Title: Scenarios in technology and research policy: case portable fuel cells

Authors: Arho Suominen, Aulis Tuominen, Jussi Kantola

Addresses: Electronics Productization Research Group, Department of Information Technology, University of Turku, FI – 20014, Turku, Finland. ' Electronics Productization Research Group, Department of Information Technology, University of Turku, FI – 20014, Turku, Finland. ' Department of Knowledge Service Engineering, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Korea

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to build scenarios in technology and research policy for portable fuel cells. In portable devices, the transitions from batteries to a fuel cell have been forecasted for a long time. This has resulted in several policy decisions made by governments and strategic decisions made by industry. Results of concrete development have, however, been lacking. Promises of commercialisation have been abundant in industry, but adoption to portable devices in niche solutions has been difficult, not to even expect adoption to applications such as mobile phones. The study builds scenarios by drawing from a two-year study on the commercialisation of portable fuel cells. The study uses results from previous bibliometric and expert opinion studies and structures previous results through a work scenario into overall scenarios in technology and research policy. These concluded on three probable development scenarios, |crisis of confidence|, |continuing the trend of development| and |niche applications| with different practical implications.

Keywords: scenarios; hype cycle; portable fuel cells; PFC; research policy; technology policy; strategic management; technology commercialisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCM.2011.040631

International Journal of Strategic Change Management, 2011 Vol.3 No.1/2, pp.32 - 50

Published online: 28 Feb 2015 *

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