A challenge of integrating technology foresight and assessment in industrial strategy development and policymaking

Appropriate demand articulation of emerging technologies to social needs are vital to the economic and social productivity, and it is essential to grasp the future trends of social needs and technology advancement to promote the strategic technology policy. Japan embarked on technology foresight in the early 1970s and has since been conducting a regular Delphi survey approximately every 5 years. To explore a new intelligent methodology for integrating technological seeds and social needs by articulating future demands, this paper reviews the following two cases: the Delphi-scenario writing (DSW) method, which is applied in 1977 for the home/office small facsimile, and the method of general assessment applied in 1972 for informationalization, which focused on the rapidly advancing information society, with a matrix scoring and policy-simulation method. Those new approaches were proved to be a powerful methodology to integrate the technology forecasting and assessment for comprehensive understanding of the emerging technologies and their social impacts in the form of integrated technology road mapping, which supports the integrated strategic planning methodology for enhancing the future innovation system. (C) 2002 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.