Forms of organisation for efficient technology management

New technologies constitute the key to future markets. Their identification and the early recognition of resulting opportunities contribute to long term business success. Systematic technology management forms a base for the technological development of an enterprise. Gathering required information, planning the technological advancement, realising and using new technologies as well as an appropriate evaluation of technologies are main challenges of technology management. Whereas activities and methodologies for technology management have been subject of research in the past, the question of an ideal form of organisation for technology management for enterprises has not been answered in depth yet. Experience of numerous industrial cases implies that there is no obvious form of organisation which is universally valid for the entire range of enterprises. In fact it depends on multiple input factors and had to be identified case by case for each particular company so far. Based on this cognition the Fraunhofer IPT has started research activities to answer the question of how the organisational form of technology management can be derived. The organisational structure must meet all requirements resulting from enterprise structure, the technology management process and the demand for efficient use of resources. This paper presents effect relations between technology management, organisation and efficiency as a starting point for an individual organisation of technology management. Particular focus is on manufacturing companies. Following an analytic and deductive approach a concept to derive the effect relations between technology management, organisation and efficiency is presented first. According to that concept relevant requirements resulting from technological, strategic and organisational characteristics of an enterprise are described and analysed with regard to their impact on technology management and its organisational structure. In a next step the technology management process and its particular activities are analysed to identify their requirements on the organisational structure. Foundation for this part is a comprehensive description of technology management, its tasks as well as its environment and interfaces to other departments in an enterprise. The last part of the investigation is the analysis of the properties of basic types of organisational forms with regard to their suitability to meet the identified requirements. Result of the paper is a comparison of basic forms of organisation. Their particular suitability for an efficient organisation of technology management is assessed in detail. The results can be employed as a guideline for the identification of an appropriate form of organisation for technology management. Thus they may be used for the set-up or the restructuring of enterprise instances assigned to perform systematic technology management