Week 8 Think Tanks Part 2

Don’t tank with your think when you discuss Think Tanks…

The week 8 activity (part 2) for exploring Think Tanks begins at our friend and guest lecturer from the last residency—Dr. William Halal and his own think tank, TechCast.

The underlying premise of the TechCast think tank is the common belief that “People everywhere sense the world is passing through a technological revolution, but they lack convenient, reliable information.”

A Virtual Think Tank

The folks at TechCast have ‘solved’ this problem by pooling knowledge of experts working online and automatically distributing authoritative forecasts to corporate managers, government officials, scientists, and the general public—anywhere in the world, on any prominent technology, in real time.

The TechCast business pitch is that “All organizations need technology forecasts for their strategic planning because the technology revolution threatens the creative destruction of markets, alters the way people work, and restructures the world itself. Most managers try to develop their own forecasts or assemble them from limited outside sources, but the time and cost are considerable and the results are mediocre.” TechCast claims to offer convenient, authoritative forecasts at far lower cost and time savings. Our clients tell us "There is nothing else like it."

The TechCast system was developed by Dr. Halal and his colleagues at George Washington University and George Mason University. (sounds like a bunch of George-isms to me…)

They have had their results of forecasts and predictions published in scientific journals, widely reported in the media (or is that wildly?), and used by paying clients around the world. Previously, the reports were distributed as the GW Forecast in print version via snail mail, but they have been online exclusively since 1998 and have reached over 1,000,000 hits per year in recent years.

The group scans literature and media, interview authorities, and draw on other sources to identify emerging trends and other background data on each technology. The data is then summarized in a “Breakthrough Analysis” and used to guide estimates of technology officers (CTOs), scientists, and engineers, scholars, and other ‘experts’. Their results are automatically aggregated to forecast the most likely year each breakthrough will occur, the potential economic demand, and confidence levels. They claim to have a success rate of +/- 3 years on their forecasts.