Centre for Technology Management

Technology Re-use: developing a practical approach to making the most of your technological assets

F Hunt, C Farrukh & R Phaal

University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering

Abstract

Re-use is the application of existing business assets in a new situation. Potentially re-usable assets include technology of all forms: equipment, capabilities, modules, designs, processes, suppliers and teams,… etc. Effective re-use promotes the creation of new assets through the integration and management of existing assets, hence saving resource overall and allowing scarce resources to be diverted to more innovative or valuable tasks. Companies can focus their re-use efforts by adopting one of two broad strategies. They can either concentrate on locating technological assets to re-use, or on building their assets so they are re-usable in the future. A key part of either process is establishing a framework in which properties of assets can be described. This is clearly easier for assets with explicit properties, however most technological assets have both tacit and explicit elements. This paper builds on a process framework for re-use, consisting of creation, integration and management elements, by describing the development of practical re-use support guidelines using industrial cases.