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This paper aims to identify future scenarios and convergent technologies regarding the plantain chain in the region of Quindío, Colombia. It proposes the definition of key variables, convergent technologies, future objectives, future scenarios and hypotheses based on stakeholders’ and experts’ opinions collected through questionnaires, surveys and workshops.

The present analysis seeks to identify and anticipate the future routes for the improvement of scientific, technological, innovative and skills management of the plantain agroindustrial chain in the region of Quindío, Colombia using the foresight-by-scenarios and, Delphi methodologies and finally validating the results with artificial intelligence code and natural language processing.

After the analysis of 100 initial variables, the results suggested the identification of five key variables defined by the stakeholders and matrix-based multiplication applied to a classification (MICMAC) analysis such as “weather,” “financing and economy,” “grouping and associativity,” “crop” and “territorial planning and raw material.” Moreover, the definition of four future objectives along with the matrix of alliances and conflicts, tactics, objectives and recommendations (MACTOR) analysis suggested scenarios according to the probability. The most possible, probable and desirable scenario, was the cooccurrence of the five proposed hypotheses. Furthermore, the Delphi analysis allowed us to define nine subgroups from 116 subtopics including: “plantain varieties,” “plantain agroindustry,” “waste use” and “crop,” among others.

Due to the specificity of the analyzed agro-chain, the study only encompasses the plantain and banana sectors. However, the implications are related to the generation of projects in the selected technologies.

This paper includes implications for the development of prospective studies combining two or more different methodologies such as foresight-by-scenarios and Delphi method at the same time and further comparing the results with artificial intelligence analysis.

The generation of public policies in the sector and input for governmental analysis and tools for decision-making with a well-grounded, systematic and rational point of view.

This work describes for the first time, the implementation of the Delphi method regarding an important agroindustry sector such as plantain and banana prospective study. Furthermore, it explains the alignment of two methodologies; foresight-by-scenarios and the Delphi method related to the sectorial approaches, and convergent technologies and innovations, respectively. Moreover, a complementary bibliometric analysis with global terms related to the plantain or banana agroindustry was also included. In a novel way, we also applied an artificial intelligence code using Python software to contrast the results previously obtained in the foresight-by-scenarios method.

The purpose of this study is to review the literature on the Delphi method, its characteristics and current applications through an analysis of recent most-cited scientific papers, with an emphasis on three axes, namely, the number of rounds used, stakeholder participation relevance or only academic experts’ participation and the possibility of using indicators or techniques different from those related to descriptive statistics.

In total, 57 papers were initially reviewed, 10 of them with a high citation rate. Then, an analysis was made of papers in Scopus for the period 2015-2018 published in the Technological Forecasting and Social Change Journal and in the Futures and Foresight Journal, which had the characteristic of displaying quartile Q1 or Q2 in Scimago in addition to being in Scopus.

Among the main results, the authors observe the tendency to use fewer rounds, a higher prevalence of stakeholder participation and not only academic experts but also the use of new types of modified Delphi such as real-time spatial Delphi, Delphi group, market Delphi, real-world Delphi and policy Delphi.

Among the conclusions, the possibility of using other indicators or complementary techniques to the descriptive statistics is highlighted such as number of justifications or comments between rounds, coefficients to quantify the competence or degree of expertise of the participants, measures of the perception of the expert on the usefulness of the presented feedback, graphs of the number of arguments according to the number of questions, the Wilcoxon Ranked Pairs Test, the k means, Kolmogorov–Simonov test and the Mann–Whitney U-test.