Method of the critical technologies selection

An important condition for the stable development of the country is quality predictive research, in international practice better known as foresight. In this paper, authors analyze the most popular methods of technological foresight, which are used both in Ukraine and in other countries. The positive and negative traits of each of them are determined. This research showed that the most common methods of technological foresight are Delphi, SWOT analysis, expert panels, scenarios, modeling, bibliometric and patent analysis, etc. The analysis also indicated that methods, such as benchmarking, polling, brainstorming, roadmaps and scenarios, conferences, seminars and SWOT analysis cannot be applied to technological foresight in defense sphere. We also cannot talk about the use of exclusively methods of bibliometric and patent analysis, if the statistical data is not enough to predictive research. Therefore, we cannot forecast future technological directions without expert methods, but it should be borne in mind that expert estimates always have an error. The authors proposed a new method of technological foresight to determine the list of critical technologies in the defense sector of Ukraine - the method of critical technologies. It combines expert methods (Delphi and expert panel method) and statistical methods (patent and bibliometric analysis). The paper describes the complete algorithm of conducting predictive research regarding to determine the critical technologies list in the defense sector of Ukraine. In addition, the full decision-making structure the selection of technologies to the list of critical ones was demonstrated, with a description of the composition of the expert commission and generalized selection criteria. A new principle is proposed for cutting off non-priority technologies based on differentiation of the approximated function and determination of the point of equal increments of abscissa and ordinate. The algorithm involves carrying out two stages of the survey, the Delphi method and method of pairwise comparisons, bibliometric and patent analysis. As a result of the foresight by the method of critical technologies, we get an objective ranking of critical technologies.