Taking Technical Risks-How Innovators, Executives, and Investors Manage High-Tech Risks
本书探讨了从科学突破到市场产品的过程中，创新者、高管和投资者如何同时控制技术风险和市场风险，分析了资金缺口、研究缺口和信任缺口对高风险项目承保的影响。
Taking Technical Risks-How Innovators, Executives, And Investors Manage High-Tech by Lewis M. Branscomb and Philip E. Auerswald, 2001, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press The difficult life of technical innovators and the gaps which have to be covered in order to cross the death (where the majority of innovative projects fail) give a satisfactory idea of how tough is the from scientific breakthroughs to market prototypes, or throughout the book-in other words-how difficult it is to control purely technical risks and market risks at the same time. The financial gap between funding of research and resources to be invested to put the projects in practice, the research gap between the initial idea and a market-suitable product, and also the trust gap-or the information asymmetry-between technologists and managers, may seriously affect the underwriting of high-tech risks. Technical breakthroughs no longer coincide with products themselves, as it was once; there is now a difference between an innovating concept and a product ready to be launched. This is the central subject of the book, and also a very typical insurance topic, as everybody can see and realize, although this is not emphasized throughout the work as it could have been. In fact, the risks necessarily related to all innovative projects are normally shared, and risky activities may be undertaken-under insurance mechanisms-which would not have been possible otherwise. At the very heart, the problem originates from the fact that different, sometimes conflicting interests stand on the valley sides. On the one hand inventors and technologists are responsible for research and follow the reasons of science, often paying attention to feasibility more than to the impact of proposed innovations. On the other hand investors, and particularly managers, are responsible for decision-making processes and risk firm reputation and money, so that they follow the reasons of market. The volume takes the form of a monograph that is divided in chapters, as usual; among the chapters a series of papers (contributed essays) can be found, however. These were mostly chosen from the commissioned contributions of a report on Managing Technical Risks, which was sponsored by the Advanced Technology Program of the NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) in the late nineties. Together with the academics, a series of practitioners were involved in the project, and two preliminary workshops were organized to approach the matter. Thus, most of the added value comes from the choice to combine continuous, often implicit, reference to theory-from Schumpeter on-with the point of view and the experience of professionals, whose opinions are quoted throughout the book. The Introduction is devoted to elucidate the aims and structure of the book. On the other hand, the first chapter (Between Invention and Innovation)-having introduced the discussion and presented two case studies-offers a useful definition of success and failure in terms of objectives. Institutional, personal, and project objectives are discussed to evaluate technical uncertainties and failure risks. The corresponding contributed essay (Technical Product Specification, and Market Risk, by George C. Hartman and Mark B. Myers) gives the subject a concrete form, by explaining how research, technology development, and product development activities are structured at the Xerox corporation, according to a model adopted to identify/quantify technology risks and market risks. Risk and uncertainty are analyzed in the following chapter (Defining Risks and Rewards). However, this is not a purely analytical approach, for a soft way is chosen to treat the related statistical concepts: the quantification of technical risk is as much an art as it is a science. Some of the methodologies to assess the technical risks are mentioned here: (1) the two-part appraisal, evaluating the global risk as the product between the probability of technical and the probability of commercial successes; and (2) the mapping of the research, development, and commercialization process, in order to simulate a series of scenarios through which a model is to be obtained. …