Multi-path mapping for alignment strategies in emerging science and technologies Douglas K. R. Robinson a,,
Tilo Propp b a Department of Science, Technology, Health and Policy Studies, University of Twente, Enschede, The netherlands b Department of Innovation and Environmental sciences, University of Utrecht, Utrecht
accepted 1 february 2008 Abstract Roadmapping serves both short and long term (strategic) alignment in science and technology (S&t.
Constructive technology assessmentavailable online at www. sciencedirect. com Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 517 538 Corresponding author.
10.1016/j. techfore. 2008.02.002 1. Lacunae and prospects of assessment and alignment tools for emerging science and technology For innovation to succeed actor alignment in the form of innovation chains from laboratory to products
and the technology field is understood well. This is the case with incremental innovation in established technological paradigms.
For new and emerging fields of science and technology (S&t) where architectural (radical innovations might occur 1,
conditions of non-linearity and high technology and market uncertainty are typical 2. This often leaves actors with the alternative of‘muddling through
'and capitalising on fortuitous events until such time that there is a feeling of stabilisation and assessments and forecasts have become more reliable.
However, in an age of strategic science and high-investment projects decision makers need to identify possible and promising directions and options and influence technology emergence in advance.
These are challenges for current strategic technology intelligence and forward-looking assessment tools. This is especially the case for the recent European Networks of Excellence
and Technology platforms have to deal with: they have been created around new and Emerging s&t and have to develop strategies in the early stages of an emerging situation.
Many networks and platforms have dedicated working groups or programmes on foresight, strategic planning and anticipation of societal and ethical hurdles to innovation based on emerging technologies.
Another term, with a similar outlook but not limited to technology only, is strategic intelligence (SI) 2
The Technology assessment Programme is part of the Science to Industry work package and the Ethical and Societal Aspect package,
At both intra-organizational (department-level) and inter-organizational levels in technology and industry, roadmapping has become a fashionable alignment tool.
There is a wealth of literature focusing on the functions, uses and tools of roadmaps in high-technology companies andmncs 3 20.
knowledge of the technology and market drivers) are generally uncertain 9, 21,22. New s&t are defined not by eventual application but characterised by‘generic richness,
Literature in the management of innovation, expectations management and sociology-of-technology fields has stressed repeatedly that for assessments during early stages of technological emergence, more‘open-ended'
/7 Cf Rip et al 2005 30‘Assessment'and‘alignment'can be used somewhat interchangeably where they refer to tools that help assessing actions on the way to an anticipated future-tools for‘anticipatory coordination'(learning curves of‘disruptive technologies';‘
and tools for portfolio and project management. 519 D. K. R. Robinson, T. Propp/Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 517 538 The point we make is that technological uncertainty
because products/applications would need a high degree of coordination to enable integration of a large number of technology innovations into a platform
'which mirrors dynamics underlying technology S-curves: in early stages of technology emergence, the more flexible multi-path mapping is used;
in later stages, when the technological, regulatory and business context of the (hopefully) growiin start-up/SME has matured,
the company can switch towards roadmapping for incremental innovation. Before delving into the context of lab-on-a-chip for cell analysis we explore what the literature can tell us with regards to insights into emerging path dynamics stemming from sociology of S&t, evolutionary economics and organization studies.
In his seminal paper, Dosi 34 argued that technical paradigms direct activities in technology development and thus are both rules that guide heuristics
'and‘patterns'for finding solutions to selected technological problems, based on selected principles derived from natural sciences and on selected material technology().
A technological paradigm embodies strong prescriptions on the directions of technical change to pursue and those to neglect.
Dosi, 1982, p 152) In their paper investigating the airplane construction regime, Nelson andwinter 35 argued that
these routines add up to a technological regime. The shared direction of search processes adds up to what they term as a technical trajectory at the sector level:
Why do certain technologies become dominant even though they may be sub-optimal (such as the use of the QWERTY typewriter layout in computer consoles)?
