Technology Foresight for Small- to Medium-sized Enterprises

Businesses, regardless of size, require the best information available to them in order to optimize their technological plans for the future. Currently, however, large, multi-national enterprises, along with nations, are availing themselves of a set of tools that are not being used by small- to medium-sized enterprises. These tools fall under the general description of foresight and the more specific term technology foresight. Many foresight methods require significant staff and monetary resources. This research, after providing a history of the concept of technology foresight, describes a majority of the foresight methods and techniques currently in use and pares them down with reference to the special resource characteristics of SMEs to identify eight methods that are determined to be sufficiently economic of time and money to be suitable for use by SMEs. These eight methods are: backcasting, bibliometrics, diffusion modeling, long wave analysis, monitoring, technological substitution, trend extrapolation, and vision generation. Two of the eight methods bibliometrics and long wave analysis are further explored through application to a hypothetical SME.