More than a decade ago, the Wharton School responded to this need by establishing a management research program to study how firms can compete, survive and succeed in industries being created or transformed by technological innovation.

Starting-Points. The goals of the Mack Center are to:

• Provide research-based insight and guidance to firms competing in emerging technologies

• Identify (and where necessary, develop) new best practices and competitive strategies, to replace traditional practices that no longer apply to emerging technology-based industries

• Offer the Wharton School as a respected neutral venue for open discussion of critical issues and problems in emerging technologies

• Report the results to corporate and academic communities

• Include the results in classroom curricula, to be shared with faculty and students in undergraduate, graduate and executive management education

• Emerging technologies represent a "different game" that doesn't fit the culture and business approaches of most established firms.

• Many traditional management principles and methods do not address the high risks and uncertainties that characterize emerging technologies. Better practices and strategies are needed.

• General and specific insights come from studying patterns of success and failure across a wide variety of emerging technology-based industries.

• The best performing companies are those that are willing to abandon old technologies and embrace new ones.

• Early stage success does not assure eventual success in development and commercialization of emerging technologies.

Insight-Building Activities. The Mack Center designs and sponsors workshops and conferences, a colloquium for academic researchers, joint initiatives with other research centers and institutions, and speaker series. All research is directed by senior Wharton faculty - more than 25 faculty researchers are currently affiliated. The program also sponsors projects by Ph.D. students and advanced field studies conducted by teams of Wharton MBA's. 

Industry Partners.  This research center/learning network owes its existence to the contributions of our industry and academic partners, research centers and institutions that have collaborated with us over the years, and of course our faculty researchers and Core Group.

Workshops for Academic Researchers. Faculty researchers participate in workshops where leading researchers in the field of technological innovation discuss research topics, projects and approaches. Speakers have included distinguished colleagues from Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and other leading business schools, as well as Wharton. 

Joint Research Initiatives and Collaborative Projects. The Mack Center has collaborated with many of the 24 research centers at Wharton, to marshal the best expertise and capitalize on our collective resources, knowledge and contacts. The Center has also collaborated with the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the Marketing Science Institute, the Institute for Human Gene Therapy, the Biomedical Research and Education Foundation (BREF), Decision Strategies International, and other organizations. 

Communicating Results. The results of our research are communicated on our website, through working papers, books and articles; in printed conference reports that summarize key findings of major events; and in the Wharton curriculum.

Books and Reports. Books that have resulted from this research include our seminal book, "Wharton On Managing Emerging Technologies" which describes the critical issues that managers need to consider in this field; and "Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company."   Numerous articles based on Mack Center research have appeared in leading business journals including the Harvard Business Review, Journal of the American Management Academy, and Long Range Planning.

Mack Center Milestones

Following are just a few milestones in the development of the Mack Center, from the most recent to most "historical".

May 1995: The Wharton School established the Emerging Technologies Management Research Program to address the need for new best practices, strategies and competencies in the field of emerging technologies...under the supervision of a Core Team of senior Wharton faculty and staff representing several academic disciplines.

2001: The program was brought under the newly created William & Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation, with a broad mandate to continue and expand our research and to communicate our insights to firms around the world, and to help prepare tomorrow's future business and technology leaders being educated at Wharton.

2002: We launched the BioSciences Crossroads Initiative, to apply the insights gained from studying innovation across many industries, to a specific set of technologies: the life sciences.  The goal of the BioSciences initiative is to identify and monitor the factors that will influence commercialization of emerging life science technologies.  These technologies include genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, stem cells, therapeutic cloning, etc. 

2006: The Mack Center published a 130 page report entitled, "The Future of BioSciences: Four Scenarios for 2020 and Their Implications for Human Healthcare," co-edited by Paul J.H. Schoemaker and Michael S. Tomczyk.

2007: We hosted industry partner conferences on Intelligence Gathering and Sensemaking and Technology-Enabled Business Transformation. We also co-hosted a Symposium on the Social Studies of Nanotechnology(in collaboration with the Chemical Heritage Foundation). We also hosted twobioscience events: a workshop on The Future of Biomedical Devices in collaboration with the Biomedical Research and Education Foundation (BREF) and Decision Strategies International (DSI); and a Future of BioSciences Update where experts in many fields were invited to provide input to a monitoring process that will help us track emerging life science technologies and the critical factors that will influence commercialization.

2008: In Feb. 2008 the Mack Center hosted the 10th annual Emerging Technologies Update Day on the theme, "The Future of Connectivity."

On June 6 Profs. George Day and Paul Schoemaker hosted a Wharton Impact Conference entitled: "Winners and Losers in Green Technologies" with a followup event in October on "Green Technologies and the Future of the U.S. Energy Grid."  In November Prof. Day and David Reibstein hosted a Wharton Impact Conference entitled "Measuring and Managing Innovation." 

Ntoe: Printed conference reports for the two impact conferences are available now to our industry partner firms.

2009: The 11th annual Emerging Technologies Update Day was held on Friday, Feb. 6 - focusing on the theme: "The Future of Biomedicine." 

The 9th Annual Wharton Technology Conference (for academic researchers) was co-sponsored by the Mack Center with the Management Department, on April 24-25.  This event featured research in progress by management research faculty from leading business schools.

On June 5, Prof. Harbir Singh hosted a Wharton Impact Conference entitled, "Innovation Networks: New Insights, Open Questions and Management Fashions"  (note: the conference report will be available to our industry partner firms in August 2009).

Fall 2009: This Fall (2009) - on Friday, November 20 - the Mack Center will present an industry partner conference entitled: BORDERLESS INNOVATION: Management Practices, Promises and Pitfalls.  Speakers and agenda items will be posted as they become available.

2010:  Early in 2010 the Mack Center will co-sponsor a major event on "Reinventing the Pharmaceutical Business Model" - organized and hosted by the Biomedical Research and Education Foundation (BREF).

The Emerging Technologies Update Day in 2010 will focus on the theme: "The Future of Computing."  This event will be held in Feb. or March - date to be announced.  Michael Tomczyk will host with Scott Snyder as this year's co-organizer.

The Wharton Technology Conference for academic researchers, will be held in April 2009.  This event showcases the "next generation" of management researchers studying technological innovation and related issues of importance to companies, agencies and industries.

As waves of innovation sweep through many industries, we look forward to surfing the crest of these waves, providing research based insights to help decision makers keep their balance and move forward with clarity, flexibility and confidence.