Small events can trigger a technological path that is 10 Affordance structures suggest directions of action,
In 1993, Harrison and Manz 52 reported on a breakthrough regarding the successful miniaturisation of the analytical technique of capillary electrophoresis,
foreseeing that this technology could aid them in their work or enable new lines of research,
High-throughput screening and microarray technologies are now in common use for measuring gene and protein expression and for assessing biological activity of potential drug targets.
and tested as technologies in of themselves as specific capabilities, techniques or devices. Examples could be a microfluidic channel, a fluid mixing system, a sample injector, positioner, sensor etc.
and bridge the technology hurdle of integrating these proof-of-principle devices and combine them into an experimental platform for systems research such as protein analysis in the lab (moving from phase 1 to phase 2). Such an integration of a number of devices into an experimental system is undertaken usually in a university laboratory.
and technology development begins. Fig. 1. Phases of materialization of the vision of lab-on-a-chip.
Loc device for many purposes (like a through a plug in and play technology platform. The grey crescent represents the present barrier
Besides the challenge of integrating many components and devices, a more general challenge is how to bridge technology research with start-ups
and/or multinational corporations to allow technology applications suited to market demands and more broadly, societal needs:
With a multitude of projections of technology configurations and possible applications in circulation, and the lack of successful innovation chains meaning lab-on-a-chip remains at the research level,
a project was set up under the framework of the Frontiers Technology assessment Programme to: 1. explore and develop tools to map possible futures for the field of cell-on-a-chip with a focus on single cell analysis
and identify possible promising paths for the technology; 2. use analysis of path dynamics and other strategic intelligence to explore the robustness of specific paths located within the field map;
and 3. evaluate which paths show the most promise of successfully bridging the gaps in the innovation chain for single cell analysis with lab-on-a-chip technology.
Each of these six functions houses scientific research and technology development. We want to point out that within the six functions attributed to a cell-focused laboratory on a chip,
and a number of semistruccture interviews we constructed a map of the actual and possible technological
and application paths for chip-based cell analysis platforms (cf Fig. 3). The map indicates that actors can select between two distinct yet general clusters of technological paths within cell analysis:
Multiple cell analysis is a technology path in as far as platforms and instruments are constructed around the principle of using multiple cells;
Any cell analysis technique Fig. 3. Technological multi-path map for cell-on-a-chip (Bioreactor 57). 527 D. K. R. Robinson, T. Propp
and technologies shown in the lowest band on the diagram. Each decision is strategic as it requires investments and expertise on the parts of actors involved
There can be a number of technological paths towards one application area. This is because the labels(‘medical diagnostics';‘
Nevertheless more defined purposes require more specific technologies and hence, particular technological paths. The map shows the possible paradigms that can emerge.
The existing technologies and the visions we have mapped here refer to results, or visions, of actors involved in the innovation process.
The first path shows a technology that is already present within a start-up company (as a prospective component of an integrated system)
where government support has been granted to refine existing technologies and develop an integrated platformfor DNA analysis, with a particular focus on point-of-use.
microfabrication and nanotechnology tools for cell analysis and (2) start-up companies and small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMES) relating to specific cell analysis techniques and lab-on-a-chip technology.
In-house R&d of a multinational corporation (MNC) Technology development conducted by SMES but stimulated by an MNC Start-ups finding opportunities and becoming the integrator Separate integrators
and integrate them into a lab-on-a-chip technology platform. Thus innovation chain 1 was said to have a key stumbling block no clear market is visible for return on investment and thus.
Identifying the end user is one clear approach to selecting the components and configurations of a technology innovation chain.
but requires a belief in the technology. The participants agreed that this is lacking in MNCS due to previous hype-disappointment cycles such as in biosensors.
and attempt to develop the technology. Intellectual property (IP) is shared with the MNC. Major issues here were agreed in the workshop to relate to the relationship between MNC and start-ups:
www. technology assessment. eu. 530 D. K. R. Robinson, T. Propp/Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 517 538 but then proceeded to outsource the further development of product
where technologies cannot be products in themselves but must be part of a system of technologies to be enabled. 22 Furthermore,
the workshop participants recognized the difficulty of researchers in public institutions getting credit in developing integrated platforms.
and teaching. 23 One way of doing this is developing an integrated platform based on an interesting 18 This agglomeration effect of technology platforms is particularly strong for nanotechnologies 67.
