'Creative', 'critical', and 'strategic' approaches to tech discovery
This article draws on an idea from a LinkedIn course taught by Becky Saltzman ("Critical thinking for better judgment and decision-making"). The course distinguishes three modes of thinking: creative, critical, and strategic.
These three modes of thinking are useful for tech discovery as well. Below is a description of each mode, when best to use it, how it works in practice, and some examples.
A longer-form article with additional background is available in our blog.
Creative tech discovery
Creative tech discovery aims to unearth new ideas, solutions, and perspectives.
When to use it
Creative tech discovery is best for addressing questions such as:
- What could be a game-changing or breakthrough innovation in my field of interest?
- How are similar problems solved in other industries?
- Might there be a completely different technological approach to solving my problem?
How it works
Try unconventional search queries. For example, rather than searching for a technology, you could search for an application or a property (e.g. "light-weight"). Related article: SimpleTRIZ: How to search for contradictory requirements.
In terms of data sets, 'Venture Capital', 'Funded Research Projects', and 'Markets' (context markets in particular) are good places to start.
You could also use Mergeflow's Emerging Technology topics for inspiration.
Examples
Here are some examples that use creative tech discovery:
- The surprisingly interesting business of shock absorbers
- How you can discover game-changing innovations
- How to use Wikipedia to boost your discovery skills
Critical tech discovery
The goal of critical tech discovery is to validate assumptions, or to check the plausibility of new findings. These new findings could be results of creative tech discovery, for example.
When to use it
Critical tech discovery is best for addressing questions such as:
- How plausible is this market size estimate that I found?
- Is this technology really "early stage" or "mature"?
- Could this technology be a hype?
How it works
Critical tech discovery often uses back-of-the-envelope calculations. For example, in order to verify a market size estimate, you can use population or revenue data from Wikipedia to make educated guesses. We describe in detail how to do this in one of our tech discovery guides.
You can also use distributional data from Mergeflow, for example for estimating technology maturity.
Examples
The following articles from our blog are examples of critical tech discovery:
- Green hydrogen ventures and R&D
- How to check the plausibility of a market estimate
- Using data to estimate tech maturity
Strategic tech discovery
Strategic tech discovery aims to develop plausible future scenarios.
When to use it
Strategic tech discovery is useful to address questions such as:
- If I used this new tech in my product, what would it enable me to do that I couldn't do otherwise?
- How likely is it that this emerging technology will be commercially available in two years from now?
- What could be the innovation strategies of companies in a certain tech field?
How it works
For developing plausible future scenarios, a core question is, What needs to change in order for something else to happen? For example, you could ask what still needs to happen for a given technology to be commercially available. For instance, if this technology only shows up in R&D, a lot more still needs to happen than if it also shows up in venture investments or market estimates. You can see this distribution across data sets when you do a 360° search in Mergeflow.
In order to infer possible innovation strategies of companies in a certain tech field, you can use Mergeflow's Grid Search. With Grid Search, you can see, for example, areas of innovation where there are patents but no published R&D. Such a pattern could hint at strategic intentions of companies holding the patents in these areas. After all, if a company holds patents in an area where nobody else seems to be doing anything, this might give them a particularly great advantage.
Examples
Here are examples that talk about strategic tech discovery: