La valorizzazione del potenziale tecnologico secondo una prospettiva market oriented: c’e’ qualcosa di nuovo nella cassetta degli attrezzi del marketing high tech?

High tech marketing face a fundamental paradox: it must help managers to elaborate strategies apt to satisfy market needs, while at the same time it cannot use traditional research tools in order to interpret such needs and elaborate ideas for new products with the same efficacy demonstrated in mature and/or stable contexts, due to the intrinsic uncertainties that characterize high tech markets. In this paper we outline some features of non conventional marketing research tools (e.g. empathic design and lead users technique) applied by some leading firms in high tech markets, pinpointing advantages deriving from their application, as well as some drawbacks of implementation. We also outline the main features of emerging phenomena, related to the diffusion of virtual communities and networks of practice, as new organizational mechanisms through which the innovative firm can acquire and combine specific and complementary pieces of knowledge necessary for developing new applications for emerging technologies. Finally, we conclude by discussing some implications of these new approaches to reduce market uncertainties and illustrate some directions for future research.