Background and Problem Statement
Technology push (TP) represents an important innovation strategy to exploit new technology and technological knowledge to transform it into value (Maier et al. 2016). While they have the potential to lead to breakthrough innovations (Herstatt and Lettl, 2000), it also involves high uncertainty. Identifying and selecting applications for new technologies is challenging and risky since the appropriate market is often not clear and no guarantee of success can be estimated (Terzidis and Vogel, 2018). Furthermore, systematic, and consistent approaches for identifying application fields are sparse (Henkel and Jung, 2009).
Despite the high demand for technological innovations in industry and research, few practical approaches supporting the TAS process are known (Terzidis and Vogel, 2018), while several exist for Market Pull Innovations, like Design Thinking (Leavy, 2012). Furthermore, there is hardly any specific investigation on the process of TAS for new technologies. Literature reviews focusing on the TAS process have been conducted by several authors, investigating different kinds of influential factors in the process (e.g., Abd Rahim et al. ... mehr2021), perceived meaning of opportunity and the underlying process (e.g., Ojala and Puhakka, 2013) and the whole TP process (e.g., Gbadegeshi, 2018). Additionally, studies explored the theoretical underpinnings in practical settings, testing the derived factors and contributions in the business environment (Wohlfeil and Terzidis, 2015; Okhli et al. 2019). Associated research topics, like methods to support the identification and selection process of applications for technology, have been covered by e.g., Hartelt et al. (2015) and Veilleux et al. (2018). Few authors address the development and testing of practical approaches to identify and select applications for new technologies, despite the continuous interest in tackling the challenge of TP innovations leading back to Roberson and Weijo (1988), being followed by various studies until today (Moncada-Peternò-Castello et al. 2003; Bianchi et al. 2010; Terzidis and Vogel, 2018).
The current state of research shows that most studies investigate mostly parts in the TAS process with theoretical and practical approaches, while few address the design and testing of practical approaches to support the discovery of new applications for technology. Whereas George et al. (2016) conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) on influential factors in the opportunity recognition process, no aggregated state of the art for application identification and selection in TP exists yet.
The purpose of this study is to explore how systematic approaches to conduct TAS for new technologies need to be designed to serve industry and research as a guiding approach to foster technological innovations. Considering theoretical contributions as well as the practical perspectives of experts in the field of TP by using a mixed-methods approach, this paper follows the main objective of answering the following research questions:
RQ1: Which influential factors exist for the TAS process and which kind of challenges arise within it?
RQ2: Which kind of approaches do already exist, and for which target group are they tailored?
RQ3: What is the relevant content of a systematic TAS approach and how is it compiled?
Thereby, the paper contributes to the body of knowledge on the TP field, by exploring the fuzzy field of TAS. Based on the findings, challenges, influential factors, and key concepts are identified, which provides the fundament for designing a systematic approach for TAS.
Methodology
Two phases of data collection were executed. For the first phase, a SLR has been chosen as the appropriate method to explore the challenges, influential factors, as well as methods and processes of TAS, following the approach of Kitchenham and Charter (2007). Semi-structured interviews were chosen in phase two as a suitable complementary data collection method, using the advantages of flexibility while giving guidance and structure at the same time (Kallio et al. 2016). The findings from the SLR and the interviews were used to enable an in-depth understanding of the topic of TAS as well as the derivation of influential factors, emerging challenges in the process and commonly known processes and methods, to answer the outlined research questions.
Results
The research has shown that processes developed so far contain the most important building blocks of a TAS process. However, the influencing factors and challenges that can affect and arise in such a process should also be considered here. Although there is already some overlap, blocks to be added are the use and expansion of human capital, the consideration of limited resources, the identification of alternative and multiple application fields, and the structured evaluation of identified applications, as the literature shows, that those can highly influence the process and are not found or specified in the existing processes yet.
The outline of identified challenges, influencing factors, and clusters of existing processes provide a comprehensive picture of the requirements that a process should address to support a systematic TAS process. To make these findings tangible, they are transformed into concrete requirements. These should be considered in future processes to ensure that the TAS process becomes more impactful.
Implications
This research enables a wider understanding of the underlying factors and challenges, occurring in the TAS process. Furthermore, it provides the building blocks of existing systematic approaches, transforming them into requirements for a systematic TAS process. By reviewing the status quo and summarizing the previous research in this field, a clear picture of the TAS process is given.
In further research, a specific target group could thus be identified, and interviews tailored accordingly. Additionally, cases could be investigated where technologies have already been transformed into value. In these settings, similarities to identified processes and building steps in the processes could be identified, and e-influencing factors and challenges could be aligned. Furthermore, the requirements that have been worked out should be reflected on to check the projectability of these requirements for various scenarios.
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1; Eckerle, Christin