A proposed convention for measuring the state of the art of products or processes

Autor: Thomas R. Munson, Theodore J. Gordon
Rok vydání: 1981
Předmět:
Zdroj: Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 20:1-26
ISSN: 0040-1625
DOI: 10.1016/0040-1625(81)90038-x
Popis: During 1980, The Futures Group performed a study under contract to the National Science Foundation to devise a convention for describing—in quantitative terms—technological state of the art of essential any technology. In designing this convention we hope that different analysts, working independently, would be able to arrive at a similar conclusion about the state of the art of a technology under study. With such a measure at hand, it would be possible, for example, to evaluate the effectiveness of investment in R&D by evaluating the improvement in the technological state of the art of a given technology, per unit investment. The form of the equation chosen for the state-of-the-art convention was SOA = K1(P1/P'1 + K2(P2/P'2) ⋯ Kn(Pn/P'n) where SOA = state of the art, Kn = the relative weight associated with each parameter describing the technology, Pn = the value of the particular parameter useful in describing the state of the art, and P'n = a reference value of the parameter. Various approaches to the selection of the parameters and their weights were described. Of particular interest is a statistical approach which assumes that the state of the art, over time, is an S-shaped curve. In this instance it is possible to compute the value of the weights through an iterative numerical technique. The convention was applied to two technologies: computers and antibiotics, and state-of-the-art measures were developed for each. In the case of antibiotics, selected organism/antibiotic pairs were analyzed to identify the state of the art of a particular antibiotic as applied to the control of a particular microorganism, over time.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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