2018 STIM Programme
The Strategic Technology & Innovation Management (STIM) Consortium is a practice-oriented research and networking collaboration between industrial member companies and the Centre for Technology Management.
STIM Brochure to download
Members of the Consortium benefit from:
Access to a network of firms from a range of industry sectors to share experience through a regular series of meetings and engagement in individual research projects.
The opportunity to influence the direction of research and development, with the associated early benefits gained through participation in case studies and application pilots.
Transfer and application of methods developed, enabled by guidance notes and training packages.
A summary of the 2013 - 2017 programmes and research portfolios can be found below:
2013 programme
2014 programme
2015 programme
2016 programme
2017 programme
Research project portfolio
Research themes
• Digital transformation: Projects #1, 4, 18, 19
• Portfolios, project selection & IP: Projects #2, 3, 8, 11
• Value and evaluation: Projects #5, 7, 9, 13, 14
• Technology strategy, intelligence and business models: Projects #10, 16, 17
• Innovation and design: Projects #6, 12, 15, 20
1. Mapping digital transformation opportunities
This research aims to leverage public data to capture digital transformation efforts by companies within an industry using machine learning, in order to provide business professionals with a single page view of digital opportunities that are saturated, must haves, and less exploited opportunities to set their own digital strategy.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Ahmed Al-Ali
2. Strategic decision making and selection criteria for technology development process
In this research project, we seek to identify and understand which selection decision making criteria are used to evaluate technology projects, and to identify trends, and motives to be taken into consideration when evaluating technology projects along the technology development stage gate process for different industries.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Leo Aristodemou
3. Intellectual property analytics for strategic decision making in the technology development process
While IP data is abundantly available and tools have been developed to run the analytics, many firms still struggle fully use this rich source of technical information to complement decision making processes. The aim of this research is to complement technology development stage gate strategic decision making with IP analytics.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Leo Aristodemou
4. Wearable technologies as smart learning enablers to bridge the skill gap
This project explores how wearable technologies can be used to teach new skills. In collaboration with STIM companies, we want to identify a specific industrial application, select suitable wearable technologies, and then experimentally test if we can use wearable technologies to improve human work.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr Thomas Bohné
5. Assessing technology potential by mapping value – a configurable toolkit
This project pilots a workshop approach within companies wishing to assess a new technology opportunity, technology application or technology-enhanced offering. The configurable toolset prompts idea generation around sustainable value in conjunction with methods to map technology benefits and exploitation routes. This delivers wider value opportunities for stakeholders seeking technology commercialisation.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Clare Farrukh
6. Speed of innovation / innovation velocity
This project aims to develop more understanding of the concept of ‘innovation velocity’ in order to assess how quickly an emerging technology could be implemented and commercialised. A wide range of literature and past work will be explored within a broad technology/innovation readiness level perspective.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Clare Farrukh
7. Higher value route toward innovation project goals: internal vs external resources
This project aims to develop a process to support companies in the identification of the highest value route to achieve their innovation project goals: would it be more effective to pursue a specific innovation project objective with internal or external resources? When and how an approach should be preferred over the other one?
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr Serena Flammini
8. Developing project portfolio management maturity model
Technology intensive firms often face a challenge of ineffective innovation project portfolio management. Drawing upon a vast literature on portfolio management in a structured way, this project aims to identify critical success factors and tools for portfolio management or portfolio decision-making.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Nitish Gupta
9. Value-driven innovations in smart industrial services
This project aims at creating and testing a value-driven approach to innovate smart industrial services. It will investigate the applicability opportunities and the functionality delivered by different technologies for value creation through industrial services. A state-of-art revision, complemented with interactions with STIM companies though workshops, will inform this work.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr Maria Holgado
10. Business-aligned technology strategy (a modular approach)
This project focuses on testing a modular and agile approach to technology strategy. The approach is based on a Scalable Toolkit Platform concept, which allows for customisation (to directly address the organisation’s most pressing technology strategy issues) and provides the scalability necessary for alignment of business- and technology-level analyses.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Imoh Ilevbare
11. Visualising portfolios
Portfolio perspectives are fundamental for managers. Generally, the execution of such visuals is relatively poor. Taking a pragmatic stance that attempts to balance the provision of data with conveying insights for users, this research project will continue the process of developing visual representations for depicting different types and aspects of portfolios.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Clive Kerr
12. Measuring design investment in firm and grasping the opportunities from the booming global middle-class consumption market
By 2030, the global middle-class consumption could be $29 trillion more than in 2015, with the overwhelming majority of new entrants living in Asia. Firms with specific focus on the management of design assets and the understanding of consumer experience will succeed in the market. In this research project, workshops based on two frameworks will be conducted to help firms to produce products that better fit with the consumer experience in Asia.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Bohao Li
13. Creating and capturing value through sustainability for 3D printing companies
This research aims to investigate the disruptive effects of 3D printing on industrial systems and how 3D printing companies can create and capture value through sustainable business models. A framework is proposed to help companies identify uncaptured value such as waste streams in the printing process, under-utilised resources, reusable parts and recyclable materials and therefore uncover sustainable value opportunities.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Wen Liu
14. Visualising value
The term value has many uses. Communicating that value of technology is therefore difficult to achieve. Visualisation is a tool that has been used to assist companies communicating ideas that are complex. This project investigates visualisation and how it may be of use in communicating value.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr Val Lynch
15. Agile: an examination of the method in literature and practice
Agile, Lean, Scrum are among the terms used to describe project management processes adopted by companies as they strive for improved productivity, certainty and quality in delivery. This project will investigate different applications of Agile approaches through study of both literature and practice.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Rick Mitchell
Val Lynch
16. The development of business models to anticipate disruption
Researchers indicate that when the advent of a new technology causes disruption, it is because firms might not have properly reacted and assimilated the signals of change. This project aims to understand whether there are patterns in the way managers react to the need for a new business models in the light of a looming technological radical advance.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr Letizia Mortara
17. Development of a maturity model for technology intelligence
This project aims to develop a maturity model to measure the effectiveness of technology intelligence. The maturity model will help an organization to understand the current level of competence and a guideline to improve organizational capabilities for performing technology intelligence (TI).
Download: Project summary
Contact: Heeyong Noh
18. Digitalisation of STM toolkits
Strategic Technology Management (STM) is key to sustainable competitive advantage. Organisations need to achieve effective STM in an efficient manner. This exploratory project will investigate the potential for digitalisation to support STM activities, with the aim of understanding where digitalisation may provide benefit, and what trade-offs need consideration.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr Michèle Routley
19. Creating and capturing value from data
Data is one of the most valuable resources in companies. This project aims to investigate how manufacturing firms can create and capture value from data. The concept ‘value uncaptured’ from previous research will be applied to the context of digitalisation, and a tool will be developed to help firms identify value opportunities from product life cycle data.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr Miying Yang
20. System design characterisation
This project is focused on further testing a systematic workshop-based process that clarifies the design specifications of new products, services and product-service systems at the early stages of their development. It helps to identify potential design complexities and thus enables early simplification, and ultimately, facilitates effort- and cost-savings in NPD.
Download: Project summary
Contact: Dr MH Yip
