What is an emerging technology?

Abstract

There is considerable and growing interest in the emergence of novel technologies, especially from the policy-making perspective. Yet as an area of study, emerging technologies lacks key foundational elements, namely a consensus on what classifies a technology as 'emergent' and strong research designs that operationalize central theoretical concepts. The present paper aims to fill this gap by developing a definition of 'emerging technologies' and linking this conceptual effort with the development of a framework for the operationalisation of technological emergence. The definition is developed by combining a basic understanding of the term and in particular the concept of 'emergence' with a review of key innovation studies dealing with definitional issues of technological emergence. The resulting definition identifies five attributes that feature in the emergence of novel technologies. These are: (i) radical novelty, (ii) relatively fast growth, (iii) coherence, (iv) prominent impact, and (v) uncertainty and ambiguity. The framework for operationalising emerging technologies is then elaborated on the basis of the proposed attributes. To do so, we identify and review major empirical approaches (mainly in, although not limited to, the scientometric domain) for the detection and study of emerging technologies (these include indicators and trend analysis, citation analysis, co-word analysis, overlay mapping, and combinations thereof) and elaborate on how these can be used to operationalise the different attributes of emergence.

Exploring the dynamic knowledge structure of studies on the Internet of things: Keyword analysis

“…Although the previous concept of IoT mainly focused on identifying and monitoring connected things, in recent times, the focus has been on the control of physical things and systems [7]. However, the distinction between them has become blurred over time [7][8][9][10][11][12]. However, the distinction between them has become blurred over time [7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

“…Emerging technology is defined as "a radically novel and relatively fast growing technology characterized by a certain degree of coherence persisting over time and with the potential to exert a considerable impact on the socio-economic domain [9]." Based on such analyses, to trace the changes in IoT research and extract emerging technologies for IoT, this study explores the dynamic knowledge structure of IoT.…”

A bibliometric model for identifying emerging research topics

“…Various types of relations among publications can be used to establish research topics, such as citation‐based, text‐based, and hybrid approaches. In the case of text‐based approaches, some studies have established clusters based on the co‐occurrence of terms (e.g., Furukawa, Mori, Arino, Hayashi, & Shirakawa, ; Lee, ; see also Rotolo et al, , p. 1834). In the case of citation‐based approaches, different citation relations, for instance direct citation relations (e.g., Kajikawa & Takeda, ; Kajikawa, Yoshikawa, Takeda, & Matsushima, ; Shibata, Kajikawa, Takeda, & Matsushima, ; Shibata, Kajikawa, Takeda, Sakata, & Matsushima, ), bibliographic coupling relations (e.g.…”

“…However, as indicated by Rotolo et al (Research Policy 44, 1827–1843, ), the most serious problems are the lack of an acknowledged definition of emergence and incomplete elaboration of the linkages between the definitions that are used and the indicators that are created. With these issues in mind, this study first adjusts the definition of an emerging technology that Rotolo et al () have proposed to accommodate the analysis. Next, a set of criteria for the identification of emerging topics is proposed according to the adjusted definition and attributes of emergence.…”

Emerging Technologies (ETs) in Education: A Systematic Review of the Literature Published between 2006 and 2016

“…The term of ETs was used for this review and it was conceptualized based on the contributions of several authors; such as Day and Schoemarker [2]; Velesiatnos [3]; Rotolo et al [4] and Kabugo et al [5]. They state that ETs should produce a radical change in learning processes.…”