Thinking about emerging technology inevitably leads to questions about technology maturity. When is a technology considered mature? There are at least three ways to determine maturity that I’ve come across.

The first is the idea of a technology emergence date – which isn’t the date the technology first appears, but rather when it has garnered enough attention to be noticeable. One of the ways of measuring this is through large datasets like the Google Books corpus, say setting a threshold for when a technology reaches a certain level of attention.

A second way to consider technology maturity is using NASA’s Technology Readiness Level descriptive scale. The lowest measures on this scale (TRL1) are for basic technology research, while the highest (TRL9) indicate “flight proven” through successful space mission operations. This scale covers everything in between, including proof-of-concept, lab validation, demonstration and testing in applicable environments. The TRL idea has been adopted by the venture capital community as a mechanism for communicating the maturity of startups from an investment capital perspective.

The third way is an emerging academic approach analysing the technological trajectory – or pathway of advancement. This starts with visions of utility, moves to working technical configurations and then encompasses evidence of knowledge exchange, co-ordination, investment, market infrastructure and finally societal embedding. (See Robinson et al, 2019, Innovation Pathways in Additive Manufacturing)

I find it interesting that the first is essentially a measure of popularity, the second is completely focused on the technical and the third places technology in the context of the ‘people’ who are engaged with the technology. Perhaps the ideal is somewhere between these.