Predicting the future of additive manufacturing: A Delphi study on economic and societal implications of 3D printing for 2030
By Ruth Jiang, Robin Kleer, Frank T. Piller. 2017
453 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Additive manufacturing (colloquially: 3D printing) is a highly discussed topic. Previous research has argued that this technology not only has profound effects on manufacturing businesses but also on society, which demands new corporate strategies and policies alike. Thus, the development of reliable future scenarios is key for strategic planning and decision making as well as for future research. Dedicated academic studies in this field remain scarce. We present the results of an extensive Delphi survey on the future of additive manufacturing with a focus on its economic and societal implications in 2030. Via an initial round of extensive qualitative interviews and a Delphi-based analysis of 3510 quantitative estimations and 1172 qualitative comments from 65 experts, we were able to develop and validate 18 projections that were then clustered into a scenario for the most probable future. The scenario is built on the six Delphi projections with the highest consensus on the likelihood of occurrence. We complement this most probable scenario with a discussion on controversial, extreme scenarios. Based on these findings we derive implications for industry, policy, and future research.
Subfields: Management of Technology and Innovation, Sociology and Political Science, Strategy and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a2513c813a35a965b4eafce74f68ad1cb81be45
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In Management of Technology and Innovation
In Sociology and Political Science
In Strategy and Management
Citations in the corpus
- Industry 4.0: A Bibliometric Review of Its Managerial Intellectual Structure and Potential Evolution in the Service Industries (2019, methodology): “This community, to a certain extent, complements and expands extant research, which specifically discusses how additive manufacturing can challenge established business models and create new ones (Jia et al., 2015; Jiang et al., 2017; Potstada et al., 2016).”
- Plastic recycling in additive manufacturing: A systematic literature review and opportunities for the circular economy (2020, background): “From a societal viewpoint, Jiang et al. (2017) reported that the product development could change from traditional stage-gate models to iterative, agile processes changing the scenario by 2030.”
- The barriers to the progression of additive manufacture: perspectives from UK industry (2018, methodology): “Furthermore, Jiang et al. (2017) recently implemented the Delphi survey to predict future societal and economic implications of AM.”