MIT Sloan Management Review Article on A Better Way to Pilot Emerging Technologies

Companies that are considering adopting a particular technology typically base the decision on the strength of the business case. Such an assessment is straightforward when the technology will upgrade existing equipment or replace manual processes with automation, or when the technology is already in use at other organizations that have demonstrated its benefits. But it’s much harder to quantify the value of emerging technologies that are not yet being widely used.

In fact, budget-centered business case approaches are biased against novel technologies, partly because they don’t factor in the value of learning gains and spillover effects. But absent the discipline imposed by requiring a good business case, organizations that bring in new technologies via isolated pilot projects often find that these experiments go nowhere.

About the Author

Torbjørn Netland (@tnetland) is a professor of production and operations management in the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich. Omid Maghazei (@omaghazei) is a postdoctoral researcher in the same department. Michael Lewis (@opsprof) is a professor of operations and supply management in the Information, Decisions, and Operations Division of the School of Management at the University of Bath.

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