and is a useful service for companies to monitor the complex business environment and provide information to allow adaptation of strategies.
and tracing the role of dirreversibilitiest of technological changes (i e. expectations that guide the research activities of scientists and firms,
be it from a company's or from a public policy perspective, is confronted with the need to navigate increasingly complex decision landscapes.
whether this kind of argument is applied to company strategies or to national policies: it implies a need to accept a quite limited power to control the future.
This holds for private firms as well as for government bodies. On the other hand, these debates are essential for consolidating forward-looking insights and making them effective in policy-making.
, industrial firms. Taken together, these features of structured consultation contribute to a closer alignment between the priorities (as conveyed by calls for proposals) and the interests and competencies of the RTD community.
Res. in press. 19 M.,Lindstedt, J.,Liesiö, A.,Salo, Participatory development of a strategic product portfolio in a telecommunication company, Inter.
as well as various projects for industrial firms, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Committee for the Future of the Parliament.
In a European-wide company survey, companies were asked about the relevance of different types of regulations for the market introduction of new products and services and the various aspects of innovation activities 8. In addition,
In a survey conducted in 1998 among companies of 12 manufacturing sectors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 2 Nevertheless,
Recently, Swann 18 used this information to assess the impact of British standards for the innovation activities of British companies. 504 K. Blind/Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 496 516
Blum et al. 29 covered a variety of possible impacts of both company-specific informal industry and formal standards.
integrating also service companies 31. This leads us to the studies on standards focusing on services or service companies.
The start of standardisation activities within services is rather recent. De vries 32 33 was one of the first researchers who conducted first case studies on standards for services
In a survey among German service companies, Mörschel and Schwengels 35 present a ranking of future standardisation areas according to their priority,
data formats and customer interaction are most important for the surveyed German service companies. This result reveals indirectly that there are strong expectations that those standards will obviously have a high positive impact to improve the former aspects.
and externally for signalling a company's competence to customers, fulfilling legal obligations and for fostering domestic and international trade of services.
and was able to rely on the answers of a sample of more than 350 service companies in the European union,
the impacts of standards on central issues and assets of service companies have also been asked for
but also that standards can support companies in fulfilling the needs of their customers and in securing a certain quality of the services provided.
The division of the sample into companies and research organisations reveals that companies are already much more involved in the elaboration of quality and compatibility standards than research organisations.
If surveys address the universe of organisations, e g. firms, and lead to representative results, the data can be combined with indicator-based approaches representing the universe in science and technology.
and maintenance) uniformly among related companies. 2009 3. 33 3. 14 2. 39 2. 29 3. 54 Development of a super high-speed computer communication protocol capable
73 3. 00 A service that evaluates the security of the e-commerce system of individual companies
reduction of inventory risk for companies. 2014 3. 65 3. 42 1. 86 2. 35 2. 38 All public transport bookings, confirmation of transport services,
enabling at least half of company workers engaged in indirect duties to tele-commute. 2015 3. 25 3. 20 2. 53 2. 23 3. 07 510 K. Blind/Technological forecasting
Again in contrast to traditional science and technology foresight exercises representatives from companies, especially those involved in regulatory affairs
and even the identification of stakeholders, especially companies, but also researchers, to be involved in the regulatory process.
and private companies, is an option to improve the reliability and the validity of survey results.
Unternehmerischer Nutzen Beuth-Verlag, 2 Bände, Beuth-Verlag, Berlin, 2000.30 M. T. H. Meeus, J. Faber, L a. G. Oerlemans, Why do firms
There is a wealth of literature focusing on the functions, uses and tools of roadmaps in high-technology companies andmncs 3 20.
The long term aim is to package MPM as a strategic support system for start-up (and more mature) companies.
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.
when different firms share particular search and development routines, these routines add up to a technological regime.
Fig. 2. Broader innovation issues of the transition from research lab to company in the single cell analysis innovation chain. 524 D. K. R. Robinson,
The first path shows a technology that is already present within a start-up company (as a prospective component of an integrated system)
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.
Perhaps when a generic platform is the target large companies may invest, but application focus for cell-on-a-chip will be niche market oriented.
