Diffusion of emerging technologies: An innovative mixing approach

Investments in emerging technologies (ETs) are extremely risky because of the high degree of market uncertainty (unknown) and technology performance (underperforming). ETs are described as new technologies based on entirely new methods and processes that have been demonstrated in a research environment but have not been developed yet to the point of being ready for mass production. This paper defines a methodology to estimate the diffusion of emerging technologies. The methodology is divided in two main parts. First, a modified Delphi process called snow ball is used to define the group of experts who will be defining the set of critical factors affecting the diffusion of the new technology. The initial list of experts is defined using bibliometrics analysis, and then an interactive process is used to increase the number of experts until the desired number to increase reliability. Second, a target segment of customers is involved in the process. This group will be using pairwise comparison analysis (PWC) to define the relative importance among the critical factors and choose the attractiveness level for each factor. The process combined methods such as Delphi, bibliometric analysis, and utility to define a global composite indicator that will be used as a proxy indicator of the diffusion for the new technology.