MPM-1 was developed to map technology-based complexitiie of future projections from various communities and for various phases of a prospective innovation chain.
We tailored this particular MPM with the generally acknowledged phases specific to lab-on-a-chip technology.
We organized a highly interactive workshop following the premises of Constructive technology assessment (CTA) 69, where insights into technology dynamics are explored with actors
in order to broaden at an early stage the decision making process. The MPM-2 project involved a collective mapping of projected actor strategy paths (or actors'paths-into-the-future) and a reflection on the future socio-technical path or entanglements
then any of the innovation chains identified can create the matrix of entanglements constitutive of the new technology-application paradigm:
The strategy support systems will be developed further for different technology fields being investigated within the framework of the Frontiers research programme.
This network level strategy support system is somewhat abstract from specific technological issues, such as cell-on-a-chip;
The tool can also be used in communities outside of research and technology development but related to its financing, such as venture capitalists.
and R&d intelligence is separate from strategic management intelligence embodied in specialized technology consultancies but both cooperate in the context of alignment exercises.
if they can gain extra insights on organizational innovation chains (as well as the technology paths), and thus a tailoring of the tool for the start-up company is currently ongoing.
Acknowledgements This work was funded through the Technology assessment Program of the Dutch Nanotechnology Consortium Nanoned led by Arie Rip (University of Twente)
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Managing Technology in Society. The Approach of Constructive technology assessment, Pinter Publishers, London, 1995. Douglas K. R. Robinson obtained his undergraduate and master's degree in Physics and Space S&t at the University of Leicester (UK) and Universität Siegen (Germany.
A further master's degree focused on an interdisciplinary study of the space sector combining science, technology policy and innovation studies with a final thesis focusing on cosmonautics research in the former Soviet union with field research undertaken at the Cosmonaut Training Centre (Star City) and the Institute of Biomedical Problems, Moscow.
His current Phd research focuses on challenges for governance and management relating to the dynamics of emerging nanotechnologies,
He worked in South africa on the dynamics of social development projects and science-and-technology-in-society issues and at Twente University,
as well as the interaction of the system with the broader socio-technological-economic-political environment. Available online at www. sciencedirect. com Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 539 557 Corresponding author.
and complexity of the ways information and knowledge is mediated, especially through developments in information and communication technologies, the increasing importance of knowledge-based industries and the service sector,
and impacts (both direct and indirect) and with the broader socio-technological-economic-political environment.
Supporting innovation-based growth Achievement of long-term reform of the productive system through a raised emphasis on high technology Making the case for increased investment in R&d More informed STI priorities
It should also be noted that the literature on technology assessment programmes is also relevant to the case of foresight programmes.
and suggested the inclusion of some elements of‘technology assessment'.'Concerning networking-related effects, the evaluation stressed that aftercare was needed
Compared with the‘technological'orientation of the first round, the second round had a greater‘social'orientation.
The first round led people to understand that technology is shaped socially, and the need to widen the scope of the second round was acknowledged.
and extensive media promotion that raised the profile of science, technology and innovation on the national agenda.
e g. the alignment of potential technological solutions within the emerging constituency and widely recognised technical
and shape each other in the course of the creation, production and diffusion of specific technologies (28 pg. 387). 553 E. Amanatidou,
important factors include the degree of alignment between the (technological) solutions proposed and widely recognised technical
and collaborating technologies. 9. Conclusions Analysis of the major characteristics of the emerging knowledge societies suggest that the characteristics
as well as the interaction of the system with the broader socio-technological-economic-political environment. The model presented in Fig. 3a
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New technology Foresight, Forecasting & Assessment Methods, Seville, May 13 14 2004.16 Technology Futures analysis Methods Working group, Technology Futures analysis:
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Since 1996 she held the position of Director of the Science and Technology policy Studies Unit at ATLANTIS Research organisation (Greece)
and led the EGIST (Evaluation of Government and Industry Strategies for Technology) group; and Technopolis Ltd, an innovation policy consultancy which he founded in 1989 and which,
as the broadest socioeconomic context for universities, with its own science, technology and innovation (STI) policy tools,
although they have advanced technologies to a very significant extent, and several major inventions have preceded long the proper theories of their underpinning scientific principles,
In other words, the links between science and technology are far from being (uni-)linear. Contrary to the widespread belief that technologies are, in essence, applied sciences,
a number of scientific disciplines evolved from the puzzles why certain technologies work as they do 22.12 This list is far from being exhaustive:
to keep it short, many professionals are mentioned not here, whose activities are also of crucial importance for successfulrtdi activities,
and patents) because the principal outputs of its scientific and technological activities are consumed by government itself in terms of advice,
or by private clients for technological consultancy. 38, p. 65). 20 Space limits prevent presenting data here;
Technological changes offer more sophisticated and thus more expensive equipment for conducting research, but in the meantime it also becomes a must to purchase these pieces of advanced equipment,
the combined effects of technological changes, together with the pressure on public funding, open a gap between rapidly increasing research costs
how to take advantage of major technological, demographic changes and opportunities stemming from globalisation; how to respond to intensifying and globalising competition in research and higher education.
