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.
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
The role of the technology barometer in assessing the performance of the national innovation system Torsti Loikkanen a,,
The article presents the background, methodology and results of technology barometer, discusses its impacts on national discussion,
The Finnish association of graduate engineers developed a technology barometer in collaboration with VTT Innovation studies during 2002 2003. The first technology barometer was published in 2004
and since then that barometer has been repeated twice in 2005 and 2007 3 7. The plan is to publish a barometer once in every two to three years.
The content of the technology barometer will be developed further in appropriate ways, however, without jeopardizing its comparative nature
and methodology Technology barometer is a societal indicator instrument with a strong emphasis on the innovation environment.
The purpose of a technology barometer is to give data of how favorable and competitive the Finnish innovation environment is assessed to be now and in the future.
In technology barometer this challenge is solved by dividing the exercise first into a comparison of the performance of the Finnish innovation system with selected nations on a basis of available international indicators
and second, to a technology barometer based on a survey study of the visions and attitudes of relevant national key actor and interest groups.
2. Technology barometer is based on the studies of the dynamic evolution of various development stages of a modern society after the industrialized development stage,
The technology barometer instrument utilizes the concepts developed by contemporary social scientists and innovation theorists, such as Bell 8
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1177 1186 The theoretical framework of technology barometer is based on various economic development stages since the first barometer exercise in 2004.
The indicators of technology barometer are structured correspondingly among different development stages of a modern society, from an information society into a knowledge society and from the knowledge society stage towards a knowledgevaalu society and towards the society fulfilling the requirements of sustainable development.
the technology barometer consists of four components, each containing three indicators (Fig. 1). In the information society,
In the technology barometer, the definition of an information society is focused around the investments in human and intellectual capital,
In technology barometer, the indicators of knowledge society assess the gearing of the human and intellectual capital investments towards science and technology
In addition to the three development phases of a modern society, technology barometer considers sustainable development as a fourth object of analysis,
The technology barometer measures the objectives of sustainable development by three indicator entities social cohesion in the society in question, environmental protection actions taken by businesses and authorities,
In conclusion, an indicator study of the technology barometer comprises 12 sub-indicators providing an index-type key value indicating the state of technology at a given time.
The development of an appropriate content, scope and structure of the technology barometer, as described above, involved a series of expert panels of the TEK, VTT and innovation policy experts.
and related construction of composite indicators 1. Methodological issues need to be addressed transparently prior to the construction and use of Fig. 1. Internal structure of technology barometer. 1179 T. Loikkanen et al./
In the technology barometer the computational procedure is as follows. Each partial area is measured by using a combined indicator
Techno-scientific competence (pages 17 19 in Technology barometer 2007,7) includes the demographic group of people aged 25 64 with higher education qualifications, the share of new graduates in techno
According to this index figure Finland rates as second after Sweden in Technology barometer 2007. In the same way other combined composite indicators determine Finland's proportional rating compared to the reference group countries in different areas of technology barometer (the content of Technology barometer 2007 is presented in Appendix B
). Besides the indicator-based comparative analysis the technology barometer includes a forward-looking survey of future expectations of relevant target groups.
The survey is based on a questionnaire directed to four relevant target groups, i e. the members of the Finnish association of graduate engineers TEK, young people studying at the senior secondary school level, political decision-makers and business decision-makers.
and innovation performance of the nation. 3. Results of technology barometer 3. 1. Indicator-based comparison Statistical indicators collected from the eight countries through OECD
In the first three implementation rounds of technology barometer all reference group countries appear to have specific profiles of their own with strong characteristic features.
7. The synthesis paints a picture of the country's progress in each indicator of two recent technology barometers.
Compared to the previous indicator studies (Technology barometer 2004 and 2005 positive development was observed in entrepreneurship and openness to internationalism. 1180 T. Loikkanen et al./
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1177 1186 3. 2. Survey study of future visions In addition to indicator-based comparison the technology barometer instrument includes a survey about people's expectations regarding the future development trends.
altogether Fig. 3. Positioning Finland in technology barometer 2007: Figure sets out Finland's above-average or below-average rating in comparison to the reference group (the y axis),
like the idea of including interactive and mobile media skills to science education curriculum at the elementary level. 3. 3. Synthesizing discussion Each technology barometer consists of concluding discussions of certain topical issues
Accordingly technology barometer 2007 accentuated the following three crosscutting themes: the changing role of knowledge-intensive work, innovations and business,
the technology barometer has proven to be capable of casting additional light on bottlenecks and problem areas within the national innovation environment in Finland.
Technology barometer provides a vast amount of processed and organized information for further analyses and its results can be utilized as an aid and support for long-term decisions concerning science, technology, innovation and education.
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1177 1186 most notably in terms of social needs and innovation policy interest, for the kinds of insights that the technology barometer exercise can deliver.
Because the technology barometer is an initiative of The Finnish association of graduate engineers (TEK), a professional and labour market organization with about 70,000 members,
Section 4. 1 draws conclusions of the experiences and observable impacts of technology barometer as an instrument supporting innovation policy-making
and Section 4. 2 discusses further development perspectives of the barometer in the future. 4. 1. Results of barometer support innovation policy-making One of the strategic aims of technology barometer exercise is to provide guidance on technologies and actions
Technology barometer aims at a contribution to related national discussion. Fromthe policy-makers'point of viewthere is a clear demand for an instrument providingwell argued,
and synthesizing it into meaningful conclusions remain among the key tasks in technology barometer exercises. These tasks are also under continuous refinement and fine-tuning.
The technology barometer instrument, which is a combination of social and economic scientific methods, calls for a high transparency of the methods used as well as transparency of all the utilized data.
Wide interest in the technology barometer is indicated e g. by numerous articles in newspapers and professional journals.
and publish technology barometer at appropriate intervals of two or three years. The precise timing of barometer procedure depends
and will be taken into account also in the further development of the structure and content of technology barometer.
and survey studies of technology barometer. The further development of barometer to respond to the above mentioned challenges is already in process.
What future development possibilities does the technology barometer instrument offer? Technology barometer is going to be developed towards an instrument that analyzes innovation systems as far-reaching socioeconomic technical complexes.
In order to respond to the systemic challenges of the innovation policy environment, there is also a need to increase the proactive and future-oriented elements in technology barometer.
More future-oriented evaluative schemes and templates are needed in order to grasp and understand the wider systemic challenges of the innovation practices.
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1177 1186 Appendix B. Technology barometer 2007 Technology instrument for measuring citizens'attitudes and the nation's orientation towards a knowledge-based
. Sustainable development 4. 5. 1. Factors threatening the environment 4. 5. 2. The state of the environment and the actions of the authorities Appendices Content of the Technology barometer Key results Competence and knowledge
, Tekniikan Akateemisten Liitto TEK ry, Artprint Oy, Helsinki, 2004.4 M. Naumanen, Technology barometer, The Finnish association of graduate engineers TEK, Painomerkki Oy, Helsinki, 2004.5 M. Naumanen
Tekniikan Akateemisten Liitto TEK, Painotalo Miktor, Helsinki, 2007.7 O. Lehtoranta, P. Pesonen, T. Ahlqvist, E. Mononen, T. Loikkanen, Technology barometer 2007
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