Centre for Technology Management

Strategic Roadmapping

Roadmapping (or route mapping) is widely used for supporting strategy, innovation and change in organisations. The process enables key technical and commercial perspectives to be captured and aligned around a common purpose.

Communication is a key benefit, enabled by the visual nature of roadmaps. It is a very flexible approach that can be readily customised to address the particular strategic needs and issues facing firms, government agencies and other organisations. Download Roadmapping overview [487k PDF file - 8 pages]

Research

The Centre for Technology Management has been researching the application of roadmapping for more than a decade. Research has focused on the development of workshop methods for initiating roadmapping at firm and sector levels, in collaboration with companies and other organisations.

The underlying principles that enable the method to be customised to address a wide range of strategic challenges have been explored. The roadmapping approach has been used to map industrial emergence in order to develop approaches that are suitable for early stage technology strategy. Research continues, with interests including:

• Visualisation in strategy, to support dialogue and communication
• Psychosocial aspects of strategy workshops
• Strategic technology management toolkits, linking together roadmapping, portfolio and other tools

Contact:

Dr Rob Phaal, E: rp108@cam.ac.uk
Dr Clive Kerr, E: civk2@cam.ac.uk

Practical support

IfM Education and Consultancy Services (IfM ECS) work closely with an organisation's key stakeholders. Facilitators design the roadmapping architecture, customise the workshop approach and deliver the roadmap findings. For further information, please visit here. A list of recent case studies is available here.

The Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) is an international centre of expertise in roadmapping. A collaborative approach ensures that the approach can be adapted to suit the particular context, supporting rapid initiation and transfer of the technique.

Resources

Training course

• Strategic roadmapping

Books

• Roadmapping for Strategy and Innovation – aligning technology and markets in a dynamic world
• T-Plan guide for product-technology roadmapping workshops

Newsletters

• Roadmapping newsletter (Autumn 2011)
• Roadmapping newsletter (Spring 2011)
• Roadmapping newsletter (October 2010)

Other resources

• Visual Strategy Network - The Visual Strategy Network was launched on 12th December 2008 to support the community of interest in roadmapping and other related techniques www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2842050&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
• Public domain roadmaps
• Roadmapping bibliography
• Integration of TRIZ and roadmapping for innovation, strategy, and problem solving. (Imoh Ilevbare 2011) Phase 1 – TRIZ, roadmapping and proposed integrations (Report, in collaboration with DUX, Mexico).

Catalogue of matrix tools

Roadmaps provide a useful means for integrating multiple perspectives, at the heart of strategic planning and innovation processes. Many other tools and techniques may be required to support the associated decision making. To support this, a general management tool catalogue has been developed (T-Cat), which contains more than 850 simple 'matrix' tools, in covering many areas of management.

• T-Cat matrix tool catalogue