A Scoring Model to Assess Organizations' Technology Transfer Capabilities: The Case of a Power Utility in the Northwest USA

Abstract

This research intends to advance knowledge in the technology management field, most importantly in the study of organizations that develop technologies inhouse and wish to enhance their technology transfer performance while maintaining adherence between R&D activities and overall business strategies. The objective was to build a multi-criteria decision-making model capable of producing a technology transfer score, which can be used by practitioners in order to assess and later improve their organizations' technology transfer capabilities-ultimately aiming to improve technology development as a whole. The model was applied to a major power utility organization in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The introduction brings initial and basic information on the topic, along with the problem statement-this chapter is aimed at situating the reader on the boundaries of the topic while highlighting its importance within the technology management field of study. The second chapter is the literature review. It brings general and specific information on technology transfer, as well as its complexities, gaps, relationship with other fields and the characteristics of this topic within the energy realm. It also tries to shed a light on how the alignment between R&D and business strategy is perceived by the literature, discussing some of the methods used and its shortcomings. Additionally, the literature review brings an analysis that builds the argument in favor of a continuous technology transfer process, and tries to show how it would be helpful in vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Scoring Model to Evaluate Offshore Oil Projects: Case of Eni and Mellitah Oil & Gas

“…However, other structures can be applied under four-level model that will include Mission, Perspectives, Criteria, and Alternatives as it's showing in Figure 18. Nevertheless, HDM has been used in a variety of cases and for several purposes, especially in technology management, to evaluate and understand which technology alternative is the best option in a particular setting, given the criteria established to evaluate the alternatives [101]. Moreover, HDM has been applied in several different settings and fields, proving that it is, indeed, an effective method.…”

“…There are several ways to determine the value of a metric. These include standard gamble, constant-sum method, and graphically representing the relative value of the metric [101]. Calculating the importance of each factor through the perspectives with respect to the mission can be done using the following equation:…”

“…In order to implement sensitivity analysis multiple scenarios can be used to test how much the ranking would be altered in a particular setting. According to Chen and Kocaoglu conducting sensitivity analysis in multiple scenarios will calculate the tolerance of the model to changes [101]. This approach has been implemented in several dissertations [98][105] [117] [121].…”

Development of a Maturity Model for Software Quality Assurance Practices

“…Cjk is the 'Relative importance of Criterion (jth) for Perspective (kth) (k), j = 1…j and k = 1…k', Djk is the 'Desirability value (Maturity Assessment Value) of Criterion (jth) for Perspective (kth)' [39,[45][46][47][48].…”

“…. k', D jk is the 'Desirability value (Maturity Assessment Value) of Criterion (jth) for Perspective (kth)' [39,[45][46][47][48].…”