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and shaping structural and systemic changes, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 24:8, 729-734, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2012.715475 To link to this article:
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and systemic changes A series of conferences on future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) has been organised by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European commission's Joint research Centre over the past years.
These unique conferences have brought together practitioners from three different communities of foresight, forecasting and technology assessment.
vision-building and consensus-building for engineering major processes of transformation; shaping and defining research and innovation agendas (2011 FTA Conference Scientific Committee.
driven by the confluence of nanotechnology, biotechnology and materials science (Linstone 2011a, 2011b. It is these fundamental changes that give rise to the main challenges of today'sworld.
and would need to complement the technological perspective that has dominated traditionally FTA. 2 It is against the background of such transformative changes that this special issue looks at the fundamental possibilities
These invade both the qualitative and quantitative pieces of information that are joined to create outcomes for policy and management in all the STEEPV themes (Social, Technological, Economic, Ecology, Politics and Values and Norms.
This tendency is likely to increase as FTA becomes involved with technologies of great social and commercial complexity.
which studies the informal production and circulation of expectations in science and technology. He derives three generic lessons from the sociology of expectations
Ahlqvist, Halonen, Eerola, Kivisaari, Kohl, Koivisto, Myllyoja and Wessberg look at the role of research and technology organisations (RTOS),
How to forecast technologies that depend mainly on discontinuous advances? Guo, Ma, Porter and Huang propose an approach to address the highly uncertain dynamics of New & Emerging science &technologies (NESTS.
The authors explore how the 10-step‘Forecasting Innovation Pathways'analytical approach can be systematised through the use of Tech Mining.
while the technological and religious perspectives are created constructs by humans (Linstone 2011a). 3. It consists of four levels:
Fourth international Seville conference on futureorieente technology analysis, May 12 13, Seville. http://foresight. jrc. ec. europa. eu/fta 2011/documents/download/PRESENTATIONS/Keynotes/JO
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Ilkka Tuomi (2012) Foresight in an unpredictable world, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 24:8, 735-751, DOI:
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ranging from innovation and technology studies to a Bergsonian analysis of creative evolution, theory of autopoietti and anticipatory systems,
The paper then makes the claim that technological change can be understood as an especially human form of Bergsonian élan vital or creative flux.
Ontological unpredictability thus becomes importaan for technology analysis, foresight, and strategy, as well as for characterising the limitations of evidence-based policy-making in innovation-intensive societies and economies.
Animals, as well as technologies, are domesticated in a historical process. For ordinary human beings, what used to be a beast can one day become cattle.
Innovation and social learning in the context of the local downstream systems of meaning then become key drivers for the evolution of technology.
many technology students could easily namealexander Graham Bell as its inventor. Yet, in his patent application from 1876, Bell tells us what the telephone is about:
How can we predict the number of cattle or the impact of a new technology, when we only retrospecttivel know what we are talking about?
In mobile technology, global system for mobile communication (GSM) short messaging is created in a similar fashion.
First technology designers implement short message service (SMS) functionality with the aim of sending control, broadcast,
stories of heroic innovators emerge telling howsms functionalitywas devised by clever engineers in the GSM standardisation groups in the mid-1980s.3 Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 04:52 03 december 2014 Foresight in an unpredictable
and technologies that effectively implement the operations that are needed to perform goal-oriented acts. A specific activity thus generates a socially shared ontology that allows problem-solving
what technologies seek to fabricate and control. Natural systems are at least partially constructions of the human mind
for example, the construction of those artificial natural systems that we usually call technology. Rosen clarified the modelling relation in considerable theoretical and conceptual RIGOUR.
I. Tuomi A similar story underlies the GSM short messaging example Engineers first define a standard that allows short messages to be delivered using the GSM control channel.
The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Borup, M.,N. Brown, K. Konrad, and H. Van Lente. 2006.
The sociology of expectations in science and technology. Technology analysis & Strategic management 18, nos 3 4: 285 98.
Bower, J. L, . and C. M. Christensen. 1995. Disruptive technologies: Catching thewave. Harvard Business Review (January February:
43 53. Bowker, G, . and S l. Star. 1999. Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences.
Mapping the dynamics of science and technology: Sociology of science in the real world. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan. CEPT-CCH-GSM. 1982.
The social locus of technological practice: Community, system, or organization? In The social construction of technological systems:
New directions in the sociology and history of technology, ed. W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes,
and T. J. Pinch, 223 42. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Dosi, G. 1982. Technical paradigms and technological trajectories a suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technological change.
