Identifying Emerging Technologies in the e-Business Industry - A Needs-driven Approach

Over the last few years, there have been huge efforts to forecast the technological future and emerging technologies, as an attempt to increase R&D efficiency within a limited budget. Therefore, this research purposes to develop a methodology for identifying new and promising technologies and apply it to the field of e-business. Unlike the previous studies taking a technology-driven approach, we take a needs-driven approach starting from future needs and derive a necessary technology to meet the needs. For this purpose, we firstly consider the future major using STEEP analysis. Secondly, the prospective social needs are derived from each major issue and then, the technologies required to meet the core needs are deduced to be a candidate of emerging technologies. Finally, the candidate technologies are evaluated from the viewpoint of feasibility and issues-relatedness, based on which the top 10 most important emerging technologies are determined. The suggested methodology is expected to be utilized as a valuable tool for discovering emerging technologies when considering IT is evolved not only in the form of technology-driven but also in the form of market-driven.