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Technologies, Institutions and Organizations, Pinter, London, 1997.12 J. Fagerberg, D c. Mowery, R. R. Nelson (Eds.
and Approaches in Technology and Innovation policy, STI Review, No. 22,1998. 16 OECD, Benchmarking Industry science Relationships, OECD, Paris, 2002.17 W. Polt, C. Rammer, H. Gassler, A. Schibany,
la lettre OST, No. 22,2001. 19 L. Georghiou, Evolving frameworks for European collaboration in research and technology, Res.
of Education and Research, Bonn, 2005.42 G. Dosi, P. Llerena, M. Sylos Labini, The relationships between science, technologies and their industrial exploitation:
which technologies are advancing the new systems, structures and capabilities that will take us forward to 2020,2035 and 2050?
FTA provides a common umbrella for the foresight, forecasting and technology assessment communities. These closely related communities play an important role in guiding policy
The challenge of joining forces to develop more robust future-oriented support to decision making has been addressed in the series of International Seville FTA Conference organized by the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies, one of the Joint research Centers
and provoke the traditional complacency of policy makers who tend to treat technology as an externality,
The essence of Cunningham's model is that the application of hierarchical random graphs of technology characteristics to questions as complex as:
enables a probability model to be constructed that anticipates novel combinations of technologies. Using this model he identified a range of technology changes associated with new standards for accessible internet applications within 100days of their emergence and without prior reference to the individual technology morphologies pathways progression.
Imagining the prospects if this technique can be developed more widely conjures up exciting possibilities for the anticipation of future innovation system developments.
another Finnish team, bring this novel focus on tools further into the interface with policy approaches in their timely paper on the Role of Technology barometer in Assessing Past and Future development of National Innovation system.
and thus the capacity to know one's own technological position relative to others represents a new FTA capability with real world predictive performance capacity.
the Technology barometer can be regarded as a new tool for managing strategic investments in R&d, as well as in other areas such as new skills acquisition and patents management etc.
The existence of the Technology barometer is itself a provocative approach to innovation policy futures. From Germany
and advance technology in ways that are responsive to society's needs and concerns through the definition of problems and boundaries that must be respected.
Therefore new techniques are needed for analyzing technology architecture. This implies a renewed dedication to alternative exploratory modeling,
Totti Könnölä is a research fellow at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the Joint research Centre in the European commission.
He is also an adjunct professor of operations and technology management at the IE Business school. He has supported coordinated
He holds a Dr. Tech. and a Lic. Tech. in systems analysis from the Helsinki University of Technology and MSC in environmental economics from the University of Helsinki.
Jack E. Smith is Senior Advisor Foresight and Innovation strategy, Defence R&d Canada, and Chair of the Foresight Synergy Network of Canada.
She was the leader of the VTT Technology foresight and Technology assessment in 1999 2008 being also the Deputy Technology manager of the knowledge center since 2007.
She holds a Phd from the Helsinki Swedish School of economics and Business administration. Her Lic. Tech. and M. Sc. degrees are from Helsinki University of Technology.