Research policy 11, no. 3: 147 62. Engel, P. G. H. 1997. The social organization of innovation:
A socio-cognitive model of technology evolution. Organization science 4, no. 3: 527 50. Geels, F. W. 2005.
Technology analysis & Strategic management 17, no. 4: 445 76. Giddens, A. 1984. The constitution of society:
Aramis, or the love of technology. Boston, MA: Harvard university Press. Lave, J, . and E. Wenger. 1991.
Los angeles times, May 3. http://latimesblogs. latimes. com/technology/2009/05/invented-text-messaging. html Miller, R. 2007.
Technological creativity and economic progress. Oxford: Oxford university Press. Nicolis, G, . and I. Prigogine. 1977. Self-organization in nonequilibrium systems:
The coconstrructio of users and technology, ed. N. Oudshoorn and T. J. Pinch, 1 25.
Technology analysis & Strategic management 21, no. 3: 307 20. Rossel, P. 2011. Beyond the obvious: Examiningways of consolidating early detection schemes.
Technological discontinuities and organizational environments. Administrative Science Quarterly 31, no. 3: 439 65. van Asselt, M. B. A,
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influences on future-oriented technology analysis, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 24:8, 753-767, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2012.715477 To link to this article:
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These invade both the qualitative and quantitative information co-joined to create outcomes for policy and management in all the STEEPV (Social, Technological, Economic, Ecology, Politics andvalues and Norms) themes.
and will be more so as FTA becomes involved with technologies of great social and commercial complexity.
quantitattive methods Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Arthur C. Clarke) 1. Introduction Is there something phoney about foresight,
In the present context, with its emphasis on science and technology, is embedded foresight in diminuendo in its corresponding social and commercial expectations?
and more broadly artefacts, can blend together across the entire STEEPV (Social, Technological, Economic, Ecology,
forecasting and technology assessment research techniques of and for their respective communities. Futures studies are omitted. Derrida's comment,
what are believed commonly to be the metaphors from foresight, forecasting and technology assessment: all have a long history and an equally long and growing catalogue of techniques to use:
nanoscience, nanotechnology and nano-artefacts and their social acceptance; stem cells and what they offer and their social dimensions.
and will be preceded by its scientific possibility and/or technological feasibility, even if the former is recognised not until after the event.
For example, engineers often create a working artefact before its theoretical underpinning (science) is understood fully: that is simply an example of a known unknown in science.
Historically, the focus of FTA has been on technology. Its purpose now is to set technology in the context of socioeconomic matters, ecology, politics and human values/norms of the STEEPV set.
Casti (2010) is only the most recent person to question the frequent assumption that science
and technology are the prime movers in disruptive change: here, it is assumed that they are not and nor should they be considered as such.
Transformation of quantitative data from science, technology and pseudo-science into information then plays a role, in conjunction with thesteepv constituents,
the broad range of sciences and technologies that any FTA has to be able to cope with:
FTAIS already confronted by technological convergence, not at the historic macro scale, but at the nanometre cum atomic scale, where phenomena are unfamiliar
and the territory suffused by quantum phenomena, but artefacts are commercialised at the macro scale.
and will face FTA with a new world of expectations of a form of social control of technology. 8. Epilogue In conclusion,
forecasting and technology assessment are construed often as theory. To search for a philosophical cum theoretical basis to underlie FTA seems to be limited of value.
Notes 1. These are referred to often in project engineering as‘unk-unks 'and are similar to the ecological‘safe-fail'principle,
and of corporate venturing to create new high technology businesses, large and small, relating to Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 04:56 03 december 2014 Ignorance and uncertainty 767 long-term directions of change in the business environment.
He has negotiated technology licenses based on intellectual property, for business growth and business advantage. Ozcan Saritas is a Research fellow at Manchester Institute of Innovation research (MIOIR) in Manchester Business school, UK.
and strategy making with particular emphasis upon Foresight methodologies and their implementation in science, technology and social fields.
Technology analysis & Strategic management 24, no. 8: September, 817 40. Casti, J. L. 2010. Mood matters:
International Journal of Technology management 21, nos 7/8: 781 91. Loveridge, D. 2009. Foresight: The art and science of anticipating the future.
