therefore, raises several conceptual, methodological and operational issues. Two of them are general, while further two are specific to the so-called grand challenges:
These present various methodological aspects of FTA APPROACHES as well as some advances needed in practice to assist FTA practitioners
four conceptual, methodological and operational issues are identified and discussed. The second part highlights the main ideas of the eight papers published in this special issue.
and outputs and be supported by appropriate combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods, which are fit for purpose and context,
and rigour in methods. Hence, devising an FTA project requires careful planning, and well-reasoned decisions on its main features/elements:
its geographical scope, time horizon, themes, methods, participants, budget, and other resources, target audience, communication strategy, etc.
but not a uniform and proven FTA methodology, to be followed by all FTA projects. All FTA projects are given unique
the number, experience, analytical and methodological skills and value system of their participants; the level of socioeconomic development of the country (ies), region (s), sector (s) or city (ies) in which they are conducted;
In other words, it would be a mistake to search for a fixed set of methods in the sense of one size fits all (or best practice.
we don't know to a sufficient extent what combination of methods/tools works best in a particular context.
(i) the perceived policy needs/opportunities to be tackled by FTA,(ii) the chosen FTA APPROACH and its methods and (iii) the policy governance sub-system,
the higher/more favourable impacts of FLAS can be expected (assuming an appropriate quality and methodological rigour of conducting FTA) 6. Against this backdrop,
the guest editors of this special issue would stress that one needs to be careful before proposing the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods as the way forward,
The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is feasible when it is not too costly in terms of time,
Excessive use of quantitative methods is likely to severely constrain participation. Practical experience clearly shows that the potential participants of an FTA exercise are simply too busy to attend training courses just for the sake of being sophisticated familiar with FTA METHODS.
an important part of the FTA toolkit, namely foresight, would be eclipsed in case the use of advanced quantitative methods is declared'always necessary,
In sum, the relevance and appropriateness of FTA METHODS to tackle the perceived needs should have a much higher weight when designing an FTA project than the‘elegance'of methods.
which these methods are applied). Also, when evaluating an FTA project, costs and benefits of certain methods (their‘fit'to the context), on the one hand,
and their actual conduct (methodological rigour, efficiency, transparency,‘fairness',representation, etc.),on the other, should be assessed separately.
In other words, the‘quality'of an FTA project is a complex issue, and it cannot be reduced to the question of its level of methodological sophistication.
To put it in a somewhat simplified way, it is much more important to apply relevant methods in a rigorous manner than assemble a set of highly sophisticated methods,
risking that this ambition would compromise rigour, due to lack of skills, miss some major factors that cannot be identified by these techniques,
and qualitative methods portraying it as the only‘accepted 'or adequate approach would endanger diversity and competition of approaches.
Without that competition a major source of methodological innovation, a means of quality assurance, and for control of costs would be lost. 4. Understanding the complex and systemic nature of grand challenges The issues covered by the term‘grand challenges'naturally lend themselves to a global outlook,
In that sense dealing with grand challenges introduces new conceptual, methodological and operational challenges for FTA. Energy, climate change, natural resources, food, water,
and social innovations to achieve a structural transformation. 6. Papers in this special issue The papers in this special issue of TFSC discuss various methodological aspects of FTA APPROACHES as well as some advances needed in practice to assist us in comprehending transformations.
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 379 385 In more detail, Haegeman et al. 4 depart from the methodological debate that has been a relevant element of the International Seville Conference series on Future-oriented technology analysis (FTA
and methods can better support policy-makers since societal challenges and complex interrelated systems require a more holistic and systemic understanding of situations.
a) gradual integration in contexts where convergence of QL and QT methods seems promising, (b) use of new disciplines entering FTA to exchange practices and increase synergies,(c) support of mutual understanding by clarifying strengths and weaknesses of QL and QT methods,(d) sharing
successful cases and good practices to build trust,(e) creation of technological and methodological interfaces between QL and QT approaches,(f) setting up of multidisciplinary teams from the very beginning of an exercise
,(g) developing forms of dialogue and communication between the two communities, and (h) fostering collaboration at the earliest possible stage,
Finally, a truly innovative research effort is required to devise methodological and conceptual frameworks, approaches and tools that intrinsically (ex-ante) integrate qualitative and quantitative thinking,
there is a major limitation of this method to assess a given technology. It is an oftenobseerve fact that technologies change their course because of (unpredictable) changes in the broader socioeconomic context (fluctuations in demand
Two papers from the same school Hamarat et al. 11 and Kwakkel and Pruit 12 address the need for novel methods and techniques to support adaptive policy-making.
and Analysis (EMA) is a methodology for analysing dynamic and complex systems and supporting long-term decision-making under uncertainty through computational experiments.
