Functional technology foresight. A novel methodology to identify emerging technologies
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Functional technology foresight. A novel methodology to identify emerging technologies Riccardo Apreda 1 & Andrea Bonaccorsi 2 & Felice dell’Orletta 3 & Gualtiero Fantoni 1
Received: 15 August 2016 / Accepted: 21 October 2016 # The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract The speed and complexity of the technology evolution faced by modern societies need new approaches to the analysis and understanding of the world. Indeed, an exclusive focus on technological goals can miss to recognize all the stakeholders of a technology and address real user needs; moreover, on the one hand low signals are becoming more and more important in fast evolving markets, on the other hand the excess of hype, fashions, or vested interests sometimes deeply alter indicators. However, the so called Big Data promise to be a huge low cost set of valuable information, available and affordable to all (SMEs included). But, analyzing them is not trivial especially if we deal with academic papers and patents. To tackle these issues, the present paper proposes to apply a powerful methodological tool called Functional Analysis to the Technology Foresight process. Actually the rigorous study of the functions, that an artefact should perform to satisfy the user needs, provides a universal and thus unifying point of view, which is able to correlate the user perspective on the product with its technical features. Functional reasoning has been applied to (i) detect possible patterns of development, spotting missing elements and highlighting strengths as well as potential sources of failure; (ii) to enhance traditional bibliometric tools such as the analysis of S-curves and (iii), integrated with a natural language processing analysis toolchain, tailored for patent documents, to identify emerging technologies. The paper describes the functional approach to technology foresight activity, presents * Gualtiero Fantoni [email protected] 1
Erre Quadro srl, Pisa, Italy
2
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
3
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy
how to integrate it with text mining algorithms and experts’ domain knowledge, and finally discusses its benefits in the context of Technology Foresight also from an economic point of view, showing that oresight is affordable also for Small and Medium Enterprises. Keywords Technology . Foresight . Biomedical . Functional analysis . SMEs . Affordability
Introduction Technology Foresight has been used for decades as a tool for decision making in the context of government innovation policies or investment decisions of large companies. By its very nature, it used to be a long and expensive process, largely based on the contributions of senior experts. More recently, participatory Technology Foresight exercises have been undertaken in a variety of countries. While these processes rely somewhat less on the contribution of individual experts, nevertheless they require the mobilization of large resources in order to design and manage meetings,
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