substrate and applies chemical deposition technique
in ceramic tile production. for its manufacturing process. Thus, this company may be a potential
c) Employ their own ceramic engineers and researchers in order to domestic supplier for the building material company but it has to
change substrates in order to ease the application of the roof tile.
acquire and develop new technology for the existing manufac-
turing process and products.
Thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV): printable solar ink
d) They have developed good relationships with domestic experts
This printable solar ink is adapted from Copper Indium (Gallium)
in the country and are collaborating with the leading ceramic Di-Selenide (CIGS) technology which was a breakthrough technology
machinery company. in 2007. This technology is the second generation of thin films and
e) Sustain the company profit through the innovation for business has the highest performance with the record cell efficiency of 19.2 %
in the long run. in the laboratory. Like amorphous silicon, the flexibility depends on
the substrates, which can be both a rigid and flexible material. It has
Company's gaps the potential to offer the lowest capital expenditure cost for the
Three technology gaps were identified through this analysis. The manufacturing process (Nanosolar, 2008).
first gap specified that the Company lacks sufficient experience to In the manufacturing process, two techniques can be applied:
apply the correct emerging technology. The second gap identified that sputtering and painting. These two techniques coat solar ink with
reliable and cost effective technologies are not readily available. multiple layers of materials on the substrates. It begins with a
Lastly, the Company does not have the ability to manufacture for and molybdenum layer, followed by the CIGS absorber layer, a cadmium
create niche markets. sulfide buffer, and a zinc oxide layer. Although this technology does
284 T.U. Daim, N. Intarode / Energy for Sustainable Development 13 (2009) 280–286

Fig. 2. Candidates of green technology for building material business.

not have a large scale of production yet and the process is still According to Hy-Tech (2008) and NASA (2008b), the micro-
complex, the companies that produce thin-film amorphous by roll to sphere has a compressive strength of up to 6000 psi and a softening
roll manufacturing processes can potentially produce CIGS technology point about 1800 °C. It is chemically resistant with the low thermal
(Grana, 2007). conductivity of 0.1 W/m/°C. It works very differently than the
According to the building material company, this technology is conventional mass insulation products such as fiberglass, cellulose,
new and has not been proven effective in manufacturing processes expanded or extruded polystyrene, etc. which provide air or gas
but it may be a technology that can be applied to a roof tile by coating pockets within the products. They reduce conductive heat transfer
the top of the roof tiles instead of using normal decorative colors from hotter air to cooler air, but cannot affect radiative heat
(Harris, 2008). transfer. Solar radiation heats the surfaces and increases heat
transfer, despite the high thermal resistance (R value) of insulating
Paint insulation materials. On the other hand, the ceramic insulating paint is able to
This technology called CVMC (Ceramic Vacuum Matrix) technol- reflect up to 90% of incident solar radiation and thereby reduce
ogy was initially developed by the NASA thermal research at Ames solar heating. Its R value is very low, so it does not significantly
Research Center. Then it was licensed to a spin-off company, “Hy-Tech reduce heat transfer from temperature differences. The ceramic
Thermal Insulations, LLC.” As both manufacturer and marketer, Hy- microspheres have inert and non toxic properties. Thus, they can be
Tech Thermal Insulation improved the properties of this insulation mixed into any paint, coating, or composite, exterior house paint,
paint in order to be easy for use. This technology is a combination of roof paint, solvent base coating, epoxy, urethane, high temperature
insulating ceramic microspheres suspended in the blended polymers. paint, etc. The price of ceramic insulating paint roof guard is $7.8
Now, this company produces a very complex blend of ceramic per liter at the spread rate 2.53 m2/l.
vacuum-filled refractory products to reduce the transfer of heat and By its properties and benefits, the insulating paint is able to add
cold from outside through ceiling, walls, and roofs. Hy-Tech ceramic value to the roof tile product. The company can use this paint to coat
insulating paint additive is an ultra fine particle, white talcum powder the top layer of roof tile in order to insulate roofs. It is not necessary to
blend of high strength ceramic “microspheres.” These microspheres establish a new process line or to invest in high-end machines. This
are very tiny and cannot be noticed by naked eyes (Hy-Tech, 2008). means it is easy to adapt to the existing production lines as well.

