Centre for Technology Management

Special Issue on Technology Roadmapping (Part 1), Research Technology Management,

Vol 46, No 2, pp 52-58, March/April 2003.

Starting up technology roadmapping in the business

By: R Phaal¹ , CJP Farrukh¹ , R. Mitchell² and DR Probert¹

¹ Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, CB2 1RX, UK

² Domino Printing Sciences plc, Cambridge, CB3 8TU, UK

OVERVIEW

Technology roadmapping is widely used in industry to support strategic and long range planning, within companies and at the sector level. The approach supports understanding and communication of the relationships between market requirements and product, service, technology and research developments. However, organizations struggle to initiate the process, and to keep it 'alive' on an ongoing basis. A process for supporting the rapid initiation of roadmapping has been developed ('T-Plan'). The method comprises a series of facilitated workshops that bring together various functions in the business, including technology and marketing. The process encourages learning and staff involvement, and identifies key issues, knowledge gaps and actions, enabling the development of a company-specific roadmapping process.