Abstract
BackgroundDecisions on adoption of technological innovation are difficult for manufacturers, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who have limited resources but often drive product development. Decision analytic methods have been applied to regulatory issues in the nanotechnology sector but such applications to market innovation are not found in the literature. Value of information (VoI) is a decision analytic method for quantifying the benefit of acquiring additional information to support such analyses that can be used to help in a wide range of manufacturing decisions.ResultsThis paper develops a VoI methodology for comparative evaluation of technological alternatives and applies it to a real case study aimed at the selection between a coating system containing nano-TiO2 and alternative conventional paints. The aim of this approach is to aid SMEs and larger industries in deciding whether to further develop the nano-enabled product and in evaluating to which extent investing in more research about risks and/or benefits would be worthwhile.ConclusionsResults demonstrated how prioritization in information gaining can improve risk–benefit analyses and impact on both risk management and innovation decision making. By applying the proposed methodology, SMEs and larger industries might easily identify optimal data gathering and/or research strategies to formulate solid development and risk management plans.
Highlights
Technology innovation is often stalled due to an inability to quantify benefits, costs and risks associated with new materials and products [1, 2]
Licara nanoSCAN (LnS) is based on a series of multiple choice questions to evaluate economic, societal and environmental benefits as well as public health, environmental, occupational and consumer risks
The evaluation is performed by means of weighted sum of values associated to each user choice so that the result is a normalized benefit/riskpair in the two-dimensional [0, 1]2 result space
Summary
Technology innovation is often stalled due to an inability to quantify benefits, costs and risks associated with new materials and products [1, 2]. Value of information (VoI) analyses have been developed and used to assess the influence of uncertainty reduction (due to acquisition of new and improved information) on management decisions [3, 4]. Similar to traditional sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, VoI analyses are concerned with the influence of uncertain parameters and model structures on model outcomes, but the focus is not on performance of individual model outputs, but rather on the change in ranking of management alternatives available to decision. Value of information (VoI) is a decision analytic method for quantifying the benefit of acquiring additional information to support such analyses that can be used to help in a wide range of manufacturing decisions
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