Identifying Emerging Technologies in the e-Business Industry

A Needs-driven Approach

Kyungpyo Lee

, Youngkeun Song

and Sungjoo Lee

Department of Industrial Engineering, Ajou University, San 5, Woncheon-Dong,

Yeongtong-Gu Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea

Technology Strategy Research Division, ETRI, 218 Gajeong-Ro, Yousung-Gu, Daejeon 305-700, Republic of Korea

Keywords: Mobile Communications, Technological Characteristics, Market Characteristics, Emerging Technology,

Methodology, Applications.

Abstract: Over the last few years, there have been huge efforts to forecast the technological future and emerging

technologies, as an attempt to increase R&D efficiency within a limited budget. Therefore, this research

purposes to develop a methodology for identifying new and promising technologies and apply it to the field

of e-business. Unlike the previous studies taking a technology-driven approach, we take a needs-driven

approach starting from future needs and derive a necessary technology to meet the needs. For this purpose,

we firstly consider the future major using STEEP analysis. Secondly, the prospective social needs are

derived from each major issue and then, the technologies required to meet the core needs are deduced to be

a candidate of emerging technologies. Finally, the candidate technologies are evaluated from the viewpoint

of feasibility and issues-relatedness, based on which the top 10 most important emerging technologies are

determined. The suggested methodology is expected to be utilized as a valuable tool for discovering

emerging technologies when considering IT is evolved not only in the form of technology-driven but also in

the form of market-driven.

1 INTRODUCTION

In order to have competitiveness in an environment

of rapidly changing science, it is important to

monitor the development of existing technology and

to discover new and promising technologies

(Wheatley and Wilemon, 1999). That is, it is

necessary for a firm to establish a technology

development strategy through emerging technology

forecasting to gain a competitive advantage while

utilizing limited resources. At the national level,

drilling and excavation technologies for the future

are also significant in realizing the vision of the

future society. At the center of discovering

promising technology, are changes in consumer

demand and the social environment in the future. In

addition to the prospective changes, the speed and

directions of technologies are considered to forecast

future technology (Martino, 1975).

Such technology forecasting and emerging

technology exploration efforts have been actively

made across many industry sectors. Among them, it

is the IT (Information Technology) sector where the

most active forecasting activities are observed. With

the latest advances in technology and the fast pace

changes that take place in the field of IT every day,

technology forecasting is an essential part of

business in the field for a firm to survive and to

remain competitive.

Looking at the methodologies commonly used

for identifying emerging technologies in the IT

sector, they seem to be divided into two types. First

one is utilizing professionals, which is the method

used by Delphi, AHP, and Panel of Experts (Dietz,

1987). The second one is to use predictive

technologies to derive trends from technical

quantitative data, for example, patents and papers

(Harhoff et. al., 2003). Despite the usefulness of

these approaches, however, most of the existing

studies have had difficulties incorporating the point

of view of users who want to practically use

technology, considering that most of the previous

methodologies are based on predictions from a

technological standpoint. Particularly in e-business,

which was created by the advances in IT, though its

evolution is highly affected by IT itself, the needs of

327

Lee K., Song Y. and Lee S..

Identifying Emerging Technologies in the e-Business Industry - A Needs-driven Approach.

DOI: 10.5220/0004065903270334

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Data Communication Networking, e-Business and Optical Communication Systems (ICE-B-2012),

pages 327-334

ISBN: 978-989-8565-23-5

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

main actors in the business also affect significantly

the direction of technology evolution.

Therefore, this study proposes an approach to

reflecting the needs of the market for exploring

emerging technologies in the e-business industry.

We use both qualitative and quantitative methods to

identify the top 10 most important technologies in

the e-business and also provide an illustrative

example to verify the feasibility of our approach.

The research outputs are expected to contribute to

the development of technology forecasting

methodology and emerging business opportunities

methodology. Also, the study results will support

strategic and policy decisions in the e-business

industry by providing guidelines for the R&D

planning and business strategy to determine

priorities of technology development. These days, e-

business is being used in the society as a whole.

Social trends of various aspects and needs of future

users are emerging. This reflects the fact that

demand-based forecasting has become important. In

this regard, we believe this study may be very timely.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This study suggests a foundation for developing a

methodology for exploring emerging technologies.

For this purpose, a definition of emerging

technology is given and the previous approaches to

technology forecasting in the e-business sector (IT

field) are examined.

2.1 Emerging Technology

Despite the concept of emerging technologies being

understood, a sound definition is difficult to find.