Totti Könnölä1 Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), JRC-European commission, Edificio Expo, C/Inca Garcilaso, 3, E-41092 Seville, Spain Corresponding author.
E-mail address: totti. konnola@ec. europa. eu. Jack Smith Defence RD, Ottawa, Canada Annele Eerola VTT Technical research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland 1
Analysis for radical design Scott W. Cunningham Policy analysis Section, Faculty of technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Postbus 5015,2600 GA Delft, The netherlands a r
and analyzing systemic change in technology. Technological changes increasingly stem from the novel recombination of existing technologies. Changes are multitudinous.
Therefore, new techniques are needed for analyzing technology architecture. A literature review of related work in the field of technology opportunities analysis is presented.
We consider a possible, radically decentralized context for the conduct of future design. A case study of new technology architecture in the information technology domain is presented.
An analytical method involving mining weighted graphs from technology archives is presented. The role of this new method in a context of distributed decision-making and design is presented. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Hierarchical random graphs Architectural innovation Technology forecasting Design 1. Introduction This paper examines a technique suitable for monitoring
and analyzing systemic change in technology. Technological changes increasingly stem from the novel recombination of existing technologies. Therefore, new techniques are needed for analyzing technology architecture.
The work is significant because the analysis of a very significant feature of technological change the recombination of existing components is not being supported by most technology opportunity analysis techniques.
A literature review of related work in the field of technology opportunities analysis is presented. A case study of new technology architecture in the information technology domain is presented.
An analytical method involving mining weighted graphs from technology archives is presented. The role of this new method in a context of distributed decision-making and design is presented.
A prospective analysis of new technology fundamentally hinges on the concept of novelty. It is the newest and most novel of technologies which presents the greatest challenges for technological forecasting.
Fundamental uncertainty surrounds the exploitation and development of new technologies. Much has been made about the convergence of new technologies, particularly in the information,
biotechnology and material sectors 1. The forces impelling convergence at the time are seen as radical, revolutionary,
and deeply uncertain. One recent study, for instance, investigated uncertainty and the emergence of dominant designs in aircraft 2. While in retrospect
the design seemed assured, the actual choices at the time appeared divergent and highly contested.
One approach to the management of technological uncertainty has been to initiate the technological forecasting process only once a dominant design has emerged 3. Once a dominant design has been selected,
uncertainty is reduced fundamentally; processes of organizational and sectoral learning then assist in securing a niche for the new technology.
Trend extrapolation approaches, for instance, are based on tracking the emergence of new technologies only once a dominant design is secured 4. This solution of tracking dominant designs neglects some of the fundamental uncertainty associated with technological evolution.
Deep uncertainty characterizes many domains of decision-making in science and technology. In particular, under deep uncertainty, there is little agreement or consensus about system structure.
Thus, exploratory modeling is used to explore Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1138 1149 E-mail address:
S. Cunningham@tudelft. nl. 0040-1625/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:
10.1016/j. techfore. 2009.07.014 Contents lists available at Sciencedirect Technological forecasting & Social Change alternative views of the future,
seeking decisions robust under a variety conflicting forces 5. Uncertainty in new design arises in at least two areas 6. Technological design is an inherently uncertain process
which is therefore subject to epistemic uncertainty 7. Technological design entails the recombination of components in new and often unexpected fashion.
New techniques for managing the fundamental uncertainty in technological design and evolution are needed therefore. Previous work has provided technology analysts with a set of techniques for both integrating and decomposing new technologies.
Relevant research has approached the problem of forecasting radical technological change with methods for supporting analysis for both decomposition and integration of new technologies.
For the decomposition of technologies, morphological analysis has long been practiced as a technique for recognizing component technologies.
Patent studies have used TRIZ to investigate the character of innovative activity 8, 9. Integrative methods also allow for the anticipation of converging technology.
Swanson explored knowledge discovery by exploring database links 10. Swanson demonstrates integrative capability by demonstrating new links between technologies, inherent in the data,
which were not readily apparent to the respective scientific communities. In this paper we examine techniques for exploring emergent structures or architectures of technology.
Consider a knowledge base of technology where components of technologies are described and linkages between the technologies are identified.
