Radical Technology Inquirer: a methodology for holistic, transparent and participatory technology foresight

Abstract

This paper introduces and motivates the Radical Technology Inquirer (RTI) methodology for anticipation of technological breakthroughs and their combined cross-sectoral and social impacts. The primary use of the methodology is long-term policy evaluation and design. The first version of the methodology was published in 2013. This paper reports the current RTI 2018 version, which is based on systematic collection of scientific and technological news and grounded on theory. It combines societal functions with technological opportunities by conceptualising 20 “global value-producing networks” GVNs and 100 “anticipated radical technologies” ARTs. The RTI methodology is participatory, using continuous crowdsourcing and stakeholder evaluations. Each GVN is characterised by a need and an existing and a novel way of satisfying that need and organising the societal function. The methodology combines existing and new foresight methods and concepts to achieve a holistic and transparent approach for anticipating technology-enabled transformative socio-technical developments of the next 20 years. In this anticipation effort, the focus is more on recent weak signals of emerging technological capabilities than on past strong signals, e.g. the diffusion of various technologies.