Various studies from different perspectives have

tried to define emerging technology.

First, research on emerging technologies in

recent years has seen rapid growth (Corrocher et al.,

2003; Porter et al., 2002). It is a useful concept to

identify, as scientific technology about reasonable

prospects such as speed and direction as well as the

scope of technological advances is important to

predict in coming years; in fact, emerging research is

a guideline for evaluation. Second, emerging

technology is a transfer or change in technology that

is in process. These transfers or changes may be

incremental or radical, and they can be difficult to

determine (Day and Shoemaker, 2000; Porter et al.,

2002; Hung and Chu, 2006). Finally, an emerging

technology gradually increases reliance on basic

science (Day and Shoemaker, 2000). Recently, it

seems to have become a topic viewed in a positive

light. It is described as “the newly emerging

technology” (Kontostathis et al., 2003).

Synthesizing existing research on emerging

technologies and considering the characteristics of e-

business, emerging technologies is defined as the

“technologies in the introductory stage to be

promising in the mid-and long-term perspective of

10 years, as seen in the country and social issues,

and as reflected among worldwide leaders in the e-

business industry” in this research.

2.2 Emerging Technology Mining

To examine the efforts of emerging technology

mining in the field of e-business, we examined the

efforts in the field of IT by taking technological

perspectives. Currently, various methodologies have

been developed in the IT fields, but mainly from a

technology standpoint. Interestingly, in the IT fields,

many attempts have been made to discover emerging

technology based on quantitative data. First, the

filing of patents and publications is rich in the field,

which is essential to take a data-driven approach.

Second, because the technology life cycle is short,

changes can be easily detected from the data. Finally,

quantitative analysis is relatively easy in terms of

cost and effort.

The relevant studies can be grouped into three

categories depending on the type of data being used.

The first category is based on the citation data.

Carpenter et. al. (1981), Albert et. al. (1991),

Harhoff et. al. (1999), and many other studies have

been conducted in this field. The second category

uses the growth trends in patents and publications.

The work by Carrocher et. al. (2003) is

representative. To derive emerging technologies in

the field of information and communications, two

periods, 1995-96 and 1998-99 were examined using

patents. The third type reflects composite indicators,

as in work by Harhoff et. al (2003).

Qualitative techniques in the field of IT include

the Delphi and scenario techniques. First, in case of

the Delphi technique, it is easy to predict long-term

time series data or forecasts for a wide range of

technical areas due to high utilization in the industry

(Dietz, 1987). Second, a scenario that describes the

future potential of complex information enables

policy-makers to understand its advantages (Kees,

2002).

Previous studies examined emerging technology

patents in the process of selection techniques such as

Delphi and most often approached the issue from the

perspective of technical and systematic analysis of

ICE-B 2012 - International Conference on e-Business

328

the actual needs in the industry. In this study, the

technical standpoint could not derive the hunt for

technology from the public's needs; quantifying

qualitative data to derive an emerging technology

process was applied.

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Framework

The proposed emerging technology mining process

consists of four phases in this study (see Figure 1).

First, identifying future issues (Step 1) involves

identifying mega-trends of the future through

extensive literature review (research paper, outlook

report) from the point of STEEP (Social,

Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political)

views. As a result, we note that issues of necessity

will rise over the next ten years.

Figure 1: Research Framework.

Second, identifying needs for the issues (Step 2)

includes a variety of perspectives among several

users, such as the state, community, family and the

private user. We note that needs are driven by the

pursuit of the ultimate goal. These goals include a

safe life, a convenient life, or a comfortable life ten

years from now.

Third, to identify technologies for these needs

(Step 3) core issues and needs of the future are

determined by a questionnaire based on the results

of Step 2 (needs technology set). We derived

element technologies for the realization of core

needs, referring to the technical architecture that has

already been developed and is being used in the e-

business sector. We develop a final technology set in

which the elemental technologies were merged.

Finally, prioritization of candidate technologies

(Step 4) involves analyzing 'issues relatedness' about

candidates of emerging technologies using QFD

(Quality Function Deployment). We evaluated

'Feasibility' using the cross-impact analysis in the e-

business sector and derived final emerging

technology.

3.2 Detailed Process

3.2.1 Identifying Future Issues

The point of view of STEEP has the advantage of

helping the mixed comprehension across all over the

external spectrum in the macro view. Thus, it is easy

to determine the candidates of emerging

technologies for solving issues that develop

primarily from the mega trends of the future as

candidate technologies for mining in the e-business

sector. We determined the issues of the future

through an extensive literature review from the point

of view STEEP, as we approached the review from a

variety of viewpoints of how all aspects of e-

business are changing.

