Sprint radar: Community-based trend identification

The Austrian research and transfer center sprint focuses on the development and utilization of advanced methods of enhancing effectiveness and efficiency of the front end of innovation. Within the area sprint>lab, an online based trend collection system has been developed to identify future technological trends and developments in pre-defined clusters by merging and analyzing opinions of experts. To support this mentioned approach, a three-step procedure was implemented following the Delphi method. The first step focuses on the collection of trends from experts via an online-based collaboration platform. For this purpose, a web-based crowdsourcing tool called sprint>radar has been developed in cooperation with HYVE. In the next step, the analytical results of the trend collection phase are fed back to a selected group of experts, using a quantitative online survey. The experts are asked to evaluate the trends regarding their probability of occurrence and relevance. This interplay between evaluation and re-analysis continues until a consensus has been reached. Based on the results of this survey, strategy workshops are conducted, where experts from industry and academia discuss the impact of the trends identified on the field of interest.