The adoption of this methodology allows the recognition of the opportunities for companies of enhancing performance through key technologies. This allows to summarize an emerging practice as the use of a key technology within a business context-represented by industry, business function, and business process adopting the technology-with the aim of achieving improvements in terms of business performance. Through the content analysis of the full text of scientific papers, emerging practices are captured and then classified within a group of standardized labels. In this article, we present a framework for performing a systematic literature review on the implementation of emerging business practices and the adoption of these key technologies: three-dimensional printing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, computing, digital applications, geospatial technologies, immersive environments, Internet of things, open and crowd-based platforms, proximity technologies, and robotics. This case-study on the origins and early evolution of ‘technology foresight’ illustrates the essential importance of terminology in differentiating key concepts in social sciences (where it sometimes gives rise to unfortunate priority disputes), and particularly in the case of policy research. In addition, it highlights the conceptual similarities between foresight and la prospective, a novel approach developed in France not just for looking into the future but also for shaping or even ‘constructing’ the future of our choice, an ambitious aspiration that it shares with foresight. The paper also examines other early uses of the concept of ‘foresight’ in the United States and Canada at about the same time. The paper reflects on the importance of concepts and terminology in the field of science policy research, providing examples of how an inappropriate term or phrase can damn the prospects of the research having an impact on policy, while a more politically astute use of terminology can greatly enhance the probability of making a significant impact. It analyses how the rationale for its use evolved over time, first providing a ‘catchy’ title for a study (‘Project Foresight’), and then a convenient shorthand for the focus of that study, before eventually coming to formally signify a new approach to looking systematically into the future of science and technology, an inclusive and wide-ranging process that differed appreciably from that of traditional ‘technology forecasting’. This article explores how the term ‘foresight’ originally came to be used in connection with science and technology by the author and SPRU colleagues in 1983.
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