Management of emerging technologies: Experiences and lessons learned at US West

Successful management of emerging technologies is critical to the survival of business organizations today. However, given the risky and often unproven nature of these technologies, considerable confusion exists on how to manage their implementation. This paper recounts the experiences of US West Communications with their intranet project, and uses it to understand problems faced in implementing emerging technologies and ways of overcoming such problems. By providing a longitudinal view of the company's intranet experience over a period of 3 years, it identifies key organizational factors that facilitated or impeded acceptance of this emerging technology. Lessons learned at US West are used to recommend guidelines that can help practitioners implement emerging technologies in their organizations more effectively. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.