Session Ten

Today’s lesson consisted of some revision of the past few weeks. Our main focus was on technology assessment and forecasting. We are moving ahead very fast and we have to keep up with the changes. More than just keep up, we should be ahead of the changes so that we will not be caught with a surprise. That is where forecasting comes in. If we are bale to forecast the future with some accuracy, we will to some extent have the power to make that change instead.

Forecasting, I feel, is especially an advantage to business as it helps them stay ahead of competition. But with the way we have been using earth’s resources we have to be very careful about the decisions we make. To be able to do this we need to consider every aspect of that change and the consequences or benefits that will come with it. As mentioned by prof in class once, and I am starting to agree with this, is that not all technologies or innovations we think of will definitely work. There is a time to everything and we need to consider that fact as well. Is everyone ready for such a change now or in the future?

A technique to forecast future and to evaluate it was discussed. Would it work if we set a particular goal for the future and slowly work backwards till where we are today? This would allow us to not only forecast the change but also predict the issues that might come along the way so we can be prepared for it. Thus, when we finally start on the plan we would have a more sound and tight project in hand. This method has its pros and cons. The biggest problem may be the fact that what if we predicted or guessed a very important part of the whole process wrongly, everything planned may go down the drain. But that is where research and careful consideration comes in. If we can try to cover as much issues as possible the chances of anything going wrong will decrease each time.

As I mentioned before, forecasting can be very handy for businesses. But how far each business can go in predicting or reducing risks for that prediction may be affected by their size. R&D costs money and how air-tight their plans are depends on how much they can spend.

I enjoyed the class a lot as it was a very nice way to tie everything up. I give this class a 9/10.