Ah, the last formal lesson of the class. It’s been a long
and hard journey through this course and I’ve been exposed to a lot of new
insights that I may never have even thought of looking at before. In this final
formal lesson, we looked through technology assessment and forecasting.
Introduction and Key Takeaways:
Why would we need technology assessment and forecasting?
What are they for? Once we begin understand what they do, would we find out why
we need them. Technology assessment simply means finding out the pros and cons
of existing technology. Their PEST effects are taken into consideration and to
the companies wanting to invest in the next Google or Apple, they would look at
the SWOT analysis. What about Technology Forecasting? This term looks to see
the holes in our current world that could be potentially filled up by
up-and-coming technology. Another way of looking at technology forecasting
would be to see the trends in current technology and seeing what fantastic new
direction they would be taking. Now that we know what they are, let’s look into
why we need them.
As business students, it would be crucial for us to find out
what new developments are likely to work and the developments that will flop.
The world is an unpredictable place and some brilliant, world changing ideas
end up never leaving the filing cabinet for various reasons. By assessing
current technology, we would be able to identify and invest in the technologies
we know will have a great impact. If we choose not to do so, we could still
prepare for potentially disruptive technology and leverage on it. Not all of us
may become industry leaders, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be prepared.
Why would we need technology forecasting? Futurist Ray
Kurzweil stipulated that the world would be entering a technological “singularity”
sometime between 2017 and 2112. That would be a period of rapid innovation,
with brand new ideas springing up every single second. Trying to assess them
all would take an eternity, but identifying the next big technological advance
would help anyone in not being left behind. In today’s competitive world,
staying ahead may no longer be an advantage, it may end up being a necessity.
New Perspectives from readings:
One perspective I gleaned from reading 8 (which talks about
early warning systems in Sub-Saharan Africa) is that one approach to technology
assessment is the problem solution method (SWOT essentially). In order for an organization
to assess the effectiveness of something, its achievements, strengths and
weaknesses have to be taken into account. The strengths can be capitalized
upon, the weaknesses fixed. This is integral especially in systems that could
help to prevent disasters such as Sub-Saharan Africa’s Early Warning systems.
Just like maintaining a car or one’s health, frequent check-ups help to keep
one’s health/ state in check.
The following phrase was taken from Reading 6 - S&T Foresight for Canadian Insights and Strategic
Preparedness (2006).
“A set of strategic tools for anticipating the future, to become
better prepared for diverse challenges with adequate lead time to initiate strategic
response capacity” – Jack Smith
Reading 6 is the slides used in the S&T Foresight for
Canadian Insights and Strategic Preparedness. The stuff I gleaned from it will
be shortlisted below:
·
For global solutions to be accepted by all, all
of us have to be involved in the decision making process.
·
There are tons of drivers of trends for the
future such as global climate change, uncertain demographics changes and the
convergence of technology just to name a few.
·
Foresight helps people to prepare for an
uncertain future, educates the public and the leaders of nations of what is to
come, and helps to identify critical fields in science and technology. Failing
to plan is planning to fail.
Ratings for the class:
Session 10 really felt like a strange class this time. Had
time really flown so fast that we were already so close to the end? If it weren’t
for this, the class was otherwise quite normal. As such, the class gets a 9/10
from me as the issues raised were generally interesting and that upon
reflection, the things learned here are actually worth remembering and keeping.
No comments:
Post a Comment