Exploring Potentials, Avoiding Pitfalls: Roles of Technology Assessment for a Successful Commercialization of Nanotechnology

摘要

Successful commercialization of new technologies requires several preconditions to be fulfilled. In order to allocate R&D resources in the most efficient way, anticipatory and strategic knowledge about such preconditions is required. Among relevant parameters in this field are future market developments, competitive product developments, cost/benefit-ratio, future applications and business models based on the new technologies, political and societal boundary conditions, public acceptance as well as the emergence of new demands depending, for example, on future changes in lifestyle or consumption. Technology Assessment (TA) can be used to provide anticipatory knowledge on some of those parameters. According to the experience of the last decades, this knowledge is two-fold: (1) orientated to exploring potentials for commercialization at an early stage of development; (2) dedicated to an early detection of possible pitfalls to a successful commercialization. The paper intends to shed some light on both of these possible contributions, with respect to thematic as well as to methodical aspects. It focuses, under the objective of "exploring potentials", on the approach of roadmapping as a tool to explore future paths of R&D towards concrete product lines based on nanotechnology innovations. Under the objective of avoiding pitfalls, we will discuss some issues of risk analysis, risk assessment and public risk perception, as well as trust-building measures, because public acceptance of NT at large could have direct implication for the success of NT commercialization.