TECHNOLOGY MAPPING ASSET IN HIGH TECH INDUSTRIES. THE CASE OF ALENIA SPAZIO COMPANY

The paper deals with some tools used to visualise and analyse a special class of knowledge assets: technologies. The paper draws upon ALenia PSazio experience inthis field. Alenia PSazio is the leading space company in Italy and plays an important role in a worldwide market led by USA companies. The company is active in all space industries segments including scientific satellite, telecom satellite and space infrastructure. The company is prime contractor in domestic satellites, some major European programs and it is mahor supplier of payload and equipment in the world commercial market. The product portfolio analysis, the conection to enabling technology platforms and selected strategic technology partnership compose a complete set of management tools constituting the company's technology governance. The model is also part of the complete technology governance process developed and improved in the last years in Finmeccanica corporate level through the action of the central technical office organization. Technologica maps are framed to value base, key and emergent technolog: straegic importance, codification, diffusion and benchmark. Technology platform is a conceputal tool used to visualise a cluster of technology capabilities and discrete technologies that exploits current competency of the whole organisation or supports the development of new competency; a technology platform has to underpin capabilities that cross more than one organisational unit or underpin products and/or services belonging to more than one organisational unit.