DELPHI TECHNIQUE FOR LOCALITY-SPECIFIC S-AND-T PLANNING

Research involves looking into future and addressing a future need. Without formal mechanisms this can be quite hazy. Since commencing research on a particular area means commitment of resources; project initiation is important in the context of constraints. This initiation process can be meaningful and worthwhile only if proper methods are adopted for formally generating potentially useful ideas of relevance to the locality-specific features of the research institute after considering its expertise profile and potential research needs. Research management and particularly S&T planning is confronted with the problem of systematic idea generation and project initiation. The prevalent literature deals mostly with the subsequent stages of project evaluation, selection and execution. There is a lot of interest growing in planning for generic technologies. In this paper a formal technique like Delphi is used to identify areas of current focus and future potential in the area of food science and technology in a manner as to be of potential interest to the laboratory in question, keeping in mind its overall charter, expertise profile and area relevance.