3.2.2 Identifying Needs for the Issues

Next, we derived relevant needs at the level of the

issues. Needs are derived from each issue in pursuit

of a 'safe life', a 'convenient life' or a 'comfortable

life' from the point of view of the 'private user',

'family' and 'community'. Specifically, the needs are

determined by the general public, not experts, for ten

years from now. Therefore, the questionnaire is

expressed as 'Needs about new product and services'

or 'Needs about improvement of existing services'.

The needs draft is derived through brain storming. If

necessary, a FGI (Focus Group Interview) is

performed by general people. Or, we could refer to

the proposed scenario of the future in several

organizations abroad.

Identifying Emerging Technologies in the e-Business Industry - A Needs-driven Approach

329

3.2.3 Identifying Technologies for the Needs

Next, we derive core issues and needs through

general population based on the determined needs

set (3.2.2 result). This section considers the most

important issues and needs that the general

population foresees; it is difficult to satisfy all issues

and needs that are deduced from emerging

technologies. So, unlike previous studies, we took a

survey of the general population, not experts. This is

the best feature for an approach based on needs, not

technology.

We determine the needs technology from the

derived core issues and needs through a survey of

the general population. Needs technology, which

primarily satisfies needs, is referred to as the

technology tree. The technical experts and the

industry experts are involved in this stage. Finally,

we merge the technologies by needs and eliminate

overlapping technologies. Thus, we determine the

candidates for emerging technology.

3.2.4 Prioritizing Candidate Technologies

In this section, we determine the final emerging

technology through detailed analysis about

candidates for emerging technology. The

assessments used are the two viewpoints of 'Issues

relatedness' and 'Feasibility'. By synthesizing the

evaluation of these results, the priorities of

candidates are set.

First, 'Issues relatedness' refers to assessing the

correspondence between core issues and each

technology. If technology is relevant to a variety of

issues, the score of ‘Issues relatedness’ is higher. We

proposed use of 'Linking grid' methodology (see

Table 1) for the evaluation of the correspondence of

issues.

When considering the weight of the issues, the

proposed linking grid is measured according to the

'Issues relatedness' of technology by the level of

relationship between the technologies and the issues.

Table 1 shows the correspondence evaluation matrix;

the horizontal axis represents core issues and the

vertical axis represents needs technology. We assess

the relationship between needs technologies and

issues on the matrix by 7-point (very strong

association: 7 points, very weak association: 1 point).

The weight of the core issues was retrieved from the

survey results of the general population. We

evaluate the 'Issues relatedness' of candidates of

needs technology by multiplying the correspondence

by the weight of each core issue.

Table 1: Correspondence evaluation of issue.

Second, 'Feasibility' involves assessing the

realistic possibility of each technology in ten years.

If the realistic possibility is high, the score of

feasibility is high. We use the evaluations of experts

to determine the feasibility and the cross impact

analysis that reflects the relationship between

technologies. The realization of e-business

correlation techniques, by nature, has a great effect

on the realization of other technologies. Thus, in the

feasibility analysis of technology, we assess the

feasibility of each technology. This is significant as

it reflects the conditional probability assessment that

when development of any kind of technology is

successful, the probability of development of other

technology is increased.

In addition, we used a 7-point evaluation index

for the evaluation of 'Issues relatedness'(very strong

independent feasibility: 7 points, very weak

independent feasibility: 1 point; 'A technology' has a

strong influence on 'B technology': 7 points, 'A

technology' has a weak influence on 'B technology':

1 point). Table 2 shows the cross-impact analysis

utilized in this study. The value of cell (i, j) in the

matrix means that “When development of 'i

technology' is successful, the success probability of

development of 'j technology' increases”. The value

of the independence row means that the realization

probability of 'i technology' is disregarded in its

effect of other technology.

Table 2: Cross-impact Analysis.

Technology

…

Total

score

…

Independent

feasibility

As 'Issues relatedness' and 'feasibility' results are

normalized, the highest score is '1' and the lowest

score is '0' on each score. We are multiplying both

results and valued importance of candidates in the

higher order. The top 10 technologies according to

the previous results are derived as the final emerging

ICE-B 2012 - International Conference on e-Business

330

technologies.

