The potential of emerging technologies: Strategy-planning for technology-providers throughout an application-radar

The increasing divergency and the decreasing half-life period of technologies combined with the growing global competition in the development of technologies force technology providers to comply with the rules of the free market economy and to consider the market needs more intensively in their future technology developments. The establishment of a technology development strategy is quite a demanding task, especially for emerging technologies where future application fields are not understood in detail or are unclear. Subsequently a general development strategy remains only partially solved. A method for the analysis of technology potential will be introduced in this paper. It addresses these issues and supports its user in the identification of actual and future applications of emergent technologies and the formulation of a technology development strategy. The methodology addresses the following main questions: Do any attractive applications exist, which can be addressed by the technology in their actual requirement profile? How must the technology be developed further in order to meet the requirements of the most attractive future markets? The methodology will be introduced and demonstrated through a case study conducted within a research project in the measurement technology area.