Two engineers kept losing the same argument. So they measured it.
At Ford and at Honda, the big R&D commitments turned on timing, and the tools for judging timing were opinion, hype and precedent. Chris Magee and Anuraag Singh each hit that wall from inside industry. At MIT they built the tool they had wanted: a validated way to estimate how fast any defined technology domain is improving, from the structure of the patent citation network.
The research was published in Research Policy (2021). The method was issued U.S. Patent 12,099,572 B2. TechNext was spun out to put it in front of the people making the decisions. Recent work spans venture capital, investment management, semiconductors, energy and power, and advanced materials.
Professor Emeritus, MIT (Mechanical Engineering and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society). Decades of senior R&D leadership at Ford before MIT, and two decades of empirical research on how technologies improve.
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Co-founder and CEO, TechNext Inc. Christopher L. Magee is Professor of the Practice Emeritus, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and formerly Co-Director, International Design Centre, Singapore University of Technology & Design. He has more than 35 years of experience at Ford Motor Company beginning in the Scientific Research Laboratory and progressing through a series of management positions to Executive Director of Programs and Advanced Engineering. Prof. Magee is currently engaged in research on technological progress with emphasis on quantification and prediction. His interests in engineering education have focused on creativity, design and socio-technical systems; he has co-published two books and more than 170 articles, cited over 7,600 times. Prof. Magee is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of ASM and SAE and a participant on major National Research Council Studies. Prof. Magee received his B.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He later received an MBA from Michigan State University.
Fellow, MIT System Design and Management. Six years in technology strategy at Honda R&D in Japan, where the recurring problem was having no objective way to compare technology trajectories. Lead author of the 2021 Research Policy paper. Falling Walls Global Call winner, 2022.
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Co-founder and CTO, TechNext Inc. Anuraag is a Fellow, MIT System Design and Management. He was a member of the MIT Work of the Future Task Force. He worked for Honda R&D Japan in Tokyo at Think Lab, which helped create long term strategy for the company. After completing his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Delhi, he joined as an automotive interior designer at the Honda R&D automobile headquarters. While at Department of Science & Technology Center for Policy Research, he did innovation policy research, particularly innovation assessment and incubators, for the Government of India.
Over 20 years as a software developer and architect, eight of them in Intel's CAD R&D division, most recently building software to design supersonic planes. At TechNext he builds the system that does the measuring.
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Barry has over 20 years experience as a Software Developer, Architect, Product owner and mentor. He has experience working in large enterprises and startups. At Intel, he was a Senior Software Engineer in the CAD R&D division for 8 years. In the recent past, he was developing software to design supersonic planes at a startup. He is now engaged in full-stack web development at TechNext Inc., building the next-gen data driven Technology Operating System for identifying fastest growing technologies. He holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Pennsylvania, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and M.Sc. in Business Analytics from Imperial College, London.