Taking Technical Risks: How Innovators, Executives and Investors Manage High-Tech Risks.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Review

Taking Technical Risks: How Innovators, Executives and Investors Manage High-Tech Risks. By Lewis M. Branscomb and Philip E. Auerswald. The MIT Press, 210 pages. $35.95.

A core concept in this slim but provocative volume is the "valley of death -- the gap between demonstrating the soundness of a technical concept in a controlled setting and readying the product technology for the market." At this stage, the authors write, "purely technical risks are coupled with the market risks inherent in innovation."

Taking Technical Risks is a high-concept book that makes good use of complex charts and specific reference materials. Its tone is quite academic -- not surprising, since its authors are two academics from Harvard (Branscomb is emeritus). Consider this sentence near the end of one...