The History of Industry mirrors the History of Society, by which it is also reflected.
Its purpose is to describe the emergence of technologies, which exhibit a personality
of their own and not only bring out new possibilities, but also a stiffness to which
all stakeholders, should to some extent yield, especially the decision makers in business
circles. Technologies that succeed commercially are those which are able to provide
sustainable answers to the demands put forward successively by each one of them. These
robust technologies, which are not identical to the disruptive technologies of K. Brimacombe,
meet criteria, which in effect are true innovation paradigms. A list of these is proposed
here, stemming from a retrospective analysis of process development in the Steel Industry.
It is probably adventurous to project these into a technological forecasting exercise,
due to the non-deterministic nature of history. But this is an interesting way to focus
on the challenges that should be met in the future and that no stakeholder would refuse
to face.