A technology roadmap is a flexible

plan A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an Goal, objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a modal logic, temporal set (mathematics), set of intended actions through wh ...

ning schedule to support strategic and long-range planning, by matching short-term and long-term goals with specific

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

solutions. It is a plan that applies to a new product or process and may include using

technology forecasting Technology forecasting attempts to predict the future characteristics of useful technological machines, procedures or wikt:technique, techniques. Researchers create technology forecasts based on past experience and current technological developmen ...

or technology scouting to identify suitable

emerging technologies Emerging technologies are technology, technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally innovation, new but also include old technologies finding new applications. Emer ...

. It is a known technique to help manage the fuzzy front-end of innovation. It is also expected that roadmapping techniques may help companies to survive in turbulent environments and help them to plan in a more holistic way to include non-financial goals and drive towards a more sustainable development. Here roadmaps can be combined with other corporate foresight methods to facilitate systemic change. Developing a roadmap has three major uses.Garcia, M.L. and Bray, O.H. (1997). "Fundamentals of Technology Roadmapping". Strategic Business Development Department, Sandia National Laboratories

/ref> It helps reach a consensus about a set of needs and the technologies required to satisfy those needs, it provides a mechanism to help forecast technology developments, and it provides a framework to help plan and coordinate technology developments. It may also be used as an analysis tool to map the development and emergence from new industries.

Process

The technology roadmapping process may be conducted in three phases: preliminary activities, the development of the roadmap, and the follow-up activities phase. Because the process is too big for one model, the phases are modeled separately. In the models no different roles are made; this is because everything is done by the Participation (decision making), participants as a group.

Phase 1: Preliminary phase

The first phase, the preliminary phase (see figure 2), consists of three steps: #satisfy essential conditions, #provide leadership / sponsorship, and #define the scope and boundaries for the technology roadmap. In this phase the key decision makers must identify that they have a problem and that technology roadmapping can help them in solving the problem.

Satisfy essential conditions

In this step it must become clear what the conditions are (they must be identified) and if they are not met, who takes actions to meet them. These conditions include, for example: * A need for the technology roadmap * Input and participation from different parts of the organization (e.g., marketing, R&D, the

strategic business unit A strategic business unit (SBU) in business strategic management, is a profit center which focuses on product offering and market segment. SBUs typically have a discrete marketing plan, analysis of competition, and marketing campaign, even though ...

s) with different planning horizons and perspectives. All conditions should be satisfied (or an agreed-on party takes necessary actions) to continue to the next step. The participants can have zero or more conditions of their own. It applies to all conditions that have the attribute to be met or not.

Provide leadership / sponsorship

Committed leadership is needed because of the time and effort involved in creating a technology roadmap. Additionally the

leadership Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. "Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...

should come from one of the participants, one of them provides leadership and sponsorship. This means that the line organization must drive the process and use the roadmap to make

resource allocation In economics, resource allocation is the assignment of available resources to various uses. In the context of an entire economy, resources can be allocated by various means, such as markets, or planning. In project management, resource allocatio ...

decisions.

Define the scope and boundaries

In this step the context for the roadmap is specified. In the company a

vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...

should exist and it must be clear that the roadmap can support that vision. If the vision does not exist one should be developed and clearly stated. When that is done the boundaries and the scope of the roadmap should be specified. Furthermore, the planning horizon and the level of details should be set. The scope can be further divided into the technology scope and the participation scope. In table 1 all the different sub-activities of the preliminary activity phase can be seen. All the sub-activities have concepts as end products (marked in bold). These concepts are the actual meta-data model, which is an adjusted

class diagram In software engineering, a class diagram in the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a type of static structure diagram that describes the structure of a system by showing the system's classes, their attributes, operations (or methods), and the re ...

Phase 2: Development phase

The second phase, the development of the technology roadmap phase (see figure 3.), consists of 7 steps:

Identify the product focus of the roadmap

In this step the common product needs are identified and are agreed on by all the participants. This is important to get the acceptance of all groups for the process. In case of uncertainty of the product needs scenario-based planning can be used to determine the common product needs. In figure 3, the participants and possibly the scenario-based planning provide the common product needs.

Identify the critical system requirements and their targets

Once it is decided what must be roadmapped, the critical

system requirements To be used efficiently, all computer software needs certain hardware components or other software resources to be present on a computer. These prerequisites are known as (computer) system requirements and are often used as a guideline as opposed ...

can be identified; they provide the overall framework for the technology roadmap. The requirements can have targets (as an attribute in figure 3) like reliability and costs.

