1. Dual Ladder, Managment of Technological Innovation, KV Patri 1 Dual Ladder: A Story “I work for a large aerospace company in the USA.Several years ago the company recognized that they were starting to lose talented Engineers. There were several reasons but one was that once you hit the top as an engineer there was no place to go except into management, some went that route, some left the company, and some stayed.

2. Dual Ladder, Managment of Technological Innovation, KV Patri 2 Now there is a program that an engineer or any technical person now can chose between management and the higher technical ranks. It is quite an evaluation that you must go through, first you must meet certain minimum levels, then you have to fill out a 12 page document about your traits (there are 9 areas Technical Knowledge and Judgement, Consequences of Technical Actions and Decisions, Creativity and Innovation, Technical Management and Planning Capability, Research and

3. Dual Ladder, Managment of Technological Innovation, KV Patri 3 Project Capability, Capability as a Teacher/Mentor, Technical Leadership, Advisory and Consulting Capability, and Communications Ability), then you go through a review board. The review board scores your profile document and interviews you and then recommends your promotion or not. You can go through the process as many times as you want..

4. Dual Ladder, Managment of Technological Innovation, KV Patri 4 The levels are Associate Technical Fellow (ATF) equal to a 1st/2nd level manager, then Technical Fellow (TF) equal to a 3rd/4th level manager, and lastly Senior Technical Fellow (STF) equal to an executive. The rewards go up with each level and you must start at the ATF and work your way up and you must go through each step of the process over again. Some of the rewards are stocks, office space, office assistant, parking pass, company pays for associations that you join, and at the higher levels you get a lap top and a discretionary fund to pursue your own studies.

5. Dual Ladder, Managment of Technological Innovation, KV Patri 5 Additionally, your name, skills, talents get put into a database and when a special project needs special talents they can do a search and request you to work on the special project. Also the Technical Fellowship program works with upper management to set company direction and what type of further education and training should be offered to the rank and file. So basically you are in a management position, you can have a group working for you but you do not give up your technical position and you usually don't have the administrative responsibilities that a true manager would have.

6. Dual Ladder, Managment of Technological Innovation, KV Patri 6 As you can see I am familiar with this process. It took me 9 months to get my ATF promotion at the beginning of this year on the first try. The program is set up so that only a small number of technical leaders are promoted. There is probably less than 2,000 people at this level out of a company employment of 200,000.” (as communicated to KV Patri by e-mail)