Thus MNCS attempt at shifting the risk to start-up companies which build on their own ties with the research community
a large multinational pharmaceutical company initiated the development of a prototype integrated device for chemical analysis with a number of start-up companies 17 For some more information on this and other elements of the Frontier FTA programme,
to another company with the end effect of the start-up companies being dissolved. Another obstacle came from the MNC perspective based on the risk of outsourcing the development of an integrated platform to SMES:
In innovation chain 3 a consortium of start-up companies would be the initiator for bridging the gap by attempting a generic integrated platform
The workshop participants agreed that the attractiveness of this innovation chain would be tempered again by IP issues a large number of companies, distributed IP,
where start-up companies (and perhaps larger companies) would form the constituents of the heterogeneous cluster.
Innovation chain 1 has been attempted by large companies such as Siemens for relatively simple integrated microfluidics. One participant mentioned a Lab-cow:
Innovation chain 2 has occurred with companies such as Glaxo-Smith-Kline19 and spin-offs such as those University of Hull (UK) and Yole Developpement,
and nanotechnology SME networks such as Minacned. 21 Innovation chain 4 is currently occurring at the University of Twente (NL) where a start-up company with a specific sensor is acting as platform integrator.
In the University of Twente case, we see a spin-off company becomes the system integrator for a specific application.
and builds its network around them with a view to transition to a company after proof of concept. 6. Discussion
as well as the strategies that companies actually use. Shifts of entanglements are possible for actors for some time
For reflexive alignment within research networks or firms it would seem advantageous that a‘strategy support system'(SSS) should be developed as a toolbox to be used without external help.
and start-up companies. Through analysis of socio-technical scenarios, emerging paths and emerging irreversibilities in the field of research can be anticipated
For a company or specific project leader, the path analysis is with respect to developments in research, the business environment, possible users, as well as regulation.
The path they wish to develop strategy for is their company path. The tool can also be used in communities outside of research and technology development but related to its financing, such as venture capitalists.
a young start-up company initiated in February 2006 with intentions to be the systems integrator of a lab-on-a-chip device focused on a specific application in the medical sector.
This start-up company is attempting innovation chain 4 (heterogeneous clusters) based on an application oriented innovation chain where users are involved already in the design process.
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)
A survey from Bain & Company, Strateg. Change 9 (2000) 269 274.20 P. Savioz, M. Blum, Strategic forecast tool for SMES:
Technological change and Company Strategies, Academic Press, London, 1992, pp. 72 102.46 A. Rip, R. Kemp, Technological change, in:
and networking between organisations (universities, research institutes, firms and service-providers), which is held generally to improve the prospects for successful innovation.
www. wiseguys. ltd. uk, a company he launched in 2000 to conduct innovation policy research and provide advice to innovation policymakers and administrators.
as it is composed of all other EU, national and regional policies affecting RTDI processes and performance, the activities of firms, various types of R&d units and institutes, higher education organisations, financial intermediaries,
First, a large number of research organisations (universities, public and private labs, firms, etc. located in currently laggard countries likely emerge as major players.
and (c) can hamper innovation efforts of firms; see, e g. 1, 22,42. 567 A. Havas/Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 558 582 3. Stronger, better articulated needs for multi-(trans;
Besides conventional academic researchers, knowledge is produced by a wide variety of players, e g. think tanks, private research organisations, nonprofit organisations, government agencies, consultancy companies, market research organisations, patients'groups, various
firms'labs), sold to other parties (contract research organisations, consultancies) or exploited in political/societal processes for advocating/pursuing certain views or interests (NGOS, trade associations).
products, firms, value chains (production networks),(sub-national) regions, nations, or even larger entities. This problem obviously cannot be solved here. 28 In launching the discussion on the priorities for the new generation of cohesion policy programmes,
strong academia industry co-operation, mutually beneficial, intense links among large firms and SMES in a large number of regions (gradually increasing over time) Intense communication among businesses, academia,
strong academia industry co-operation, mutually beneficial, intense links among large firms and SMES both inside and across flourishing regions Coordinated, joint efforts supported by EU funds
yet, a number of other organisations e g. think tanks, private research organisations, private nonprofit research organisations, government laboratories, consultancy firms, patient organisations, various NGOS, trade associations and interest groups
Nonetheless, the purpose of this article is not to advocate flexible networks of innovating firms as a preferred form of innovative activity.
may contribute to an open innovation paradigm where firms work together as part of an extended technological network 11.
