A Multi-layered Prioritization Scheme for Emerging IT Technologies for Constructing a National Technology Road Map

The advancement of emerging technologies can create more national value, and this motivates many nations to invest their resources in the emerging technologies. However, due to limited financial and human resources, even a wealthy nation cannot afford to randomly invest its resource in all profitable technologies. Therefore, cautious appraisal and prioritization of the competitive technologies should be conducted first, and then concentrated investment should be done for only the selected technologies. In this study, we propose a quantitative criterion for prioritizing the targeted electronic device technologies. The prioritization scheme devised in this study consists of a growth layer, a profitability layer, a vitality layer, and an influence layer. The proposed model forecasts the most promising technologies by applying the revised version of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We performed empirical experiments on 12 emerging electronic device technologies to analyze the practical applicability of our study. The experimental data was obtained from 70 experts in high-tech industry as a part of the 2004 Prioritization and Selection project that was carried out in South Korea. As a result, the proposed scheme was able to present the most promising areas for investment in the field of electronic device technology.