Analysis for Radical Design Scott Cunningham Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management Delft University of Technology Third International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA): Impacts and implications for policy and decision-making 16th- 17th October 2008

Analysis for Radical Design Technology Analysis Techniques Techniques for supporting radical innovation are needed For the unprepared radical innovation – Increases cost – Increases uncertainty – Destroys competence Many future-oriented technology analysis techniques are for incremental innovation – Forecast after market uncertainty is resolved – Base assumptions on a dominant design – c.f. trend extrapolation Exceptions include – morphological analysis and TRIZ (Altshuller, 1988) – linkage analysis (Swanson and Smalheiser, 1997)

Analysis for Radical Design Theories of Innovation Radical Innovation Henderson and Clark (1990) define two axes of radical innovation

Analysis for Radical Design Theories of Innovation Technology in Hierarchies A rich basis of theoretical support for analyzing technology in hierarchies – Axiomatic design (Suh, 1995) – Intersection of technology and marketplaces (Clark, 1985) – Infrastructure systems (Marchetti and Nakicenovic, 1979) – Nested ecologies of technologies (Meyer et al., 1999)

Analysis for Radical Design Key Contribution Use databases of science and technology – Internet (Wikipedia, news groups, newswires) – Science and technology databases – Patenting databases Can we hierarchically structure the data So as to anticipate new linkages between components Thereby better assisting problem owners with architectural innovation?

Analysis for Radical Design Hierarchical Random Graphs – (Clauset et. al 2008)

Analysis for Radical Design Case Study Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Google Earth (centered on Sevilla) An Ajax application

Analysis for Radical Design Case Study Data Network from Wikipedia pages Ajax (Programming) and surrounding linkages

Analysis for Radical Design Case Study Model Fit using a form of Monte Carlo simulation

Analysis for Radical Design Case Study Prediction of New Links

Analysis for Radical Design New Developments Accessible Rich Internet Applications New technology for supporting the disabled on the Internet Converts text, user interface, to other media formats including spoken word and braille Supported in Standard by the W3C 200 days ago Incorporated into Internet Explorer 8 beta 100 days ago Stub page included in Wikipedia 100 days ago

Analysis for Radical Design Conclusions A hierarchical random graph structuring of technological data appears to anticipate new architectural innovation in this information technology domain

Analysis for Radical Design Policy Implications Innovation Researchers Consider the important difference between architectural innovation involving internal and external technologies The disassortative nature of Ajax means external architectural changes are more likely

Analysis for Radical Design Policy Implications Open Innovation Chesborough et al. (2006) describe an open, distributed, collaborative environment for new innovation May require a shared vision of new technological developments Implemented – via access to knowledge bases of new technology – structured with generative models such as this – presented by decision support or other visualization technologies

Analysis for Radical Design Limitations and New Research This example closely followed, rather presaged, technological change Careful validation needed, perhaps with longitudinal data Some elements of subjectivity in interpreting linkages Definitional issues involved in identifying component technologies More cases and examples needed, particularly in patenting databases