The consequences of assortative and disassortative architectural networks may be very different across firms and industries.
the reconfiguration of existing product technologies and the failure of established firms, Adm. Sci. Q. 35 (1990) 9 30.30 S g. Green, M. B. Gavin, L. Aiman-Smith, Assessing a multidimensional measure of radical technological innovation, IEEE Trans.
He has worked as a data miner for large database companies, developed patents in the fields of pricing and promotion algorithms, been a research fellow at the Technology policy Assessment Center of Georgia Tech,
regions, sectors and companies mainly by focusing on perspectives associated with new technology development. Furthermore, its standard case of application has been to direct
Greening as strategic development in industrial change why companies participate in eco-networks, Geoforum 39 (1)( 2008) 32 47.63 J. Gausemeier,
whether it fits into the company and/or the society, and whether it has impacts or side-effects.
Weak signal and Wild Card analyses for instance are used tools in risk analyses concerning the strategic design of societies or companies, e g. 43 45.
and management of future uncertainties and risks in companies that are giving rise to new business 29.
and methods for companies in order to support the decision making related to introducing existing technologies into new markets, development of new technologies for existing markets,
Methods are developed together with the companies in three different case studies: a medium-size company offering control systems for high-tech companies, a medium-size technology company and a large-size technology company. 2 The back-pocket roadmap starts
by defining the state-of-the-art of the markets, the existing technology or know-how, and the existing offering in the markets,
The link between the opportunity analysis and strategy works of a company becomes evident in the roadmapping process 29.
The experiences of the method development in the INNORISK case companies have been positive. Dominating feature in all cases has been that the top management of the companies has been involved actively in the development processes.
Active involvement of the decision makers in the analysis allowed them to have a broad and realistic image about opportunities and risks related to the new (potential) business.
in order to evaluate their business potential after 5 10 years in a medium-size company. One opportunity was selected for more thorough concept development including iterative steps of idea generation and enrichment,
In the medium-size technology company a roadmap of the offering of the company in the future was done
and these in turn guide the company on how to deal with the identified challenge: act, prepare or monitor.
The new framework help companies to create climate change strategies. How case studies contributed to risk resilience thinking?
The Handbook of Technology foresight, PRIME Series on Research and Innovation policy, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2008.8 I. Nonaka, H. Takeutchi, The Knowledge-creating Company, Oxford university Press, New york, 1995.9
45 Futuríbles, THE Strategic Environment for Companies: Guideline Scenarios General Summary, 2004 http://www. futuribles. com/pdf/Strategicenvironment. pdf. Read 28th 2009.
and the creation of credible indices of progress across countries, companies and groups with common assumptions to measure progress. 3. Reducing the domain of the unknowable It is hard to imagine the consequences of a new breakthrough before it occurs.
The fourth group of respondents, that of Company Executives, was formed from one hundred of the largest Finnish companies measured in terms of their product development investments.
According to the results, the Finnish politicians are consistently more optimistic than professional engineers or company executives about the country's techno-economic development.
and trans-illuminating its meaning and significance at the company level could help businesses identify the various phases of the innovation process,
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1187 1197 For the survey, in September 2008 altogether 19.365 persons from German companies, academia, associations and single persons (consultants or persons
or companies in other countries dealing with crosscutting issues and future topics with a time horizon of 10 to 15 years and beyond?
There are also data available on the types of businesses that use scenarios most often large firms in capital-intensive industries with long (greater than 10 years) planning horizons.
using scenarios to address the challenges facing firms can easily fail for another reason: managers can reject the scenarios
and companies throughout the Europe and many other regions of the world in either its basic form (as described here) or in its later formats.
this was ignored widely by companies and in the end it was abandoned. It is almost certain that a similar fate will befall any similar attempt to halt
and of reinsurance companies shaping the emerging path of RRI. Dynamics are visible at all three levels,
Firms are reluctant to start reporting the DEFRA voluntary reporting initiative was mentioned as having limitations
This leads to precaution by health insurance companies to cover the procedure. The further effect is that this medical option becomes available only to those who can obtain it in another way through private clinics. 1232 D. K. R. Robinson/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009
The daylong workshop was comprised of a number nanotechnology researchers, a ministry of health representative, a large chemical company, a trade union representative, a nanotechnology industry association,
the ethics of promising (by researchers and firms), the ethics of engagement (not incorporated in the scenarios
for this reason our company will not sign up A strong position: this is a stylised quote announced by a large pharmaceutical company in a meeting in November 2007 on Nanomedicine 38..