This description of a knowledge base describes many repositories of scientific and technological information, including: the Internet, science and technology databases, patent databases, newswires,
and potentially also newsgroups or other online collaborative environments. This work is similar in spirit to that of Swanson
and Smalheiser reviewed earlier 10. It extends and elaborates upon the procedures described by these authors for discovering new linkages of knowledge through use of a structured representation of science and technology,
which facilitates finding the integrative terms responsible for novel recombination of component technologies. In addition, the paper outlines several important caveat about the use of these models in forecasting new technology:
the model lacks a model of the actor; full validation of the model requires a longitudinal analysis;
missing links may signal poor quality source materials; and content scoring remains a subjective process. 2. Application to distributed design environments Our purpose in exploring this topic is to better consider the information needs of designers.
Designers may soon be positioned in a new and radically decentralized environment. In this section, the paper explicates the social and technological organizational structures which may permit a new era of open innovation.
Chesborough 11 describes a new paradigm of open innovation involving the design of technological systems which, in technological requirements, transcends the boundaries of a single firm.
Likewise, in terms of knowledge production, researchers form multi-disciplinary teams devoted to specific problems and specific contexts 12.
These authors go further: rather than simply describing a new and distributed environment, they prescribe the manner in
which innovative organizations can create an open and porous environment by which to participate in this anticipated new mode of innovation.
Such networks require special technological and infrastructural capabilities to succeed in this emerging environment. In the following paragraphs some ideas about the organization of technological knowledge is described;
this knowledge is coupled with the institutional environment of distributed knowledge production. This review suggests an important avenue for research in this article, and in future research:
creating software solutions to help innovative organizations develop new technologies within an open innovation environment. Knowledge is structured hierarchically.
Hierarchies are one form of technological structure confirmed by theories and practice. A hierarchy is one structure of many that have been used for technological integration 14.
The International Institute for Applied Systems analysis (IIASA) and others have examined the hierarchical embedding of infrastructure systems
Clark 16 considers how market forces shape technological hierarchies, and how such hierarchies in turn shape the market
Thus, there is a rich basis of theoretical support for structuring technological component data in a hierarchical format.
the nodes are technologies, and the edges are the component relationships that are present between the respective technologies.
The challenge of the technology analyst is to usefully structure this information to anticipate change. The technology designer has a similar challenge in exploring new, heretofore unforeseen, combinations of new technologies.
The network data in the raw is not useful for this purpose. A structured representation of technology is needed for multiple reasons:
interpretation, theory, robustness and also the production of actionable results. An unstructured network contains many parameters,
which are hard to visualize and interpret. The technology analyst requires structured information, conforming to theories about the organization of science and technology.
Without a theory of the data the technology analyst cannot distinguish between meaningful structure and possibly accidental corruption of the knowledge base.
Therefore, without a generative model of the data, the interpretation of the data may not be robust.
The technology analyst needs to anticipate change. A structured representation of the data provides a principled account of where technological change is most likely to occur. 1139 S w. Cunningham/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1138 1149 The article
which follows argues that there is a sizeable amount of open source information which is shared between distributed communities of designers and researchers.
This knowledge is stored in databases of science and technology. New future-oriented technology analysis techniques, such as the approach suggested here,
may contribute to the process and management of radical innovation 17,18. Radical innovation establishes a new dominant design,
and thereby creating a new set of design concepts and a new configuration of components technologies.
The express purpose of these science and technology databases is to research specific existing technologies, and yet the biggest promise of these sources of information may be the diffuse and distributed information they contain about the current state of the knowledge of the community.
but decentralized, knowledge of science and technology is something which can be tested through the use of machine learning techniques.
These concepts are explored further in this paper with a case exploring a software technology known as AJAX.
If the routine process of exploring for new technological components can be automated, then the designer will be free to spend more time at value-enhancing activities.
that many users of technology roadmapping exist in a vertically integrated environment where a few big players have the interests and capabilities to assist in technological coordination.
The description of distributed design in this article is, perhaps, somewhat at odds with the stated premise of technology roadmapping.
analysts should avail themselves of a wide variety of techniques appropriate for the task at hand. 3. Methodology In the following section we develop an analytical method for the representation of emerging technologies in the form of a hierarchical graph.
