ISSN 1995-459X print E-ISSN 2312-9972 online ISSN 2500-2597 online English
Editor-in-chief Leonid Gokhberg
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2021. vol. 15. No. 2
Topic of the issue: Foresight and Roadmapping Methodology
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5–11
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This guest editorial article introduces contextual and theoretical frameworks of foresight and futures studies’ methodology. Outstanding questions relating to methodological development are then addressed. This is followed by an introduction to five papers that make important methodological contributions. The article ends by a call for further research on the questions that have been identified, but remain unanswered. |
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12–24
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Identifying technology trends can be a key success factor for companies to be competitive and take advantage of technological trends before they occur. The companies always work to plan for future products and services. For that, it is important to turn to methods that are used for technology forecasting. These tools help the companies to define potential markets for innovative new products and services. This paper uses text mining techniques along with expert judgment to detect and analyze the near-term technology evolution trends in a Software as a Service (SaaS) case study. The longer-term technology development trend in this case is forecasted by analyzing the gaps between science and technology. This paper contributes to the technology forecasting methodology and will be of interest to those in SaaS technology. Our findings reveal five trends in the technology: 1) virtual networking, 2) the hybrid cloud, 3) modeling methodologies, 4) mobile applications, and 5) web applications. Among the results achieved, we can summarize the interesting ones as follows: it is possible to say that traditional information systems are now evolving into online information systems. On the other hand, the use of a licensing model based on subscriptions triggers the change in perpetual licensing models. The product range that has evolved towards mobile technologies has put pressure on information storage technologies and has led to the search for new methods especially in the development of database systems. |
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25–38
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Foresight scenarios are not only useful presentational devices to show that many aspects of the future are open. Scenarios are means for generating advice that helps policymakers initiate actions in the present or near future that will be of long-term significance. Despite the influence that such advice may have on policy decisions, the Foresight literature has paid very little attention to the creation of policy recommendations. Though reports of scenario exercises frequently conclude with lists of recommendations that follow from the study, there is very little explication of the process whereby advice is elicited from the examination of these future scenarios. This paper addresses this gap, examining how the generation of recommendations is related to the development of scenarios within multiple future repositioning workshop settings. It focuses on the fluency and originality of these recommendations, and how this is influenced by repositioning participants in highly transformational scenarios. Repositioning is the process whereby participants are invited to imagine themselves playing roles in hypothetical future contexts, and on that basis to make decisions or devise strategies as if they actually were immersed in these circumstances. The method proposed and the findings of the case study have implications for why and how this future repositioning approach can be incorporated as a ‘key feature’ in the design of Foresight activities. The aim is also to raise awareness of the need for more exploration of Foresight recommendation methodology. |
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39–51
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Roadmapping has long been regarded as a practical tool for supporting decision-making for science and technology innovation and it has received recent attention for its potential use in responses to uncertainty. Indeed, roadmapping enables forward-looking strategy making and thus helps to reduce uncertainty. Accordingly, numerous studies have been conducted to propose new approaches to roadmapping for a wide range of contexts, including the data-driven and expert-based approaches. Although these two main approaches have distinct advantages and disadvantages, few previous studies have focused on how to integrate them into roadmapping to better support decision-making related to science and technology innovation. To address this research gap, this study investigated how to integrate data-driven approaches with expert insights during roadmapping. For this purpose, a workshop-based roadmapping method was combined with data-driven methods to test this approach in the context of technology planning for the automobile industry. An ethnographic approach was used to collect data on when, where, and how data analysis must be conducted to support experts’ discussions. The research findings open a discussion regarding how to integrate data-driven methods with expert insights during roadmapping based on the trade-offs between the two types of data, that is, hard data for data-driven methods and soft data from expert insights, and suggest possible opportunities for future roadmapping developments. |
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52–64
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This paper proposes a knowledge co-creation roadmapping tool for knowledge creation in future-oriented discussions for members of competing firms with the aim of co-creatively envisioning the future of the industry. This approach adapts the roadmapping method to knowledge creation, thus building a communication infrastructure for discussing future plans beyond an organization (i.e., participants are from competing companies). Knowledge co-creation roadmapping could be commissioned to an open industry organization consisting of members sent by individual companies interested in overcoming obstacles to development. We put our method into practice with the subcommittee of the Engineering Advancement Association of Japan and set the subject as “The Future of Smart Social Infrastructure”, a theme involving multiple stakeholders. We were able to draw up a vision of smart technology on the basis of the insights gained through the roadmapping activities. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in terms of acquiring knowledge that could not be obtained by our own company or a single industry organization alone. |
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65–81
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Technology roadmapping has become an important foresight tool for science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy and technology strategy development. There are, however, challenges in translating evidence from foresight into the strategies of STI agencies and the planning of research & technology development (RTD) organizations. While the foresight evaluation literature identifies methodological issues related to evidence granularity, scope, and stakeholder confidence, there is limited guidance on how to ensure roadmapping outputs are strategically relevant, appropriately detailed, and credible. This paper highlights the potential of using structured visual roadmapping frameworks to anticipate potential strategic foresight evidence failures and using the adaptive and iterative nature of roadmapping processes to address them. In this paper, we distinguish between: the roadmapping framework ‘canvas’; the foresight evidence captured on the canvas; the process of generating the evidence; and any final strategic plan developed using that evidence (with goals, milestones, actions, etc). We investigate efforts to use the roadmapping canvas as a research tool and diagnostic to explore emerging technology trajectories and innovation ‘pathways’. We demonstrate that key patterns of evidence distribution on the roadmapping canvas have the potential to reveal where further evidence may need to be gathered, or where further triangulation of stakeholder perspectives may be required. We argue that by adaptively addressing these patterns at key stages within the roadmapping process (and appropriately re-scoping, re-prioritizing, and re-focusing foresight effort and resources), the granularity, coverage, and consensus of the roadmapping evidence can be greatly enhanced. We conclude the paper by summarizing a set of novel principles for adaptive agile roadmapping, reflecting on the implications for foresight more generally, and outlining a future research agenda to test and refine this approach to agile foresight. |
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