TY - JOUR
T1 - An exploratory perspective to measure the emergence degree for a specific technology based on the philosophy of swarm intelligence
AU - Li, Munan
AU - Porter, Alan L.
AU - Suominen, Arho
AU - Burmaoglu, Serhat
AU - Carley, Stephen
N1 - Funding Information:
Arho Suominen PhD, is a Senior Scientist at the Innovations, Economy, and Policy unit at the VTT Technical Research center of Finland. Dr. Suominen's research focuses on qualitative and quantitative assessment of emerging technologies and innovation management. His-research has been funded by the Academy of Finland, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology, and the Fulbright Center Finland. He has published work in several journals such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Science and Public Policy, Scientometrics, and Journal of Systems and Software. Dr. Suominen has a Doctor of Science (Tech.) degree from the University of Turku. Email: Arho.Suominen@vtt.fi.
Funding Information:
We do appreciate the comments from the reviewers and the editors, which are very helpful for us to improve this article. The work is partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 72074081 & 71673088 ), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province ( 2020A1515010438 ), the Foundation of Guangdong Soft Science (2019B101001002), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities ( ZDPY201903 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - How to evaluate or measure the emergence degree or level for a specific technology is rarely discussed in the prior studies, and it should be a valuable issue for the relevant areas on technology forecasting, foresight, and technological strategies for macro and micro economies, particularly for those emerging economies who are chasing the technology advances in the developed countries. A conceptual framework inspired by swarm intelligence theory is introduced to measure the emergence degree or level for a specific technology. Swarm intelligence belongs to complex systems theory, and has evolved into a helpful tool for heuristic algorithms and optimization computation, and brought forward an insightful perspective on the evolution and emergence of natural or social systems in the past decades. To verify the proposed framework for measuring emergence degree of a specific technology based on the basic philosophy of swarm intelligence, a case study analyzes an annual set of emerging technologies of the World Economic Forum. The theoretical and empirical analyses could present a fresh vision to investigate the essence of technology emergence, and provide some supplemental thoughts for the policy-making on those emerging or new technologies.
AB - How to evaluate or measure the emergence degree or level for a specific technology is rarely discussed in the prior studies, and it should be a valuable issue for the relevant areas on technology forecasting, foresight, and technological strategies for macro and micro economies, particularly for those emerging economies who are chasing the technology advances in the developed countries. A conceptual framework inspired by swarm intelligence theory is introduced to measure the emergence degree or level for a specific technology. Swarm intelligence belongs to complex systems theory, and has evolved into a helpful tool for heuristic algorithms and optimization computation, and brought forward an insightful perspective on the evolution and emergence of natural or social systems in the past decades. To verify the proposed framework for measuring emergence degree of a specific technology based on the basic philosophy of swarm intelligence, a case study analyzes an annual set of emerging technologies of the World Economic Forum. The theoretical and empirical analyses could present a fresh vision to investigate the essence of technology emergence, and provide some supplemental thoughts for the policy-making on those emerging or new technologies.
KW - Emergence degree
KW - Technology emergence. Swarm intelligence. Emerging technology
KW - Technology evolution
KW - TOPSIS
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100319988&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120621
DO - 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120621
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85100319988
SN - 0040-1625
VL - 166
JO - Technological Forecasting and Social Change
JF - Technological Forecasting and Social Change
M1 - 120621
ER -