Science Fiction Prototyping as a Tool to Turn Patents into Innovative Marketable Products.

Abstract

Science Fiction Prototyping (SFP) has a lot of potential as a tool to help turn patents into innovative marketable products. The underlying assumption of this paper is that many patents from research institutions and corporations alike lie idle when it comes to their actual realization and commercialization as real products. The conceptual paper focuses on patents that are already application-centric and constitute a technology prototype. Despite technological foresight and trend analyses gaining increasing momentum and attention in theory and practice, we anticipate a lack of creativity and future context in opportunity identification following invention. Whereas traditional methods focus on product prototypes and technological foresight, context prototypes gain substantially less attention. The paper derives a conceptual framework that addresses this gap and introduces SFP as a tool to foster commercialization efforts and business innovation. Its contribution is threefold: We explore new ways of how to spot new capitalization opportunities on patents, suggest SFP as a strategic tool to provide a more structured way of creative thinking to seize future market opportunities and aim at supporting SFP as an increasingly sophisticated method in technology forecasting and future science.