4 APPLICATION

This section proposes the process of emerging

technology mining in E-business. However, the

scope of the study is limited to illustrative examples

in the wireless communication technologies field

among e-business infrastructure technology, because

we verify the validity and applicability of the

proposed method. Up to now, we have progressed to

step 2 in practice. Step 3 includes a hypothetical

case for how to apply the proposed process.

4.1 Future Issues

In S.T.E.E.P, deriving the issue of the future through

extensive literature review is performed as follows

(see table 3). The result can be summarized in three

mega trends, such as “The change in population

structure and human relations”, “The progress of

the knowledge Based network society” and “The

emergence of new, fusion, energy and eco

technologies”.

Table 3: Issue mining results.

Category

Future issue

Social

ㆍ Changes in population structure

ㆍ Globalization

ㆍ Network society

Technological

ㆍ Virtual intelligent space

ㆍ Fusion Hybrid technology

ㆍ Robot

Economic

ㆍ Emotional consumption

ㆍ Knowledge-based economy

ㆍ Changes in labor market

Ecological

ㆍ Climate change and environmental

pollution

ㆍ The energy crisis

ㆍ Prolongation of life technology

Political

ㆍ Changes in corporate governance

ㆍ Increased safety risk

ㆍ Civil Integration

We draw 30 sub-issues from issues of Table 3.

We separated the sub-issues into three sections and

ten parts for the convenience of needs mining. The

results are attached to Appendix 1.

4.2 Future Needs

Next, we draw the needs of the market from sub-

issues. However, it is difficult to do so for all 30

sub-issues. Therefore, we grouped sub-issues that

were judged to have high similarity in needs into 10

sections, and needs are derived by grouping category.

Table 4 shows an example of the future needs

drawn in the Health/Welfare/Senior/Women section

that include increase in older people, increase in

consumption related to safety/wellness, increase in

natural disasters and disease threats, increase in new

health hazards, and real-time medical/diagnostic

services.

Table 4: Example results of needs mining.

Safe life

Convenient life

Comfortable life

- Assistive

services for

seniors /

disabled

- Accidents

and risk

prevention

services

- Smart mobiles

and applications

for silver IT

- Mobiles and

services for

momentum

measurement

- Secretary mobiles

and services for

seniors / disabled

- Mobiles and

applications for

preventing

dementia

- Mobiles

and services

for location

tracing

- Emergency

detection and

emergency

warning

system in

home

- Information

sharing

applications

between family

- As a partner in

life, a robot

services for home

management

- Smart home,

Tablet PC

- Smart home

monitoring and

control services

- Wireless

health

management

system

- Unmanned

security

system

- Wireless

communication

service for

accessibility

improvements of

seniors / disabled

- Silver town

operating system

- Management

system for the

seniors

4.3 Emerging Technology Candidates

We carried out a survey targeting five hundred of the

general population for core issues and needs of

future mining. The survey was undertaken by a

professional research firm and was held during the

week of January 19-26, 2012. The survey represents

the demographic characteristics of Korea. Also, we

performed screening for suitable respondents

through a few questions in advance due to the nature

of the survey, because it required basic

understanding of E-business products and services

Identifying Emerging Technologies in the e-Business Industry - A Needs-driven Approach

331

and the ability of a panoramic view of the future

society.

Upon investigation, nine core issues and three

core needs of each core issue at the level of sub-

issues were derived. Table 5 shows the core issues

and needs.

Table 5: Example results of core issues and needs.

Core issues

Core needs

Personaliza

tion and the

change of

values

Personalized service and intelligence

equipment

Implementation of the emotion recognition

service

Technology

fusion and

synergy

Smart Vehicle Service

Implementation of Smart City (including

smart home / building / transportation)

U-health healthcare services for real-time

health service

Primary, wireless technologies are derived to satisfy

each need based on drawing core needs. At this

stage, several principles are important. First, this

should well reflect the context of emerging

technology mining. In other words, in this case, we

should infer belonging to a relevant technology part

and consider satisfying the needs of the wireless

technology in the E-business field. Second, we must

consider the technology for the gratification of the

needs in ten years. So, we should be careful of

technology mining in the short term. Third,

technology satisfies specific needs and needs to

express generalized technology. It is necessary to

consider integrated technology that is derived from

needs later. Therefore, we draw specialized

technology for needs and change the type of

generalization. Table 6 shows results of technology

mining regarding “Personalized service and

intelligence equipment” in “Personalization and the

change of values”.

Table 6: Example results of technology mining.

