Advanced technology innovation mapping tool to support technology commercialization

This work outlines an Innovation Gap in technology commercialization and presents a novel tool, the Advanced Technology Innovation Mapping (ATIM) tool to address this gap. The tool aims to support technology commercialization in early stages of & prior to the New Product Development Process. The dissertation includes a detailed rationale, description, history, similar and originating methods for this tool based on Value Engineering and Function Maps for Design. This work also demonstrates on several example studies the use of the tool and evaluates via an exploratory study the usefulness of the tool. Research tests the tool in educational and training programs at the University of Texas at Austin and finds that the tool improves user understating of majority of important factors for technology commercialization (customer, technology, development activities). User feedback supports these conclusions. In the future the tool could be further expanded, more standardized and improved. Additionally, the work proposes further ways to study the tool in different settings and with groups of different sizes beyond this early exploratory study.