Regulation of overlaps in technology development activities

The innovation design and process engineering, two inevitable interrelated stages in the development of a new technology, are captured in this paper as a non-antagonistic leader–follower target-pursuit system subject to uncertainty in market and technology changes. The innovation design team (leader) is driven by market needs, while the process engineering team (follower) then strives to attain suitable production means with a focus on technological availability and profitability. In face of uncertainty in market changes and technological advances, the proposed strategic regulation of overlaps model addresses relevant scheduling issues such as when to start, to overlap, and then to end the development activities. We obtain the optimal timing of the overlaps in these development activities. An algorithm is developed to calculate the optimal overlap schedule which is easy to be implemented for realistic applications.