Ahh – we kinda came in before TRLs got off the ground … They came along a little late for us to sew them into statements that would be contractually binding.
That’s not to say we weren’t able to focus effort on segments that weren’t based around mature technology 🙂 You could say we were looking at maturity without measuring it with the distinct levels of the theory.
However, my heretical nature kicks in with initiatives like technology management because while it gets everyone looking at the developmental items, the Off-The-Shelf “it worked before, it’ll work again” item ends up being the proverbial Rusty Nail …
A good initiative to determine whether we have the tools to make what we’re looking at but not one to be taken in isolation …
PS iPodFM ! The mini FM transmitter is proven technology but falls down on integration due to interference from the outside world 🙂 Or the cassette devices that let you hook up CDWalkmans to car stereos … Proven technology but it fails when the car stereo gets confused and keeps trying to turn the tape over 🙂