Technology Forecasting

Definition
Technological Forecasting tools can be used to decide if the market is really ready for an innovative new product (technology). The tools can be used to see how close an existing technology may be to the end of its life, identify competing new technologies still in their infancy, provide insights into possible adoption rates of the new technology (forecast sales), and for many other purposes..

Why Technology Forecasting ?

Technology Forecasting is one of several ways of "customer validation"- determining if customers will really buy an innovative new product or not. Prospective customer identification, interviews, prototypes, field testing, focus groups, test marketing, internet polls. Technology Forecasting is to gain confidence in the market. Technology Forecasting should not be used alone to "prove the market", but when used in conjunction with other tools, a greater understanding of the market can be realized.

Important Aspects
Primarily, a technological forecast deals with the characteristics of technology, such as levels of technical performance, like speed of a military aircraft, the power in watts of a particular future engine. Secondly, technological forecasting usually deals with only useful machines, procedures or techniques.

Methods of Technology Forecasting

THE DELPHI METHOD: The Delphi method is a structured communication technique, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. In the standard version, the experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results.

 Committees : committee is a qualitative forecasting technique in which a group of experts are involved ; this helps in avoiding individual biases. These experts usually carry relevant experience and may be drawn from internal or external sources. The number of experts in a committee depends upon the important nature of the technological forecast. If the forecast is highly important, seven-eight, or more, experts may be involved. The experts meet on different occasions, interact with each other, exchange their views and develop consensus forecast.

e.g. : Technology forecasting for telecommunications

Technology forecasting in telecommunications has been a success story. This may seem like a bold statement given the recent debacle in the telecommunications industry, caused in part by some extremely poor forecasts. The successes over the last twenty years are many and include good forecasts in the following areas: digital switching, digital transmission, fiber transport SONET/SDH adoption, optical data rates, cellular adoption, digital cellular substitution, wireless competition, Internet demand, broadband access (e.g. DSL and cable modems), bandwidth demand, and DTV/HDTV, to name a few. Active forecasting areas where technology forecasting is crucial, but where it is still too early to gauge success, include VDSL, PONs, VoIP, IP PABXs, 3G wireless, wireless LANs, and the future increases in access bandwidth.

THANK YOU