Technology Validation is the Driving Heat of Excellent Innovation Process (Case Study of Tanzania)

The technology validation is expected to be a very important activity in the process of technology development and verification of the quality for the stakeholders expected to benefit from the technology. Tanzania is one of the least developed countries that has put a great effort in establishing the technology development centres. On the extensive visit made in a number of technology development centre related to mechanical engineering, it was observed that the technology validation process is partially undertaken and sometimes completely not understood and hence not fully practiced. The scope of validation process and the need for the same process is not clear. On the other side the design process starts at the need identification, need justification, need interpretation, development of technology design specification and technology/process validation. Certainty of the appropriate technology design development should be the result of comparative analysis of the expected technology development variables and the actual market performance of the technology. There has been a need of studying the deriving variables for technology validation thence mining these variables so that they are made as input to a development of a model for Engineering Design Validation Process. Structured interviews, questionnaires and observations in R& D organisation, staffs, validators and activities studies were used to collect data from sources identified. Literatures on engineering design, use of technology validation and various models for innovation were studied. At the later stage the model was developed and validated. The major finding of the validation process was the transformation of the technology design specification into the complete and thorough validation procedure, the understanding and the development of the design procedure was still a myth in least developed countries. It was noted that the development of technology for market acceptance or diffusion is more than the prototype development. The whole technology validation processes need be to considered for relevant technology development.