Decision-making for Technology Executives

This text is designed to help readers break away from the constraints of the technologist’s “analytical/scientific” viewpoint and employ broader organizational and personal perspectives that strengthen their decision-making ability and leadership skills. The text shows the reader how to utilize this multiple perspective approach to problem-solving and systems development in real-world, outside the laboratory, situtations. Readers learn how this three-dimensional approach has been applied successfully to a wide spectrum of complex systems tasks, from system forecasting to technology assessment, from industrial catastrophes to facility sitting decisions, from corporate strategy to acquisition. Through case studies, the book explores improving technology and risk assessment, forecasting, and crisis management. It also looks at complex sociotechnical systems, technological risk management and planning.

Author Biography

Harold A. Linstone is University Professor Emeritus of Systems Science at Portland State University and editor-in-chief of Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Author and co-author of several other books in the field, he has 20 years of industrial experience at Hughes Aircraft Company and Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Dr. Linstone has also served as visiting Scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and Visiting Professor at the Universitites of Rome, Wasington, and Kiel. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Southern California.