Managing technological change through strategic planning

The strategic planning process, a tool that integrates interdisciplinary functions with a systems approach to accomplish organizational goals, is described. Strategic planning establishes a company purpose and business objective for developing organizational capabilities to continually and effectively manage technological change. The strategic plan can establish the company´s technology development program and its business direction by capitalizing on its competitive advantage. The plan should be developed only after internal analysis in determining the organization´s strengths and weakness and external analysis in evaluating the general and specific environments for changes. Organizations, both large and small, need to understand that technology is a strategic and competitive asset that must be effectively managed. Business executives need to continually develop technology development strategies and improve organizational capabilities as a routine business objective