Economic and financial evaluation of innovation technology

The topic of economic and financial evaluation of technological innovation has recently received increasing attention. In particular, the problem related with the difficulty of using traditional Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) methods to evaluate technologies whose peculiar features are quality timeliness and flexibility raised great interest. In this paper, after a critical analysis of the motivations which urged some authors to reject DCF criteria, a conceptual approach is proposed to take into account in the economic-financial evaluation aspects of ‘strategic’ nature. Finally, a translation of the conceptual model into operative terms is presented, for the particular case of an investment in a flexible manufacturing system.