The situation of technologies searching for market opportunities is a common one in technology-based industries. We add to the technology manager‘s toolbox by developing a new tool for application identification. It is based on insights from user innovation and lead user research, with merits...

In this paper, we suggest an approach to application identification based on von Hippel’s lead user method, adapted in such a way that it starts from a given technology rather than from an application area. Our approach complements existing methods for application identification, but it also...