## 3 Methodology
### Sense and Respond (S&R) Approach (Target: Technology Developers)  
In general, the sense and respond approach created a two-way conversation with the market and used these conversations to create value by understanding the customer needs [5]. In line with this approach, the H2020 RESOLVD conversations (bi-directional communication) between technology developers and the target customers (DSOs) would serve to validate how the proposed H2020 RESOLVD solutions were relevant by first sensing and responding accordingly.  
In H2020 RESOLVD, we introduced the sense and respond analytical tool, which combined the expectations of technology developers from the project value propositions, experiences of the proposed solution, comparisons to the competitor/available solution and investigations of the general technology development (see sample questionnaire in Table 1). The results from the analysis then provided a holistic view on identifying the critical value proposition based on the respondents' expertise knowledge (technology developers). This ultimately helped technology developers to prioritize between different value propositions of the complete RESOLVD solution and, thereby, adjust their business strategy and joint exploitation pathway. The analytical sense and respond method was adopted and used for analysis purposes with the governing formula [15; 16].  
The Critical Factor Index (CFI) was calculated according to [16] and presented as follows:  
\[\text{CFI}=\frac{\text{Standard deviation of expectations}*\text{Standard deviation of experiences}}{\text{Importance index}*\text{Gap index}*\text{Direction of tech. development index}}, \tag{1}\]  
\[\text{Gap index}=\left|\frac{\text{Average of the experiences}-\text{ Average of expectations}}{10}-1\right|, \tag{2}\]  
\[\text{Direction of development index}=\left|\frac{\text{ Dir. of devt.(better)}-\text{ Dir. of devt.(worse)}}{10}-1\right|, \tag{3}\]  
The gap index considers the change of respondents' experiences and expectations (before and after the deployment of the technology in the pilot and measured KPIs) (Equation (2))  
The direction of development (Dir. of devt.) index indicates the subjective judgment of respondents based on their experiences of the past, current and expectation of future trends of technology evolvement in relation to specified attributes (Equation (3)). The respondents' rated if the proposed attribute was better, worse or same as business as usual, as presented in Table 1.  
By incorporating the sample correction error [15], the Scaled CFI was calculated as:  
\[\text{Scaled CFI}=\frac{\text{Standard deviation of expectations}*\text{ Standard deviation of experiences}}{\text{Gap index}*\text{Direction of development index}*\text{Importance index}}-\frac{s-1}{2*\ln(2)*n}, \tag{4}\]  
where '\(s\)' is the minimum number of samples required, and '\(n\)' is the number of total samples (responses) analyzed; CFI is the critical factor index without sample error correction.  
The importance index was considered by averaging the given experiences scores (see Table 1) after piloting. The experience was scored based on the results of the project KPIs from the pilot compared to the business-as-usual scenario (BAU). The competitor index reflects a relative performance of the attribute, considered and rated by technology developers, based on the available competitor's technology.