Core

needs

Needs-based

technology

Generalized

technology

Personalize

d service

and

intelligence

equipment

Location and context-

aware service platform

technology for

personalized services

Location and context-

aware service platform

technology

Stand-alone signaling and

configuration for power

control for continuing to

receive user information

Stand-alone signaling

and configuration for

power control

This step is necessary to domain knowledge about

technologies and industries because it is performed

through an expert survey. Finally, 20 generalized

technologies, in other words, candidates of emerging

technologies are derived.

4.4 Emerging Technologies

Finally, we evaluated “issues relatedness” and

“feasibility” for the 20 candidates of emerging

technologies.

Table 7 is a part of issue-relatedness evaluation.

First, we wrote the weight of each issue in the

evaluation matrix. 43.4, for example, is the weight

of “Issue 1” and 18.5 is the weight of “Issue 9”.

Next, we analyzed the correlation between

technology and issue. Responsiveness by issue of

needs 1, for example, means that is closely related to

“Issue 1” and is not closely related to “Issue 9”

because “Issue 1” is the 7-point and “Issue 9” is the

1-point. We multiplied weight by issue and summed

up issue-relatedness in each technology for the total

score. Normalized, the highest score is 1 and the

lowest score is 0.

Table 7: A part of issue-relatedness evaluation.

Issues

Technology

…

Total

score

Weight

43.4

18.5

427.5

…

279.3

Next, Table 8 is a cross-impact analysis result for

candidates of emerging feasibility evaluation. We

wrote down the feasibility of each technology in the

evaluation matrix. We used a 7-point scale, the

response to the feasibility, for ease of response and

to assign the appropriate probability according to the

barometer(1 point-0, 2 point-1/6, 3 point-1/3, 4

point-1/2, 5 point-2/3, 6 point 5/6, 7 point-1). For

example, the probability of technology 1’s feasibility

is 2/3.

Next, we measured cross-impact between

technologies. We used a 7-point scale and converted

to probability. The value of the cell (1, 20) is 5/6.

This means that the probability of realizing

technology 20 is the same as that of realizing

technology 1. With a completed matrix, we could

derive the probability of realizing (total score) to

consider cross-impacts between technology. The

probability of realizing technology 1, for example, is

0.67 without regard to relation to other technology.

However, it rises to 0.82 when considering relations

with other technology. Finally, as for issue-

relatedness, it is normalized; the highest score is 1

and the lowest score is 0.

ICE-B 2012 - International Conference on e-Business

332

Table 8: A part of technology feasibility evaluation.

Technology

…

Total score

…

5/6

0.82

…

1/3

…

0.12

Independent

feasibility

2/3

…

1/6

We synthesized the results of assessments, issue-

relatedness evaluation, and cross-impact analysis.

The top 10 technologies according to total scores are

derived as final emerging technology.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This study uses the needs-driven approach to find

future emerging technologies. The contribution of

this study is twofold. First, this study has

significance in the proposal of emerging technology

mining that is important to the social needs of

industry, including the e-business industry. This

methodology is judged as useful as it applies in

evolving technologies based on needs. Second, this

study uses the 'qualitative technique', such as future

needs mining based on users, for the emerging

technology mining process. The 'qualitative

technique' is also used in, the correspondence

evaluation of technology. The objectivity of this

study increased compared to our previous study

based on discussions with experts. The strategic

value also increased compared to our study based on

the database of scientific techniques.

Despite these contributions, this study has some

limitations. First, this study requires advanced

methodology due to the earlier studies of emerging

technology mining in the e-business industry.

Through the variety of information collection and

processing, we will forecast and design our system

so as not to end the study in a one-time effort. At the

same time, the system should be designed by the

study for the creation of new information. Second,

we applied only part of the proposed whole

methodology in the application of this study.

Becoming an emerging technology requires

'Economic feasibility', 'Technical feasibility' and

'Suitability' in addition to 'Issues relatedness'. Thus,

further research needs to be applied to various

processes. Finally, we used a needs driven approach,

but we need to flesh out the possibility of a

methodology to integrate a technologies-driven

approach. Recently, an attempt was made to

continue to identify a hidden signal early in the

technical trend using the database of widespread

scientific techniques. Thus, it is very meaningful to

identifying emerging technologies in the e-business

industry that are used to integrate surveys and patent

analysis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by Basic Science

Research Program through the National Research

Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry

of Education, Science and Technology(No.2009-

0089674).

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APPENDIX 1

Table 9: Sub-issues results.