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lessons from the sociology of expectations, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 24:8, 769-782, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2012.715478 To link to this article:
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Yet, anticipaatio in science and technology is limited not to foresight, but occurs in many more informal ways.
which studies the informal production and circulation of expectations in science and technology. Finally, three generic lessons from the sociology of expectations are derived,
technology and innovation studies; technology road mapping; expectations of technological change; foresight; technological change and dynamics 1. Introduction While foresight has been developed into an important instrument for both firms
and policymakking the active exploration of the future is by no means a privilege of foresight methods. Anticipation occurs in many more domains, in particular, in areas of science and technology,
which are predicated on ideas of progress. Innovation studies have shown and discussed how expectations are part and parcel of all professional practices
and circulate amongst engineers, board rooms, research institutes and policy circles (Borup et al. 2006; Van Lente and Bakker 2010.
Expectations are produced, circulated, adapted and are forceful in various ways (Berkhout 2006). Foresight exercises, or‘formal'assessments of the future,
thus, are surrounded by‘informaal assessments of the future (Salo 2001). This particular condition will have consequences for the established foresight approaches.
and discusses the implications for formal foresight exercises of science and technology. The central question of this paper is whether and howforesight exercises,
which studies the informal production and circulation of expectations in science and technology. These two reviews allow us to reflect in Section 4 on the implications for the practice
Foresight activities are seen as functions not only to identify promising technological pathways but also to engage relevant stakeholders and create common visions into action.
The special issue of Technology analysis & Strategic management in 2008 provides a good overview of these intended benefits.
A popular technique is technology roadmapping, which has been used since the 1980s by Motorola and later by many other firms (Willyard and Mcclees 1997), like Philips (Groenveld 1997) and Lockheed martin (Houston and Turner 2001).
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:02 03 december 2014 772 H. van Lente Technological roadmaps basically are creative connections between expected developments in technological skills, sequences of products and potential future
and technology are structured, how they grow, gain dramatic attention or quietly disappear, and how this affects the decisions of engineers, businesses and governments.
It investigates how researchers, businesses and governments derive their agendas from their collectively created images of a promising technology
and how they are fueled, for instance by the fear of laggiin behind. It is helpful, thus, to study the insights from this literature,
In the case of technological expectations, however, it is not easy to distinguish between the validity of a claim and the collective perception of it (Van Lente 2000;
a promising future of a technological option lacks such independent tests. In fact, the only reliable way to validate the claim is to try to achieve it.
While the Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:02 03 december 2014 774 H. van Lente current performance of a technology
Second, expectations provide direction to the search processes of science and technology (Rip and Kemp 1998.
but the promising direction is available through the informal expectations circulating amongst technology developers. Expectations thus reduce uncertainty in much the same way as heuristics do in research and development (Nelson andwinter 1982.
In addition, sociologiist of science and technology point to the dynamic nature of science and technology:
'For the involved engineers, the uncertainty is relatively high: they know all the details, conditions and assumptions.
The developers of a hopeful technology, on the other hand, see more uncertaintiie and have other options in case the applications will disappoint.
whether the promises of stem cells or nanotechnology are‘true'.'Instead, the promise of stem cell research or nanotechnology could
either be accepted as meaningful and are acted upon which leads to some new developments that will differ more or less from what was promised
For example, constructive technology assessment (CTA) does not intend to give a final decision about the prospects of a technical development,
New technological options, as variations within a selection environment may or may not survive. The market is a distinct selection environment, next to institutional (regulations), cultural or political selection environments.
New technologies need protection to survive (in a company or a governmental programme), as they evolve by trial and error;
‘What I resent is the pressure from Europe to force one country to adopt this very dangerous technology'(371.
An example here is that public participation in new technologies often does not lead to new and heterodox insights;
and consultants anticipate the wave of expectations by locating their technological option in the cycle.
Foresight will thus enhance the reflexive and strategic character of technological change including self-fulfiling and self-denying dynamics.
In most OECD countries, for instance, nanotechnology is listed now as top priority; referring to the efforts other governments have planned (Berube 2006.
to be contrasted with the numerous informal articulations of futures that circulate in science and technology.
and philosophy and has published widely on the dynamics of expectations in science and technology. His research interests concern how emerging technologies such as nanotechnology
hydrogen and medical technologies produce novelty and needs. This involves studies of technology Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:02 03 december 2014 780 H. van Lente assessment, foresight, intermediary organisations, politics of knowledge production and philosophy of technology.
Currenntly he is Programme Director of Technology assessment of Nanonextnl, the leading Dutch research consortium in nanotechnology.