Hence, the implication for future emerging technologies is that the methodology and practice of FTA should consider the governance dimension from the beginning by acknowledging that monitoring
From a methodological point of view, the combination of these four features, rather than their individual use, has not been described before
while there is as yet no clear methodological answer to the identification issue there has been some institutionalised responses and new organisational models of FTA,
7 L. Gao, A l. Porter, J. Wang, S. Fang, X. Zhang, T. Ma, W. Wang, L. Huang, Technology life cycle analysis method
Received 14 may 2011 Received in revised form 9 july 2012 Accepted 3 september 2012 Available online 8 november 2012 The FTA COMMUNITY relies on a set of disciplines and methods,
and shape the future from different methodological perspectives. Whilst the community has grown since the first edition of the International Seville Conference on Future-oriented technology analysis (FTA), there is still little dialogue
and those applying qualitative methods. The FTA events have, since the beginning, provided an avenue to debate methodological aspects
and this paper summarises and furthers the discussion developed during the 2011 edition, building on the debates at the conference and between members of the conference Scientific Committee, to which the authors of this paper belong.
In particular this paper describes the methodological state of the field through a tripartite taxonomy of increasing levels of qualitative and quantitative integration.
and misconceptions within the FTA COMMUNITY are amongst the factors undermining further methodological integration. The paper concludes by suggesting some steps
Qualitative Quantitative Barriers Combination Integration FTA Epistemological divide 1. Introduction The methodological debate has been a relevant element of the International Seville Conference series on Future-oriented technology analysis (FTA
For the 2011 edition, the Scientific Committee decided to focus specifically on the combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
and a methodology as quantitative when applying statistical/mathematical tools. In contrast, we define data as qualitative
and sounds) and a methodology as qualitative when not relying on statistical/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 386 397 The views expressed are purely those of the authors
A participatory method, regardless of the qualitative or quantitative data it uses, is one in which the outcome requires the active interaction of different types of stakeholders.
1 foresight practitioners have concentrated traditionally on participatory methods based on qualitative data, on the grounds that quantitative extrapolation from past data is not sufficient to address the uncertainties of the future
considering qualitative and participatory approaches as a second best option, to which we are compelled somehow to refer until adequate quantitative methods arise.
in the social sciences the mixing-methods debate has advanced considerably 2 6 and is illustrated well by the existence of dedicated publication outlets such as the Journal of Mixed Methods.
Nevertheless in the discussions at the 2011 FTA Conference some trends were identified suggesting that methodological combination may potentially become more common amongst FTA scholars and practitioners.
Just to mention a few key developments: the fast progress of the internet offers new opportunities for participatory projects, of both quantitative2 and qualitative nature;
at the same time, the improved availability of S&t and innovation indicators and the advances in quantitative methods provide more input for quantitative analysis;
and methods can only but better support policy-makers in their job. These tendencies raise important questions on the value and scope of combining methods,
as well as on the reasons why, such combination, within the FTA COMMUNITY, seems to proceed at a lower rate than in other fields.
Building on this, Section 3 proposes a taxonomy of methodological combinations at different levels of integration
or deeper methodological integration and Section 5 discusses whether and how some of them could/should be eased.
and quantitative approaches in FTA In social sciences alternative methods may encourage or allow expression of different facets of knowledge or experience 2,
or even tap different domains of knowing 8. A detailed discussion on the reasons for applying a combination of methods in social sciences goes beyond the scope of this paper,
However, one must be aware that the relevance of quantitative methods may lie more in their systematic process of comparing policy alternatives under different scenarios,
the 2011 FTA Scientific Committee argued that the exclusive use of qualitative methods can lead to partial views on possible futures,
and Cahill 1 for further details on the origin and definition of the acronym FTA. 2 Quantitative participatory methods could for instance relate to the online sharing of big amounts of data,
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 386 397 qualitative) as an imaginative projection of current knowledge in which formal methods and techniques play a subsidiary role (p. 753.
and what is crucial is to understand the opportunities that different methodologies can offer. In order to better understand those opportunities,
we look in the next section at some current FTA practices. 3. A taxonomy of methodological combinations as a basis for identifying current FTA practices
Although there have been many efforts on classification of methods and on the possible combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches 22 25 the literature provides little evidence on systematic comparison
and Porter 27 argue that this absence of stocktaking analysis is mirrored also in the lack of guidance on how to evaluate FTA projects that combine different methodologies.
Yet, evaluation on methods is important in order to identify‘good practices 'and to contribute to the robustness of FTA, in terms of process, content, and impacts.
Since its first edition the International Seville Conference on Future-oriented technology analysis devoted part of its attention to the development of new tools and methods, novel use of existing methods and (new) disciplines applied by FTA.