D). In this technology analysis application these nodes represent four component technologies of a system. These four nodes may be connected in sixtyfoou possible networks,
representing various combinations of the component technologies. Rather than a full enumeration of links, any observed network of these four component technologies can be represented compactly by introducing three parent nodes, each with their own associated probabilities of linkage.
These parent nodes which cannot be observed directly in the data, represent morphological principles actively at work in structuring the data.
& Social Change 76 (2009) 1138 1149 4. Results In this results section we apply the methodology described in the previous section to a specific system of new technologies.
Our previous example of four technologies will be expanded considerably to the analysis of forty-one technologies within an information technology design context.
Ajax is not so much a single technology; rather it is an architecture of technological components.
Ajax is therefore a particularly good test bed to test new techniques for anticipating architectural innovation. Recognition of this architecture grew only once the component technologies were given the Ajax name 26.
In this regard of being a novel recombination of source technologies Ajax is not unlike many other modern technologies.
Other examples, drawn just from the information technology sector, include grid computing, the ipod and iphone, virtualization and LAMPP. 4. 1. Data collection and comparative analysis For the case study we collect data about Ajax and component technologies from the Internet.
We use Wikipedia as a test-bed by mining a series of pages and hyperlinks starting from a seed page.
At this disambiguation page AJAX the computing technology has been distinguished from other meanings of the word Ajax.
Many of these nodes in this expanded network are now very remote in content from Internet technologies.
Fitting the data The component technologies of Ajax may be represented in hierarchical random graph form. We apply the Monte carlo simulation procedure of Clauset 21 to fit the 41 pages within one hop of Ajax (Programming) into a hierarchical random graph.
along with general purpose technologies such as web servers, Javascript and object-oriented computer science. The hierarchical random graph also productively groups related technologies such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants.
Another example of effective groupings of technology induced by the network structure is the combination of search engines and web crawler.
At the lowest leaves of the tree are functional groupings of technologies including: scripting languages (Activex, Java Applets and Visual basic Script), document models (DOM and XHTML), alternative implementations of Ajax (using JSON and IFRAME),
and web application technologies (including key phrases of rich Internet applications, style sheets, web applications). The Monte carlo simulation procedure evaluated a range of competing solutions to the model.
There are many common features shared among the set of best solutions of the algorithm. It is useful to examine a consensus diagram showing the major shared features shown across multiple solutions.
The consensus diagram makes it clear that there are two sets of technologies technologies which are external
and technologies which may be considered internal to the Ajax paradigm. The internal technologies constitute a hierarchy in Fig. 6,
while external technologies do not reveal much hierarchical structure, at least in this sample of the data. One challenge to classification revealed by Figs. 5 and 6 is the placement of the various web browsers.
Consider that Safari, Internet explorer, Internet explorer 5, and Mozilla all various kinds of Internet browsers are placed in different locations in the hierarchical random graph.
On the face of it, these related technologies should probably be grouped together. However, this is not an artifact of the algorithm
It may be that the various browsers become closely associated with specific innovations in media technology. 4. 3. Interpreting the results Fig. 6 does not label the parent nodes with probabilities because of graphic visibility concerns.
Nonetheless, the principal virtue of this hierarchical graph approach is the ability to use this probability model to anticipate novel combinations of technologies.
which seem logical given the induced structure of the technological system but which have not yet been realized.
As noted earlier the parent probabilities provide an explicit hypothesis about the nature of technological linkages.
but not yet observed in the Wikipedia knowledge base are shown below in Table 2. Fig. 6. Consensus diagram for Ajax Technologies. 1145 S w. Cunningham/Technological forecasting
These technology linkages are associated with a 70%likelihood. Some additional research into the first item reveals that there are indeed developments here:
and manipulate these web components through a range of alternative assistive technologies. An example of an assistive technology is screen readers;
screen readers convert plain text HTML messages to audible speech or Braille output. This new standard for rich Internet applications was incorporated in a recent beta version of Internet explorer 8. 5. Policy impacts These developments in ARIA are less than a year old at the time this paper was written the W3c posted a working draft
In summary, the hierarchical random graph did seem to anticipate new technological changes in the area of new standards for accessible rich Internet applications.
