Technology foresight for growth and productivity: the design and implementation of a new foresight approach for UK SMEs

远见是战略和政策规划中非常真实的趋势的一个方便和令人回味的标签（Vecchiato, 2015）。它的崛起是由商业环境日益增加的不确定性和企业长期维持业绩的相关困难所驱动的。尽管在过去的20年中，技术预见在大公司中越来越受欢迎，但在中小企业中使用技术预见的证据却很少。这种有限的采用是由于它们侧重于日常业务，战略决策的短期眼光，对环境变化的反应性方法，监测和评估新技术的资源有限，以及最重要的是缺乏与技术预见有关的方法技能和能力。但是，预见对中小企业，特别是生产率低的中小企业是非常有益的，因为它使人们能够迅速选择新技术，从而促进长期生产率和国际竞争力。总体而言，前瞻性将使中小企业能够以系统的方式确定优先事项和联合战略行动，从而优化配置资源以进行产品和工艺创新。该项目将分为三个主要阶段。第一阶段的重点是物色合适的中小企业和技术专家参与计划。第二阶段将包括一个德尔菲过程，以便确定最相关的技术。第三阶段将包括两个讲习班，企业家和技术专家将通过这些讲习班开会，评估发展、影响（例如新产品和工艺）以及采用/开发新的关键技术可用的应对办法。”

"Foresight is a convenient and evocative label for a very real trend in strategy and policy planning (Vecchiato, 2015). Its rise to prominence was driven by the increasing uncertainty of the business environment and the associated difficulty of firms to sustain their performance in the long run.Despite the growing popularity of technology foresight among large corporations in the last 20 years, little evidence has been found on the use of technology foresight in SMEs. This limited adoption is attributed to their focus on day-by-day operations, short-term horizon in strategic decision making, reactive approach to environmental changes, constrained resources for monitoring and assessing new technologies, and -- most important -- a lack of methodological skills and competences related to technology foresight. However, foresight can very beneficial to SMEs, especially those who have low-productivity, by enabling the prompt selection of new technologies and thus fostering long-term productivity and international competitiveness. Overall, foresight will enable SMEs to set priorities and joint strategic actions, in a systematic way, leading to the optimal allocation of resources to product and process innovation.This project will consist of three main phases. The first phase will focus on the identification of suitable SMEs and technology experts to involve in the project. The second phase will consist of a Delphi process enabling the identification of the most relevant technologies. The third phase will consist of two workshops through which entrepreneurs and technology experts will meet to assess the evolution, impact (e.g., new products and process), and the response options available for adopting/developing new critical technologies."