**5. Conclusions**

The approach of Constructive Technology Assessment offers a useful methodology and set of tools such as scenario workshops to support researchers, firms, policy makers and other stakeholders in identifying dynamics in innovation processes and anticipating plausible future developments. In this chapter I have described this approach and showed how to actually do this in the case of nanotechnology-enabled drug delivery systems.

A key finding from the scenario workshop on NDDS is that participants' assessments of development dynamics and future market introduction of nanotechnology-enabled drug delivery systems often took into account what was happening at the level of the sector. That said, participants did discuss nanotechnology specific aspects, often in the context of uncer‐ tainties about performance, risk and demand for nanotechnology engineered products. Still, during interactions and positioning of actors, broader considerations about sectoral dynamics and circumstances came to the fore. Participants discussed patterns of interaction between actors in the chain and developments at the level of the sector that were independent of, but relevant for, nanotechnologies. In this way, participants drew from a general repertoire of embedding issues in their sector, independent of specific emerging technologies, as part of their anticipatory competences. Discussing dynamics at the level of the sector rather than Focussing on a specific NDDS technology was appreciated by participants as they usually did not look at NDDS from such a perspective.

Occasionally participants also discussed issues transcending sectoral aspects such as overall changes toward dealing with risks of (new) technologies in general and nanotechnology as an umbrella term. These broader discussions will offer further, though non-specific clues, such as general pressures to take into account risks of nanotechnologies and take into account ethical and societal aspects during the development of nanotechnology-enabled products.

Present uncertainties of performance of emerging NDDS will make concrete anticipation of societal embedding difficult. Then, considerations about sectoral conditions and patterns of interactions between actors in the sector are likely to be highlighted. This is relevant as a variety of actors and interests are involved during the development and market introduction of novel NDDS. Understanding of sector-level patterns linked to drug delivery technologies in general then offers clues as to what will be important to take into account when working on the development and introduction of specific combinations of drug delivery devices, pharma‐ ceutical agents and diseases. Scenarios offer playgrounds to experiment with specific cases of NDDS which will anyway be embedded in dynamics of the intersecting supply chains of pharmaceuticals and delivery systems.

By organizing an interactive discussion involving participants at different positions in the value chain, supported by well-prepared scenarios, analysts or practitioners adopting CTA methodologies can support articulation of anticipatory strategies and decision making. Whether the insights gained during such events actually make a difference is more difficult to determine, among others because this depends on how much opportunities and room to maneuver participants have after the workshop. The workshops will however contribute to an emerging shared understanding of dynamics and issues which cannot be easily ignored by the individual participants. This will be different than before the workshop and in that sense the workshop will already have effects on how actors will anticipate market introduction of nanotechnology-enabled drug delivery systems.
