Technological forecasting in a dynamic environment

Government and industry are developing many new ways to forecast future technical developments, but the payoff comes when these projections are incorporated as part of the R&D planning process. This is done on two levels — when deciding on future work in a specific development project and when assigning priorities to the overall R&D effort. Systems being developed in industry and in the federal government are able to integrate technological forecasts with data on future needs, probabilities of success, and potential funding levels. The computerized result is a complete ranking of all on-going and potential projects according to their overall worth. But care must be taken to ensure that the computer printout retains its role as a servant and not a ruler of managers. One of many normative (goal-oriented) technological forecasting techniques currently being examined will be discussed in this paper. It is hoped that this technique will serve two interrelated purposes: 1) to explore the structure of project-selection decision problems in the context of the information and organization environment of the R&D manager and 2) to explore characteristics of the R&D process that are relevant to the design and implementation of management system for planning and controlling resource allocation among various R&D projects.