Technology forecasting
Technology forecasting (TF) is part of the strategic innovation and technology management. Your goal is to identify promising technological approaches or trends to make their development potential significantly and prepare for the launch of new products by suitable measures. In English (and often in German ) technology forecasting is also referred to by the term " technology intelligence ".
History
Originally they were looking for clues through the analysis and extrapolation of operational key figures from business data. Focused on the early detection of financial imbalances in the enterprise This vividly reminiscent of a controlling instrument "early warning". Even in the developing therefrom " early " - the specially established for this purpose indicators einbezog - it went ultimately to an assessment of the situation of ( business ) data from yesterday. Only in the third generation, the " foresight ", reached strategic, performance- oriented potential and especially future-oriented issues to the fore. From this it can be deduced technology forecasting and technology foresight as strategies that support the business owners / managers, especially in the early phase of the innovation process in the selection of relevant technologies.
Objectives
TF technology allows the manager the preparation of strategic decisions. Without this information base decisions made are subjective, spontaneous and based on larger uncertainties but can still - though less likely - be correct. The usually carried out as a continuous process monitoring of individual fields of technology allows the company to:
- Early and often to identify even weak evidence of technologies and technological developments,
- Generating ideas for new products and services,
- To exploit new technological solutions in ongoing projects,
- To provide information for the assessment,
- To identify external suppliers, which should be included,
- Expand existing core competencies,
- New skills and thereby creating new market access.
Are crucial for the success of TF
- Good and reliable sources of information within and outside the company,
- Each relied on selection and evaluation criteria for new technologies,
- A reliable, continuous communication of the results of the TF in the company.
In companies preferred selection and assessment criteria are based on the (future) market environment, they are usually relatively short term and product-based oriented. The larger the company and the greater openness to questions and planning for periods of five years out, the more likely resemble the matrix of criteria which the TF in the public or cross-industry area. Aspects such as sustainability, social change and general opportunities and risks of new technologies play in the TF in the public sector, which is generally more comprehensive and long-term oriented, a larger role than in the company. The technology manager must be limited to a narrower set of criteria in order to make the process financially and temporal vision feasible. It is helpful nonetheless to gather all possible criteria at an early stage of the process and to face each other to finally focus through a conscious ranking on the current situation for the most important. Technology forecasting especially makes sense if it is understood as an iterative learning process. That is, the TF process is not carried out once, and its results will then hold for some time. Only a continuous continuation ensures that those weak signals of burgeoning technologies are identified early, which could have negative consequences for a product, production process, a product line or under circumstances the whole company for non-compliance. As a continuous process thought offers the opportunity search spaces used, evaluation grid, source selection and implementation of the results to continually optimize. In operational practice, it has proved useful to complete the TF process into three steps. In the first substep relevant technology options are identified, the second assessed on the basis of an evaluation grid; in the third, the selected technology options for integration into the internal processes are being prepared. In this sub-step, the targeted communication of the results of the company plays an important role.