Innovation activities based on s-curve analysis and patterns of technical evolution-“From the standpoint of engineers, what is innovation?”

Abstract In the first half of this paper, I would like to introduce “The Diagram related to Innovation” based on “Affinity Diagramming” (It's called KJ Method in Japan). In order to collect “Language Data” for organizing the Diagram”, I asked engineers to answer a questionnaire about “what is innovation?” and respond on the answer sheet freely. The approaches are based on the Question asked engineers who took part in the pan-industry social events held by SANNO in September, October and November 2006. Total respondents are 45 engineers. This question was asked before starting the events. That is to say, I didn’t reveal my intentions. What “Organized Diagramming” makes clear is that a majority of engineers have images of “Innovation” as “the turning point of S-curve” focusing on the new generation products based on innovative technologies, as opposed to the conventional technologies. However, others have images of “Innovation” as “the integrated powers to create new ones, based on the conventional technologies, even utilized in previous the field. Moreover, some of them have images of “Innovation” as “something like a natural feeling”, “something like the power to keep organization control”, and so on. For the results mentioned above, there is no doubt about the innovations having a variety of aspects. To the images of innovation, I want to consider “the four types of Innovation activities” on S-curve, which are organized through our experimental studies focusing on future oriented strategies for new business. In the latter half of this paper, through one case example, I would like to introduce “The Future Prediction Technique based on the S-curve Template” developed by utilizing both “S-curve Theory” and “Pattern of Technical Evolutions” as one of the highly valued future prediction techniques, which is very useful to analyze the types of innovation activities.