Investigating the merge of exploratory and normative technology forecasting methods

This paper aims to investigate the origins and historical evolution and revolution of technology forecasting (TF) methods. A thorough review on TF techniques is conducted to help researchers easily capture numerous methodologies as well as research gaps in the TF field. For over 60 years, a number of TF methods have been developed and recently become a distinct field of investigation of future world. The study introduces a historical overview of the development of TF. A variety of TF approaches, initiated in the 1950s, with the pioneering researches carried out by US department of Defense, and some researchers of The RAND Corporation. The paper also offers a classification of the approaches and methods that are available for TF studies. Mostly revolutionary techniques would have been to combine different methods characterized by the several disciplines, such as exploratory and normative approaches. Finally, the paper proposes research gaps of the main TF techniques, identifying their methodological origin and characteristics. Some concluding remarks and lessons learned complete the research.