Forecasting across technology discontinuities: visualising the management of “next generation” products and processes

There has been a resurgence of interest in technological forecasting approaches as the impacts of technological advancements on firms´ competitiveness grow more frequent, more profound, and more global. The traditional techniques-envelope curves, morphological matrices, Delphi, substitution curves-can now be utilised in conjunction with process re-engineering and other computer-simulation approaches to provide a picture of what managerial life would be like as the new technologies are adopted. Managers facing completely new environments resulting from technological breakthroughs need aids to enable them to “visualise” the challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, and leverage points. Computer visioning aids can offer pictures of the future that are very dynamic and lifelike, and offer a management team the opportunity to “experience” life in a number of future scenarios to provide itself with new insights, confidence and competence in tackling the realities of the firm´s future. The author discusses computer-aided visioning including hypermedia visioning