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A prototype system must answer user needs, and the best way to accomplish this is to incorporate buyers' input into the R&D process at an early stage. Even if system buyers have little insight into the workings of the underlying elements of the technology within the system, they know their needs. Researchers who develop the technology can only recognize how an early-stage technology could be shaped to benefit the user (envisioning its function once incorporated into a full system) if the user's needs are clearly understood.

The performance of a complex system is limited by the capabilities (and costs) of it's component-level technologies. The most valuable new technologies have always started out as innovative concepts that were at some point considered to be farfetched. The big disconnect is between the current system buyers and the new technology developers. There are many instances in which MNT will significantly enhance the performance of existing systems as well as enable entirely new systems that would answer user needs far more effectively. Agency program directors and systems acquisition managers, however, currently have no way to learn about highly relevant yet underdeveloped technology. Without that knowledge, they are not in a position to provide sufficient, sustained funding to ensure steady development to the system level. Moreover, with so few people considering the benefits of international collaboration in MNT development for aerospace applications, many opportunities are lost when exceptionally valuable potential combinations of new technologies are overlooked.

The existing technology development process is thus often inefficient and ineffective; projects that do not have a strong connection to the end-user from the start will often end up going nowhere - or at best have many "stops and starts" - leading to disappointed investors. Even if they are involved, end-users usually have no way to evaluate the cost-benefit arguments that would lead to the incorporation of the most effective new MNT concepts.