Specify the major technology areas

These are the areas that help achieve critical system requirements. For each technology area several

technologies Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

can be found. Example technology areas are: market assessment, crosscutting technology, component development, and system development.

Specify the technology drivers and their targets

In this step the critical system requirements from the second step are transformed into technology drivers (with targets) for the specific technology area. These drivers are the critical variables that select the technology alternatives. Drivers depend on the technology areas but they relate to how the technology addresses the critical system requirements.

Identify technology alternatives and their timelines

At this point the technology drivers and their targets are specified and the technology alternatives that can satisfy those targets should be specified. For each of the alternatives a timeline should be estimated for how it will mature with respect to the technology driver targets. The time factor can be adapted suitable for the particular situation. The time horizons for

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

and

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

related sectors are usually short. Other distinctions can be made on scale and intervals.

Recommend the technology alternatives that should be pursued

Because the alternatives may differ in costs, timeline, etc., a selection must be made of the alternatives. These are the alternatives to pursue in figure 3. In this step a lot of

trade-off A trade-off (or tradeoff) is a situational decision that involves diminishing or losing on quality, quantity, or property of a set or design in return for gains in other aspects. In simple terms, a tradeoff is where one thing increases, and anoth ...

s must be made between different alternatives for different targets: for example, performance over costs and even target over target.

Create the report

At this point the technology roadmap is finished. In figure 3, it can be seen that the technology roadmap report consists of 5 parts: #the identification and description of each technology area, #critical factors in the roadmap, #unaddressed areas, #

implementation Implementation is the realization of an application, execution of a plan, idea, scientific modelling, model, design, specification, Standardization, standard, algorithm, policy, or the Management, administration or management of a process or Goal ...

recommendations, and #technical recommendations. The report can also include additional information. In table 2 all the different sub-activities of the development phase can be seen.

Phase 3: Follow-up activity phase

This is the moment when the roadmap must be critiqued, validated and hopefully accepted by the group involved in any implementation. This requires a plan developed using the technology roadmap. Next, there must be a periodical review and update point, because needs from the participants and the technologies evolve.

The fast-start approach to roadmapping

Given the potential complexity and organisational inertia surrounding the creation of roadmaps, researchers at the University of Cambridge focused on developing a fast-start approach to roadmapping. This approach, called T-Plan, was created in the late 1990s primarily to help organisations take the first step into roadmapping with minimal resource and time commitment. It has been influential in the propagation and uptake of roadmapping internationally including translations of the T-Plan workbook into Chinese (traditional & modern), German, Japanese and Spanish. The approach (as well as its counterpart for innovation and strategy roadmapping, S-Plan) is flexible and scalable, and therefore can be easily customised for efficient application. Fast and lean approaches are particularly important for small and medium enterprises (SME) and have been shown to work in particularly to give directions to clusters of SMEs.

Planning and business development context

The process of technology roadmapping fits into

corporate strategy In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of Resource management, resources ...

, corporate

strategic planning Strategic planning is the activity undertaken by an organization through which it seeks to define its future direction and makes decisions such as resource allocation aimed at achieving its intended goals. "Strategy" has many definitions, but it ...

, technology planning and the

business development Business development entails tasks and processes to develop and implement growth opportunities within and between business organizations. It is a subset of the fields of business, commerce and organizational theory. Business development is the cre ...

context. Three critical elements should be connected: needs, products, and technology.

Knowledge and skills required

Consultant with skills

Creating a technology roadmap requires certain knowledge and skills. Some of the participants must know the purpose of technology roadmapping. Next to this group-process and interpersonal skills are required since the process includes a lot of discussions and finding out what the common need is. If the number of participants is really large there might be need for a

consultant A consultant (from "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice or services in an area of specialization (generally to medium or large-size corporations). Cons ...

or facilitator.

Purpose

Product planning in roadmapping

This is the most common type of a technology roadmap: linking the insertion of technologies into products.

Programme planning

This type is more directed to the implementation of strategy and related to project planning. Figure 5 shows the relationships between technology development phases, programme phases and milestones.

Formats

* Bars: Almost all the roadmaps are (partly) expressed in bars for each layer. This makes the roadmaps very simple and unified, which makes the communication and integration easier. * Graphs: A technology roadmap can also be expressed as a graph, usually one for each of the sub layers. (e.g. IMEC uses the second method).

Case studies

Documented case studies include: * ABB * Mining *

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