It recognized these new changes without explicit linkages in the knowledge base of technologies. Thus, the hierarchical random graph approach may provide a new forecasting, analysis and design technique for architectural innovation.
We have argued in this paper that many previous technology forecasting techniques have focused only on incremental and dominant designs.
high costs, high uncertainty, technological inexperience, business inexperience, lengthy time to market, and the general destruction of firm competence 17,29, 30.
and technology databases using techniques such as hierarchical random graphs Knowledge claims are heterogenous in character Derrida 32 Networks built upon science
and technology databases are very heterogeneous in character Technologists have a wealth of tacit knowledge, built upon practice,
which they struggle to encode within the network of scientific progress Polanyi 35 Changes in technology in this case are manifested in changes in network structure Knowledge is built upon the configuration of knowledge claims,
and not associated with single individuals Table 2 The most likely new combinations of technology predicted by the graph.
Common understanding of technological architecture as provided by machine learning models and delivered by decision support systems, may contribute to an open innovation paradigm where firms work together as part of an extended technological network 11.
A final note from these results might be directed to assisting innovation theorists. This technological network clearly demonstrated technologies internal and external to the core technology network.
The disassortative character of this network means that architectural innovation is much likely to occur from external technologies.
Other technological architectures may be very different: these might be assortative networks which favor the use of technologies which are internal,
and therefore already present within the system. The author suggests that the original conception of architectural change,
as specified by Henderson and Clark 29, is predicated on external sources of innovation. Certainly, this is the class of technological innovations
and case studies. 6. Interpretations from the philosophy and sociology of science The hierarchical random graph is one possible model of science, technology and innovation data.
Derrida's ideas informed Callon and others who developed actor network theory as a vehicle for research in science and technology 33.
Knowledge about science and technology may come in two forms. Explicit knowledge entails knowledge about specific claims.
the existence of the claim can be verified through recourse to knowledge bases of science and technology.
Polanyi's account of science and technology has technologists laboring at the interface of claims,
and technology information, is likely to be material as well as semiotic in character. 1147 S w. Cunningham/Technological forecasting
The alternative approach would be to expressly encode the configuration within the database of science and technology.
a hierarchical random graph, is a useful way for structuring diffuse knowledge bases of science and technology.
as well as presaging a significant reorganization of the science and technology database to better match technological progress.
of which may be monitored by means of science and technology databases. This technique (and other techniques like it) may see application in open innovation,
and possible future research which might be performed to strengthen the method for technology analysis. The hierarchical random graph approach structured evidence of an existing technological network
recognizing the development of new technological linkages shortly after they actually occurred in the market.
Even better would have been to anticipate change before it occurs, rather than recognize change shortly after.
Nonetheless revealing undocumented links still provides a useful stimulus for technology monitoring efforts. The procedure proposed in this paper provides an objective method of predicting new technological linkages.
It remains subjective in two regards: the character of nodes, and the interpretation of new links.
For instance, the nodes used in this study ranged from specific technologies, to people (Jesse James Garrett), to institutions (W3c.
While a mix of node types might be desirable (for instance technology as well as process), it may be difficult to establish a uniform definition of the technological components of the network.
The case study recognized impending change in nodes related to W3c standard setting, rich Internet technologies, and Internet explorer.
Finding supporting evidence for change was ease. Nonetheless, interpreting the meaning of these changes introduced a component of subjectivity.
Such subjectivity may be hard to remove given the epistemic character of uncertainty in new technology. It is important also to acknowledge that this is only a first demonstration of concept on a relatively limited sample.
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Scott Cunningham received a Ph d. in Science, Technology and Innovation policy from the Science policy Research Unit.
developed patents in the fields of pricing and promotion algorithms, been a research fellow at the Technology policy Assessment Center of Georgia Tech,
He currently works for the Faculty of technology, Policy and Management, of the Delft University of Technology,
His book on Tech Mining co-authored with Alan Porter, was published in 2001 with Wiley. 1149 S w. Cunningham/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1138 1149
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