Theme: Emerging Technologies

Once a new technology has been invented it goes through several stages of adoption. Considering a new technology as an innovation, Rogers [1995] has developed a theory for the diffusion of innovations. He defines an innovation as an idea, practice or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption. He distinguishes the following types of adopters of an innovation: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority,and laggards.
In its life cycle, initially a technology is brand new and it has not proven itself yet. The innovators start adopting it, followed by a small group of early adopters, who take the risk of adopting the technology for use in their products. When the applications of the technology appear to be successful, more and more companies will implement the new technology into their products (early majority and late majority). In the end every company will use it. At this point, the innovators and early adapters are usually already working on implementing the next emerging technology and in this way they try to stay ahead of their competitors.

The theme of this study project is emerging technologies, implying that we focus on the first stage of the adoption of technology. At the start of this stage the technology is brand new without any available products and at the end of the stage there is a small number of applications of the technology (by innovators and early adopters), but it is not yet widespread. Examples of current emerging technologies that are in the beginning of the first stage of adoption are UltraWideBand, 3D-displays and fuel cell cars. Some examples of emerging technologies that are coming close to the end of the first stage of adoption are Blueray/HD-DVD, UMTS and E-paper.