Multicriteria evaluation of technological competitiveness in diversification processes. An application to the automotive components industry

Considering technological competitiveness in diversification processes as the existence of key technologies that guarantee the current and future effective running of firms in terms of their technological and operational potential, this paper presents a multicriteria approach for its evaluation and provides an index for measuring the technological competitiveness of diversification processes. The application of this multicriteria approach, based on the analytic hierarchy process, in three real technological diversification processes allows (i) the validation of the hierarchical model (five levels and 25 attributes) and the index (73 indicators) proposed for evaluating the technological competitiveness; (ii) the use of this hierarchical model and index to confirm the suitability of the diversification process and to extract knowledge related to the technological and operational potential of the firm; and (iii) the exploitation of this knowledge in order to guarantee the long-term survival of automotive components industry's firms. The methodology finds the most relevant attributes in the automotive component sector (innovative capacity and activity, good functioning of the management and finance departments). Its practical application determines the firm's suitability for a diversification process, identifies the attributes that require some improvement, and the decision opportunities. After 5 years, the three companies that have been studied showed a behaviour aligned with the values and recommendations of the index developed to assess technological competitiveness. The main limitation lies in the difficulty of studying companies if they change or disappear in the future.