(and flourish) to take the university research to the market, 1234 D. K. R. Robinson/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1222-1239 with the prospect of takeover by larger firms in 3 to 4
small companies begin to commercialise this technology Broader context of comparable innovation journeys: these other fields are added to compare to the medical device innovation journeys later in the scenario..
A number of legal actions were filed against medical device companies which in turn causes health insurance companies to withdraw their backing of the devices in their coverage.
One medic was quoted saying The technologists missed the boat early on, they should have listened to user needs rather than contemplating far off utopian and dystopian sci-fi futures Consequence of division of RRI labour:
like how governance arrangements affect cowboy firms (and other organizations) versus good firms. This scenario worked well in terms of showing interactions
Many of these methods were developed between the 1940s and 1970s, often in the USA and often in affiliation with defence-related analyses or strategic intelligence in large firms.
Porter's book from 1980 focused on the strategic management of a firms'external environment and on selecting a strategy to position a firm in the market (Porter 1990.
and it was stipulated that a number of companies not just one must be involved. The research consortia instrument was added to the list of seven strategy areas for the Strategy plan The eight areas were:(
A professional designer and a PR company were hired also to work on the final publication. Contrary to the earlier 5-year plans, the Strategy plan 2003 2007 was targeted primarily at politicians,
the PR company and the authors of the vision papers only a few other persons were involved directly in the development of the Strategy plan 2003 2007.
Technollog and Innovation Partly the Confederation of Danish Industries Advisory Council for Energy Research Energy production companies Energy-technology companies Scientists Interest groupings/NGOS Target groups
Upward Government minister, parliamentary politicians Downward Programme Management system operators (PSO actors) Energy production companies Energy-technology companies Scientists Approaches Key scope Science
namely the energy efficiency PSO, managed by the association of energy production companies, ELFOR. However, ELFOR has less influence than the energysysstem operators.
The knowledge-creating company. Newyork: Oxford university Press. Porter, M. E. 1990. Competitive strategy. Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors.
Technology foresight in companies: from an indicator to a network and process perspective. Technology analysis & Strategic management 13, no. 4: 533 53.
and the establishment of several public research centres in 1987, with the primary aim of supporting technological innovation in firms.
as well as companies and public administrators. These were focused all upon identifying future research directions for Luxembourg. In parallel, key trends
Initiatives in this urban policy area were expected to contribute to enhancing the competitiveness of firms in the city,
3) 800 companies engaged in R&d;(4) 20%of the population having a university degree;(
Whereas Fombrun discusses howa company should take care of its own image in order to communicate effectively with its stakeholders,
Imagine a scenario in which our organization is an American company initiating operations in Australia.
A l. Porter/Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1070 1081 1075 o three companies each show 7
Company at a Glance: Ceramic Fuel cells Ltd. http://www. cfcl. com. au/Love 6 Ciacchi 8 Zhang 9 Foger 16 Badwal 2 Jiang 22
Investors in the Company: 12 Organizations, including Australian manufacturing, power, gas, investment & government. Low High tech Fit Tech Coverage Tech Concentration Hungry?
CHANAUD P Badwal AHMED K 012345678 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Company Patenting Trend Who uses their patents?
Company Knowledge Network Fig. 2. Organizational ddone-Pagerq. A l. Porter/Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1070 1081 1076!
Within the Scorecard, the Capabilities Spectrum synthesizes information to draw implications regarding this company's relative strengths.!
From this digest of the company's open R&d face, we pose the action question for managerial decision.
But note that we also tap Internet sources here, for company information. In general, we find that the databases provide much richer S&t information resources with a measure of quality control.
Fig. 2 profiles one company's activity in this case for one technological development domain, SOFCS. Other variants of company profiling might compare the company's activities across technologies,
or probe more deeply into a more specific sub-area (e g.,, nano-surfaces and rare-earth materials for SOFCS.
