Nesta Working Paper No. 13/08 Quantitative Analysis of Technology Futures. Part I: Techniques, Contexts, and Organizations Tommaso Ciarli Alex Coad Ismael Rafols Quantitative Analysis of Technology Futures. Part I: Techniques, Contexts, and Organizations Tommaso Ciarli Alex Coad Ismael Rafols SPRU, University of Sussex SPRU, University of Sussex SPRU, University of Sussex, UK and Ingenio (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Nesta Working Paper 13/08 May 2013 www.nesta.org.uk/wp13-08 Abstract As a gentle introduction to quantitative foresight techniques we begin by providing a working definition of Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) and discussing its role, uses, and popularity over recent decades. We select 22 FTA techniques identified as the most important quantitative FTA techniques. We introduce these techniques, discuss their main contexts and uses and classify them into groups with common characteristics, positioning them along four key dimensions: descriptive/prescriptive; extrapolative/normative; data gathering/inference; and forecasting/foresight. Keywords: Foresight, Data, Futures, Prediction Prepared as part of the project financed by NESTA on `Research into the quantitative Analysis of Technology Futures'. We have benefited from comments on a preliminary draft from Jessica Bland, Michael Hopkins, Ben Martin, Rafael Ramirez, Andy Stirling and seminar participants at the NESTA workshop We are indebted to Alan Porter for his thorough review, which helped improving the paper. All errors and omissions are our own responsibility. Author: Tommaso Ciarli, SPRU, University of Sussex, BN1 9SL Falmer, Brighton, UK.
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