Towards a Conceptual Model for Decision-making Regarding the Incorporation of Disruptive Technology: Technology Scanning for Early Warning Signals

The identification of disruptive technologies and the evaluation of their impact on the own business is a major challenge for technology intelligence. Technology scanning is the technology intelligence sub-discipline for finding weak signals (early warning signals) to technology trends, and as we conjecture also for finding signals on technology-driven impeding changes in evaluation contexts in relevant markets. To do so, technology scanning uses a toolbox of methods including prediction, scenario analysis, and trend analysis methods. The main challenge of dealing with disruptive technologies is the lack of guidance on how organizations can incorporate disruptive technologies into their service operations to improve their service delivery. To address this challenge, we examine whether Information Systems (IS) research can contribute to this guidance by developing a conceptual model. The goal of our research is to design a method to formalize a conceptual model that supports organizations in incorporating disruptive technologies into their service organization. In this paper, we present preliminary results related to requirements for identifying and evaluating disruptive technologies in a company’s context. We also present an analysis of existing methods and design options (process, organizations, technology) for technology scanning regarding these requirements.