Technological competences: Identifying, describing and exploiting

Technological competences are the success-determining factors for the competitiveness of every technology-oriented company. Identifying, fostering and exploiting technological competences are amongst the crucial activities within technology management in order to strengthen the market position of a company in the long term. New market opportunities for future company growth have to be identified and evaluated against the background of a company´s own competence profile. However, companies find it difficult to identify, evaluate and consistently describe their technological competences due to a lack of methodology. As a result, decision makers often struggle to derive their superior technological competences and to search for promising new markets suitable for the company´s unique technological expertise. The identification and selection of a diversification alternative is therefore often done without a systematic and profound decision basis. In this paper, the authors introduce an approach to identify and systematically describe technological competences. This is done by presenting a description syntax for the consistent description of technological competences. The development of the syntax is performed by using a deductive approach on the basis of existing literature, theories and models. The syntax enables companies to consistently describe their technological competences. The paper furthermore includes a case study of a recent consultancy project in the industry performed by Fraunhofer IPT.