IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/tefoso/v84y2014icp15-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evolving products: From human design to self-organisation via Science Fiction Prototyping

Author

Listed:
  • Roberts, James P.
  • Middleton, Andrew

Abstract

The paper sets out to use Science Fiction Prototyping (SFP) as a tool to explore how networked electronic products might evolve in the future digital economy. It highlights a number of trends already evident in the commercial environment (the increasing speed of new product launches and associated decision making, the growth of data available to decision makers, the ability to imbue devices with limited sensing and decision making faculties) and sets this against enduring issues around the limits and efficacy of human decision making. This is used as the basis for a vignette in which products increasingly carry the burden of decision making in terms of their form, function and interaction with consumers, a responsibility which has unexpected outcomes. It highlights the difficulties associated with forecasting discontinuities for practitioners, the value of SFP as a tool to address these challenges and the prospects for the widespread adoption of SFP as a forecasting methodology.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberts, James P. & Middleton, Andrew, 2014. "Evolving products: From human design to self-organisation via Science Fiction Prototyping," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 15-28.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:84:y:2014:i:c:p:15-28
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2013.09.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162513002321
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.techfore.2013.09.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arnould, Eric J & Price, Linda L, 1993. "River Magic: Extraordinary Experience and the Extended Service Encounter," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 20(1), pages 24-45, June.
    2. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    3. Makridakis, Spyros & Hogarth, Robin M. & Gaba, Anil, 2009. "Forecasting and uncertainty in the economic and business world," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 794-812, October.
    4. Joshua M. Epstein & Robert L. Axtell, 1996. "Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262550253, April.
    5. Cravens, David W., 1986. "Strategic forces affecting marketing strategy," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 77-86.
    6. Jonah Berger & Chip Heath, 2007. "Where Consumers Diverge from Others: Identity Signaling and Product Domains," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(2), pages 121-134, June.
    7. Foster, John, 1997. "The analytical foundations of evolutionary economics: From biological analogy to economic self-organization," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 427-451, October.
    8. Witt, Ulrich, 1997. "Self-organization and economics--what is new?," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 489-507, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gigante, Anna Azzurra, 2013. "Institutional Cognitive Economics: some recent developments," MPRA Paper 48278, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Michael Makowsky, 2006. "An Agent-Based Model of Mortality Shocks, Intergenerational Effects, and Urban Crime," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 9(2), pages 1-7.
    3. Sandra Silva & Jorge Valente & Aurora Teixeira, 2012. "An evolutionary model of industry dynamics and firms’ institutional behavior with job search, bargaining and matching," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 7(1), pages 23-61, May.
    4. Brendan Markey-Towler, 2018. "A formal psychological theory for evolutionary economics," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 691-725, September.
    5. Vallino, Elena, 2013. "The tragedy of the park: an agent-based model on endogenous and exogenous institutions for the management of a forest," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201316, University of Turin.
    6. Hiroshi Takahashi & Takao Terano, 2003. "Agent-Based Approach to Investors? Behavior and Asset Price Fluctuation in Financial Markets," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 6(3), pages 1-3.
    7. Edoardo Mollona & David Hales, 2006. "Knowledge-Based Jobs and the Boundaries of Firms Agent-based Simulation of Firms Learning and Workforce Skill Set Dynamics," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 35-62, February.
    8. Gabriel Galand, 2009. "The Neutrality of Money Revisited with a Bottom-Up Approach: Decentralisation, Limited Information and Bounded Rationality," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 337-360, May.
    9. Stokburger-Sauer, Nicola & Ratneshwar, S. & Sen, Sankar, 2012. "Drivers of consumer–brand identification," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 406-418.
    10. Hanoch, Yaniv, 2002. ""Neither an angel nor an ant": Emotion as an aid to bounded rationality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-25, February.
    11. Otterbring, Tobias, 2021. "Peer presence promotes popular choices: A “Spicy†field study on social influence and brand choice," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    12. Edward Bishop Smith & William Rand, 2018. "Simulating Macro-Level Effects from Micro-Level Observations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 5405-5421, November.
    13. Gigante, Anna Azzurra, 2016. "“Reviewing Path Dependence Theory in Economics: Micro–Foundations of Endogenous Change Processes”," MPRA Paper 75310, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Frank, Joshua, 2003. "Natural selection, rational economic behavior, and alternative outcomes of the evolutionary process," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 601-622, December.
    15. John Foster, 2005. "From simplistic to complex systems in economics," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 29(6), pages 873-892, November.
    16. Friederike Wall, 2016. "Agent-based modeling in managerial science: an illustrative survey and study," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 135-193, January.
    17. Troy Tassier, 2013. "Handbook of Research on Complexity, by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. and Edward Elgar," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 39(1), pages 132-133.
    18. Duffy, John, 2006. "Agent-Based Models and Human Subject Experiments," Handbook of Computational Economics, in: Leigh Tesfatsion & Kenneth L. Judd (ed.), Handbook of Computational Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 19, pages 949-1011, Elsevier.
    19. Brendan Markey-Towler, 2016. "Law of the jungle: firm survival and price dynamics in evolutionary markets," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 655-696, July.
    20. Geoffrey Hodgson & Thorbjørn Knudsen, 2008. "In search of general evolutionary principles: Why Darwinism is too important to be left to the biologists," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 51-69, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:84:y:2014:i:c:p:15-28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401625 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.