These centres which are organised as nonprofit seeking companies owned by the state, research institutes, universities and private companies will establish new ways of allocating resources to research activities,
in accordance with research plans that are jointly agreed upon by companies, universities and research institutes, with the aim of fostering research that will offer possibilities for the commercial deployment of results within 5 10 years.
These centres seek to build a highly efficient framework for enhanced collaboration between companies universities, research organisations.
By June 2009, six strategic centres have started their operations (i e. energy and environment; metal products and mechanical engineering;
See http://www. aka. fi/en-gb/A/for details. 3. Tekes provides project-oriented funding to universities, polytechnics, research institutions and industrial firms,
Future-oriented technology analysis impacts and implications for policy and decision making, Technological forecasting and Social Change 76 (2009) 1135 1137.14 I. Nonaka, H. Takeuchi, The Knowledge-creating Company, Oxford university Press, Oxford
At the same time sectoral and technology specific determinants (technological regimes) significantly structure companies'search processes and thereby shape the dynamics of knowledge production 11.
and innovation, borne by PROS, universities and firms, which employ researchers, manage infrastructures; they produce,
plant genomics is based a science discipline where industrial companies play a major part, which means that it is regulated by a firm IPR regime. 5. 1. 1. GMP:
Under pressure from the biotech firms, and from America and other big growers ofgmcrops, the EU then persuaded the anti-GM countries to replace the moratorium with a scheme in
plant genomics development is based a science activity led by industrial companies. This domain displays a strong institutional (i e. inter sectoral) complementarity between industry and academia.‘‘
S ense-and-respond firms must excel at sensing subtle change earlier and in responding to it faster than do their competitors.
which a company can regularly and systematically marshal the pattern-recognition capabilities of a group of professionals to identify important changes in the business environment
and evaluate them in the context of the company's strategy, competencies, and mission. 2. The promise The organizations that survive today's marketplace turbulence will be those that can adapt rapidly to change.
of knowledge into a company is just as important as managing information flows within the company.
The companies that currently incorporate externalities well usually depend on a leader at the top of the corporation who performs the scanning function on a continual basis,
If a company wants to attain mind share in a large segment of the consumer market, concentrating on flash instead of function
Software systems are even available to set up futures markets that allow employees to bet on the market success of various products a company has in development.
This type of clustering allows companies to gain ideas from other industries or other product domains.
To bdistributeq a future orientation throughout client companies both push and pull distribution mechanisms are necessary.
A pull mechanism, in which employees in the client company can pull content from the scanning abstract data base as the need arises,
A push mechanism, in which the scanners and meeting participants push content into distribution throughout the company,
and administrators in the company. Boring memos or e-mails typically are lost in the shuffle so a journalistic flair is frequently helpful in attracting attention and readership.
and experience to assist companies in creating their own internal K. M. Patton/Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1082 1093 1091 scanning systems.
That experience includes an awareness of the hurdles that companies typically face in attempting to implement scanning processes internally.
and longer-term benefits accurately is important to a fair trial of the process within a company.!
companies have applied it in various other ways. Scanning processes can serve as a form of peripheral vision (to avoid being blindsided by events outside one's industry),
In the corporate world, the rise of open innovation has emphasised the need for firms to work with their collaborators
and shape the future of their innovation environment 6. Firms are increasingly playing a role in defining innovation policy due to the rise of demand side approaches and the convergence of corporate and structural foresight.
In the open innovation systems firms are concerned less with stand-alone type foresight and more about how corporate strategy interfaces with the emerging research and innovation policy scenario.
Research on prioritisation practice in the world's leading research companies in the USA and Europe has indicated that corporate labs had moved away from the traditional, discipline-based organisation 16.
Becker reports that a small group of firms (Daimlerchrysler, Philips and Decathlon) use foresight in a catalytic role to stimulate
as firms become increasingly dependent on complementary or external sources of technology, formulation of strategy, previously an internal activity, must at least in part nowbe carried out in the public arena.
This thinking was also the basis of the‘‘open innovation''concept in that it recognises centrally that innovation is a process of interaction between firms
and their external environments and that firms do not innovate alone, but by interacting with universities, technological institutes, consulting companies, suppliers and even competitors.
Supply-side refers here to the provision of firms with resources, technological knowledge and/or the capabilities to innovate.
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