Table 2
Total score of technologies. Table 3
Score of each perspective given by different group of experts.
Perspectives Thin-film Thin-film printable Paint insulation
amorphous silicon solar inkThin film Candidate technologies Company University NSTDA experts
printable solar ink experts experts

1. Technology 2.98 2.81 3.97 T O M T O M T O M

2. Organization 3.06 2.53 3.93 1. Thin-film amorphous 3.75 4.12 3.29 2.01 2.37 3.12 3.28 2.51 3.41
3. Market 3.12 2.96 3.86 silicon
Total 9.16 8.30 11.76 2. Thin-film printable 3.49 3.03 3.40 1.93 2.07 2.90 3.11 2.47 3.23
P
j P
i   solar ink
Note. Total score = ½Wi  Sji (W = weight of each criterion and S = score of
j=1 i=1 3. Paint insulation 3.19 3.91 3.58 4.33 3.63 4.78 4.60 4.41 3.15
each expert).
 T.U. Daim, N. Intarode / Energy for Sustainable Development 13 (2009) 280–286 285

Table 4 this technology is a mature technology and there are no local

Key word for searching patents. manufacturers adapting this technology to their products. Thus,
Candidate technologies Key words they see future opportunities to make this company's products
superior to the rivals. A different opinion is the scores in market
1. Thin-film amorphous silicon “thin film amorphous”
2. Thin-film printable solar ink “thin film copper indium di-selenide” perspective. Company and university experts give the highest score to
“thin film copper gallium di-selenide” paint insulation because this technology is more affordable and
“CIGS thin film solar cell” realistic to be marketed to the mainstream market in the short term,
3. Paint insulation “ceramic insulating paint”
while an innovative product equipped with the thin film technologies
“energy saving paint additive”
“insulating additive for paint” may be sold only in the niche market. NSTDA, on the other hand, is a
“energy saving insulating paint” government agency and knows the direction of Thai government's
policy to encourage investment in thin film technology to sustain
national energy by using renewable energy. They see an opportunity
Although the final product is not really high technology, the cost and in the future market of this technology.
selling price may be acceptable and create incremental innovation for
a mainstream product. Forecasting candidate technologies by patent analysis

Evaluation results—pair-wise comparisons and scoring Patent analysis is a methodology applied to forecast the maturity
level of the technology. This method measures the growth of patents
The total scores of each perspective assessed by the expert panel in a specific technology in order to determine the trend of technology
are summarized in Table 2. (Wen and Shin, 2008). It is valuable for companies to assess and
Paint insulation has the highest score. This means that this analyze technologies or innovations because it can assist them in
technology has the most potential to be integrated with the planning and developing their strategies and research for the new
company's roof tiles followed by thin-film amorphous silicon and innovation (Daim et al., 2006). The key words for this analysis are
thin-film printable solar ink. It is easy to apply this technology with shown in Table 4.
the existing manufacturing process because the company will only After using these key words to search the patents of each
need to minor modifications. Regarding the other technologies, the technology, a number of patents in each technology are plotted
experts believe that these technologies are possible to integrate into along the time line. The results of patent analysis are shown in Fig. 3.
the Company's products. However, the Company has to invest in According to the graph, it can be concluded that thin-film amorphous
some new equipment and modify the existing manufacturing silicon and paint insulation are mature technologies. The growth of
process in order to attach these thin films on a product. The thin-film amorphous silicon dramatically increased in 1995 and kept
Company may need to spend at least 5 years to develop the process increasing until 2002, when its trend declined. Although the trend of
and the product. In addition, the Company may need to develop the patents in thin-film amorphous silicon has decreased, the total
knowledge and skill for its employees. Moreover, given the number is still much greater than the patents of thin-film printable
skepticism about this emerging product, the Company needs to ink solar technology. This means that this technology is a new
put forth a huge amount of effort in order to prepare to launch this emerging technology which is still being researched. In the case of
product into the market. Therefore, using a quick win strategy, the insulating paint, the number of patents published from 1981 to 1998
Company should take advantage of proven technology to generate fluctuated between 10 and 20 patents, and has tended to decrease
cash from the first generation of product innovation before since 1999.
launching the advanced innovative product to the market in the
next step. Not only does the Company have a chance to learn about Conclusions
the niche market but also prepare itself before launching the other
innovative products to the mainstream market in order to create Technology assessment is an important step prior to pushing an
competitive advantages and sustain growth of its business in the innovative product into a competitive market. In order to get a
long run. feasible idea for investment, the firm must invest not only
The divergent opinions among the group of experts come from the substantial time but also resources to confirm and finalize all critical
difference in organizations and backgrounds (see Table 3). The group assumptions. This paper provided a step by step methodology to
of company experts gives the highest scores in organizational and evaluate technologies through a case of green technologies in a
technical perspectives to thin-film amorphous silicon. They think that developing country.

Fig. 3. Number of patents of candidate technologies.

286 T.U. Daim, N. Intarode / Energy for Sustainable Development 13 (2009) 280–286

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