Despite the lack of systematic investigation, there are clear signs of interest from the FTA COMMUNITY in combining methods.
An interesting one is to group FTA EXERCISES based on the level of integration of qualitative and quantitative methods.
We therefore propose a taxonomy of methodological combinations at three different levels of interaction and use this as a basis for looking at current practices in combining qualitative and quantitative FTA APPROACHES. 3. 1. Independent (parallel
Typically, when different methods/tools are applied within the same project, links consist mainly of using the results of one part as an input into another part.
and most projects in this category tend to have a rather straightforward methodological design. A drawback of this type of combination is that,
Quantitative methods can also be used to process qualitative judgments for scenario design 30,31. Valette 32 points at opportunities for foresight exercises that combine expert-based contrasted socioeconomic and policy scenarios (qualitative part) and a mathematical quantification of the impacts of the alternative scenarios (quantitative part)( p. 239.
The mapping identified only three quantitative methods (bibliometrics, modelling and simulation, trend extrapolation), highlighting that they were combined with literature review, scenarios and expert panels.
Remarkably, evidence stemming from the forecasting communities on cases combining qualitative and quantitative methods is limited rather,
suggesting that the need for combining methods is less felt than in the foresight communities, possibly because foresight is more recent and still wants to prove its usefulness. 388 K. Haegeman et al./
giving experts an opportunity to focus on particular technology areas using relevant qualitative methods. Thorleuchter et al. 35 demonstrate that patent-based quantitative approaches to cross-impact analysis for the identification of relationships between technologies can be used instead of,
or in combination with, traditional qualitative methods based on literature reviews. Identification of trends and wildcards: Quantitative methods can also be used to identify outliers (outstanding observations) which could be revised further by experts as potential wild cards.
Visualisation of quantitative data 36 can be a useful way of bringing these data to a workshop or another qualitative process.
Comparison of outcomes of qualitative and quantitative approaches Participants at the 2011 International Seville Conference on FTA raised the potential of the use of qualitative and quantitative methods for identifying
of which were compared to the findings of a quantitative calculation of performance indicators. 3. 2. Use of technical and methodological interfaces that facilitate interaction A second type of exercise uses intermediaries as interfaces between the two approaches.
and methods of social scanning and prediction markets could be used to improve professional forecasting and foresight in an era of complex phenomena and disruptive events with high level of uncertainties.
both for better explaining (quantitative and qualitative) methodologies adopted and for results obtained. A method that makes use of visualisation techniques is the application of strategic design in addressing societal challenges.
It explores and visualises‘the architecture of problems 'and can offer a wider framework in which quantitative
and strategic design could offer opportunities for more integrated use of methodologies. 7 3. 3. Full integration of qualitative and quantitative FTA A third type of exercise goes beyond the use of interfaces,
This is expected to generate dynamic cross-methodological learning processes as at each phase or iteration of the exercise ideas flow between different domains of knowledge.
but more generally also in social science where most reports of mixed methods studies report either parallel
the authors believe that such deep integration of methods can potentially enhance both the analytical depth and the policy impact of fta activities.
It also raises the question as to why simpler forms of methodological combination are developed relatively well
This section elaborates on these aspects by discussing some of the barriers that may hamper a deeper integration of quantitative and qualitative FTA METHODS. 4. 1. Barriers stemming from an epistemological divide in social sciences The main barrier to a full methodological integration is epistemological
(which is confined not to the FTA COMMUNITY) on the type of knowledge that qualitative and quantitative methodologies can produce and on the value of combining them 45 49.
Despite these and other longstanding attempts 58 61 for methodological combinations, the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is still not the norm,
even in projects combining quantitative and qualitative methods, data 7 At first sight, this method is more suitable for FTA for businesses.
However, it has been applied by the Finnish innovation Fund to develop holistic understanding of a challenge with issues related to ageing, education,
with some kind of bridging mechanism to connect the respective outcomes. 4. 2. Cultural differences in FTA A layer of complexity is added to this methodological debate in the case of FTA,
In Section 2 we pointed to the need to understand the opportunities that different methodologies can offer in collecting knowledge about possible futures 22.
The shortage of examples of full methodological integration (as shown in Section 3 may also reflect deeply ingrained cultural differences hindering good communication between different epistemological communities.
Efforts to address this cultural clash have focused often on the adaptation of the methods and tools commonly used by the two communities,
Misconceptions within the FTA COMMUNITY In order to better understand the pros and cons of different methodologies, three implicit misconceptions within the FTA COMMUNITY need to be addressed.
In the absence of market values for such goods and services, valuation practices commonly recur to Contingent Valuation Methods (CVM),
as participatory methods can be (and in fact are adopted in the framework of quantitative analyses as well.
