Technology Strategic Decision Making (SDM): an overview of decision theories, processes and methods

Abstract

Technology Strategic Decision Making (SDM) requires a fair amount of information regarding the field in which the technology is to be selected for (Kalbande and Thampi, 2009) due to the nature of technological uncertainty (Grant, 2012). The literature argues that different methods can be applied to these SDM processes, with the most common being the qualitative scorecard approach (Cooper, 2007; Goffin and Mitchell, 2016; Mitchell et al., 2014, 2017). In addition, these SDM processes should have unique selection criteria, due to the risky and uncertain nature of early stage technology projects (Ajamian and Koen, 2002; Koen et al., 2002) and due to the different outcomes each decision gate leads to (Cooper, 2006). In this paper, we contribute to the growing literature on technology strategic decision making by producing a narrative literature review on strategic decision making processes, decision theory and strategic decision making methods.