Technology push-based product planning – future markets for emerging technologies

Today, companies face increasing competition. While product lifecycles are shortening, a company’s competitiveness is determined by technological know-how and the ability to transform it into successful products – innovations. Generally, innovations arise from technology and market opportunities (technology push, market pull). Especially, emerging technologies are frequently driving forces for disruptive innovations (technology push). This paper presents a method for technology push-based product planning, consolidating our knowledge from numerous technology push projects. The method extends our technology planning concept by implementing iterative foresight/feedback processes between technology and market stages. This allows synchronising technology push and market pull, including all relevant steps from the analysis and anticipation of the current and future technology performance, respectively, to a future-oriented identification of applications. Thus, the most success promising technological advancements can be precisely deduced. This enables the creation of innovation roadmaps, indicating when the identified applications can be manufactured, as required technological advancements will be achieved.