Acknowledging these aspects is essential to identify a common ground for methodological integration. 4. 4. Lack of skills
short-term/long-term As the examples provided in Sections 2 and 3 suggest that methodological integration can be promising and beneficial to the field,
with longer-term priorities for research and policy that address more fundamental barriers to methodological integration. 5. 1. Overcoming short-term barriers One way to extend the application of quantitative methods in FTA
Addressing practical incompatibilities between both approaches may also gradually change preferences of FTA practitioners for specific methods in favour of integrated approaches.
Below we sketch a possible agenda to overcome the main short-term barriers regarding methods selection and misconceptions. 5. 1. 1. Methods selection The selection of methods in FTA remains largely a context-driven issue,
when different types of methods are applied where it is important to combine or integrate both approaches
making use of complementary and/or contradictory features of methods. Given the lack of identified good practices
one could consider developing a starter kit for combining different methodologies. In social 10 The lack of human capital skilled in both quantitative
and qualitative methods, could be traced potentially back to the education system, where students are confronted early with choices between different options (such as the divide between social and natural sciences),
'11 Interestingly, our reflection on the epistemology skills trust triangle is in line with Bryman 62 who focuses on the integration of qualitative and quantitative data and methods in social sciences.
Based on interviews with social scientists he identifies eight barriers to integration of qualitative and quantitative data and methods,
perceptions on the expectations of different audiences, methodological preferences of the (mixed methods) researcher, structure of the research project, different timelines for different method types, skill specialisms, the nature of the data, ontological differences,
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 386 397 sciences, Cameron 71 developed the Five Ps Framework, 13 which provides a mixed-methods starter kit,
It could be adapted to serve as an FTA starter kit for combining methods. In addition, a short-term research agenda could help addressing practical incompatibilities that hamper the combination of different methods.
A possible item on such research agenda could be screening specific sectors where quantitative FTA APPROACHES are represented traditionally stronger, in view of identifying good practices.
misuse of methods should be avoided and transparency increased. In particular, from the start of an FTA PROCESS, it is necessary to clarify the definition of terms used and the basic set of assumptions, on which the exercise (in its quantitative and qualitative components) rests.
and practitioners from different methodological traditions is crucial at least at three major stages of FTA PROCESSES:
and practitioners from different methodological traditions at each stage. 5. 2. Overcoming long-term barriers Overcoming barriers such as the lack of identified good practices,
Such stocktaking endeavour should compare FTA EXERCISES according to a set of variables (such as goals, methodologies, time horizon15) and provide both methodological and evaluation guidelines.
The experience of the European foresight Platform (www. foresight-platform. eu) could provide some relevant inputs towards this endeavour.
these methodological and evaluation guidelines should explicitly account for the wide range of context-dependent choices,
Ultimately, what matters is that methods and tools provide as far as possible a 13 The 5 P's Framework includes Paradigms, Pragmatism, Praxis,
Increasing trust between communities can also be pursued, from a strictly methodological perspective, by increasing the mutual understanding of the approaches applied.
and the development of frameworks that support the selection and implementation of an appropriate combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and tools in a given context, can enhance shared knowledge,
White 75 suggests that combining methods mainly needs mutual professional respect. Looking at collaboration in the wider context of collaborative governance,
These should aim at understanding the reasons behind differences in methodological preferences, and at reducing the barriers between quantitative and qualitative training.
within and beyond the FTA COMMUNITIES. 6. Conclusions and further steps Although systematic integration of quantitative and qualitative methods in FTA is not a standard practice so far,
evidence in this paper has shown practical examples of combinations of these types of methods. The different and highly heterogeneous contributions to the 2011 International Seville Conference on Future-oriented technology analysis in this area share a common bottom line:
In trying to push forward the field of FTA towards methodological integration, this paper has explored possible barriers hampering such development,
New research efforts are required to devise methodological and conceptual frameworks, approaches and tools that intrinsically (ex-ante) integrate qualitative and quantitative thinking,
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He has been publishing articles and reports on anticipatory and analytical research in support of European RTDI policy and on new methods and tools for FTA.
She has experience in quantitative and qualitative research methods and at the JRC-IPTS she is developing a specific interest in their combination and application in foresight exercises.
Technology life cycle analysis method based on patent documents Lidan Gao a b,, Alan L. Porter c, Jing Wang d, Shu Fang a, Xian Zhang a, Tingting Ma e, Wenping Wang e, Lu Huang e
and hope that would help decision makers estimate its future development trends. 2. Methodology The model that we build to calculate the TLC for an object technology includes the following steps:
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 398 407 We propose a normalisation method with two steps to pre-process the original data.
This method can be used not only in NBS but also in other technology fields, since data of the all indicators can be downloaded from most patent databases.
and obtain more data to validate the method. Second, we did not consider the technology type.
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