Evaluating potential investments in new technologies: Balancing assessments of potential benefits with assessments of potential disbenefits, reliability and utilization

In recent years, the assessment of intangible benefits has become an explicit requirement of investment evaluation techniques. By contrast, assessments of three factors which can prevent the realization of any benefits have not become an explicit requirement. Those three factors are disbenefits, reliability and utilization. The importance of these factors may sometimes be identified prior to investment evaluation when exploratory methods such as contingency planning are used. However, evidence presented in this paper suggests that these three factors are often overlooked. Further, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that investment performance often suffers as a result. Accordingly, it is argued that investment evaluations need to be balanced by making assessments of disbenefits, reliability and utilization an explicit requirement. This argument is supported by reporting of experiences from action research. These experiences indicate that investment evaluations can be balanced by making assessments of disbenefits, reliability and utilization an explicit requirement.