Science fiction (sci-fi) creative products inspire individuals by envisioning alternative futures and imaginary technological development. The stimuli conveyed by sci-fi creative products can trigger consumers' interest, which nowadays translate into reactions on social media platforms. Consequently, these reactions allow to understand the attitude of potential consumers towards not-yet-developed technologies and inform firms developing novel and unconventional technological solutions, hence reducing their market uncertainty. This study aims at exploring if the individuals' reactions to the technological themes presented through sci-fi creative products and conveyed through social media may become a source of information for innovating firms, that may consequently affect their technology development processes. To answer our research question, we relied on the individuals’ reactions to the sci-fi series Black Mirror conveyed through Twitter and on patents related to the technological themes presented in the series. Results show that in most cases there is a significant variation in social media engagement about the presented technology after the first airing of the episode and, in a subset of cases we found a significant variation in the mean number of related patents filed per day, that can be associated with an actual change in the technology development processes.

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消费者对科幻小说作为技术发展信息来源的反应：实证分析

科幻（sci-fi）创意产品通过设想另类未来和想象中的技术发展来激励个人。科幻创意产品所传达的刺激可以引发消费者的兴趣，这种兴趣如今转化为社交媒体平台上的反应。因此，这些反应可以了解潜在消费者对尚未开发的技术的态度，并为开发新颖和非常规技术解决方案的公司提供信息，从而减少其市场不确定性。本研究旨在探讨个人对通过科幻创意产品呈现并通过社交媒体传达的技术主题的反应是否可能成为创新公司的信息来源，从而影响其技术开发过程。为了回答我们的研究问题，我们依赖于个人对通过 Twitter 传达的科幻系列《黑镜》的反应以及与该系列中呈现的技术主题相关的专利。结果表明，在大多数情况下，该集首次播出后，所呈现技术的社交媒体参与度存在显着变化，并且在一部分案例中，我们发现每天申请的相关专利的平均数量存在显着变化，即可以与技术开发过程中的实际变化相关联。