| Abstract |
An unquestionable need, resulting from the macroeconomic expectations of increasing the level of the innovativeness and competitiveness of national economies, is to develop products, technologies, and conduct projects that are innovative and comply with market needs. The importance of technology influences the need for technology assessment (TA), which is one of the key challenges in innovation management concerning support for the decision-making processes with regard to the development and implementation of technologies. The dominant actors in the field of technology assessment have been policy-making bodies; however, the subject was later directed to research and industry. In the traditional understanding of technology assessment, two aspects are stressed: the usefulness of TA in the decision-making process and the impact on the society of the introduction of a new technology or the expansion of an already existing technology. The non-mainstream of TA research emerged in business, industry, and non-governmental circles, and it is currently developed and will probably expand in the future. It is connected mainly with economic evaluation, decision-making, and technology measurement methods. The authors of the paper present the origins and development of technology assessment approaches and the methods applied. In this field, single methods and simple and complex models for technology assessment are applied. There are models focused on one homogenous group of assessment factors and complex models that simultaneously take into account various aspects of technology development. Against the background of existing approaches, methods and systems in technology assessment, an original complex technology assessment system is presented that has been developed by the authors of the paper, verified, and experimentally implemented at the Institute for Sustainable Technologies - National Research Institute in Radom, Poland. It is embedded in the stream of TA research, corresponding with the needs of business and industry. It concerns support for the process of technology development and presently comprises the following three main modules: The implementation maturity level assessment module, The commercial potential assessment module, and The innovativeness level assessment module. The forth module concerning risk assessment is currently being designed. The main advantage of the system comprises the possibility to assess innovative products at any stage of a project execution, including ex-ante, ongoing, ex-post, and follow-up, and to compare the assessments results at different stages of product development (from the concept stage, through the development stage, to the final technology stage). The practical value of the system has been proven by its use for the assessment of several hundred technological solutions for the needs of research organisations, technological parks, and enterprises in Poland. |