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matching environmental uncertainty Riccardo Vecchiato a a Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy Published online:
matching environmental uncertainty, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 24:8, 783-796, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2012.715487 To link to this article:
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matching environmental uncertainty Riccardo Vecchiato*Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy This paper explores how strategic decision-makers select
and technological (PEEST) landscapes that surrooun the business micro environment and today are referred commonly to as the business macro environment (Fahey and Randall 1998).
and technological drivers of change interact in novel and unforeseeable ways. Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 786 R. Vecchiato Prominent scholars supported the idea that the best way to handle an uncertain future is to ignore it
on the other hand, Philips and Siemens operated in fastpaace industries (consumer electronics and information and communication technology (ICT))
which were affected strongly by new technologies and customer needs. Foresight in mature industries Environmental uncertainty and foresight approach The chemical and automotive industries throughout the last decade were typically mature and global industries where trajectories of technologies
and customer needs were established well and companies competed for market share at the international level. The boundaries between the micro and macro environments were blurred in these industries;
by rooting them in an understanding of the long-term dynamics of technologies, economics, society, and politics.
The growing pace of technology developmment and the continuous emergence of disruptive changes in customer needs have contributed together to greatly increased dynamism in these industries and for these firms.
in the display and large-screen TV segment, in the last decade, there have been some major market launches of such new technologies as liquid crystal display, plasma display panel, surface-conduction electron-emitter display, organic
as major changes in technologies and ensuing customer demand are again continuously scrambling the boundaries of the business.
In such a context, strategic foresight efforts at Philips aimed essentially at detecting new trends in society, technologies,
and the expressions of these values as they emerge in customers'attitudes towards the technologies
These different pieces of insight are matched finally through an interactive process that brings the social researchers from Philips Design and the technologists from Philips Research together with the business managers from all the product divisions of the company.
and made coherent with those about technologies and markets, to provide a comprehensive vision of the future evolution of the firm business environment, in a procees that guarantees that all view points (people,
technology, and business) are taken into account. Foresight activities usually cover a 10-year time horizon, while emerging trend investigations are scheduled yearly to fit in with the annual strategy calendar.
As with Philips, foresight efforts at Siemens aim at identifying strong discontinuities and disruptions in markets and technologies so that they can be acted upon quickly.
Foresight activities are carried out by the Corporate Technology unit, where a specific research unit (an‘Innovation Field')has been established for each of the company business segments.
and customer needs in terms of both markets and technologies. In the case of the consumer products and ICT businesses, the time horizon is 5 years.
Foresight and decision-making The main goal of strategic foresight at Philips is to drive the renewal of the organisation by figuring out how to exploit the new market opportunities enabled by emerging technologies or in response to changing customer needs.
Philips has built its core technological competencies around displays, connectivity, and storage and started to develop and to experiment with innovative product concepts in all its business divisions.
Anotable example is the Ambilight concept (Ambient Lighting Technology), which aimed at enhancing the home cinema experience by generating lighting effects around the TV SET that match the video content,
At Siemens, too, foresight activities go beyond identifying emerging changes in technology and customer needs to encompass the exploitation of the new market opportunities inherent in such changes.
it is allocated to the‘Siemens Technology Accelerator'(part of the Corporate Technology Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 791 division),
Let us consider in particular such a driver of change as the convergence of multimedia technologies:
Investigating such changes in technology and customer needs requires not only the anticipation of their likely evolution,
Continuous drivers of change typically affect mature and global industries where trajectories of technologies and customer needs are established well
Discontiinuou drivers of change are typically disruptive technologies (Christensen 1997) and new customer needs stemming from emerging or growing industries.
foresight must help decision makers realize the implications of new technologies and customer needs for the value chain,
Discontinuous drivers of change typically stem from technology-driven industries which are at the initial stage of their life cycle.
if new technological paradigms such as electric of hydrogen car will be established. Firms operating in mature industrrie have to rely as well on environmental scanning
and explorative actions to look for likely technological discontinuities and major shifts in customer needs, even if such events are quite infrequent
and Phd graduates. 3. Roadmaps consist of representations of interconnected nodes of major changes and events in some selected fields of the external environment, such as science, technology, and markets.
a new technological paradigm might be established in mature industries as well, bringing the life cycle to the initial stages
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 795 Notes on contributor Riccardo Vecchiato is Assistant professor at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of Politecnico di Milano
His main research fields are foresight methodologies and strategic management of technology and innovation. He has presented on these themes at international conferences
and published in international journals such astechnological Forecasting and Social Change, Technology analysis and Strategic management, and International Journal of Foresight and Innovation policy.
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