Identifying emerging technologies: An application to nanotechnology

Research and inventive activities represent core elements of science-based companies' comparative advantage. In a competitive environment, this requires methods to identify at an early stage the most promising technologies within the scope of the companies' business model. Generally, they frame their technological strategies on personal expertise, intuition or gut feelings but this intangible decision process faces possible adverse effects like imperfect information or tunnel vision. The technology scanning literature usually tackles this limitation by analyzing patent trends in absolute terms. However, this approach disregards both the relative nature of technology emergence, as well as the scientific dynamics behind technologies. This paper proposes an alternative decision support tool which identifies technologies with relative emerging patterns based on science and technology data, and connected by adequate -and expert reviewed- keyword strategies. Emerging technolo gies are identified from Sharpe ratios in a two dimensional S&T framework. An empirical test is conducted in the field of nanotechnology where emerging technologies are found to belong to diverse material types, although the largest dynamic is observed for carbon based technologies. This method appears as adequate to support the decision process regarding companies' technological choices by providing insightful information on ongoing emerging technologies.