Technology Road-Mapping

The linkage of corporate business strategy and technology strategy plays an important role in firms’ success. Technology forecasting, technology assessment and product planning are integrated by road-mapping.  Integrated technology road-mapping provides a practical instrument for middle- and long-range technology development and corporate business strategy formulation by aligning internal and external resources and social marketing factors. 

Technology roadmaps help you to identify new business opportunities, validate internal knowledge and communicate ideas, improve your technology portfolio decisions, and develop effective technology strategy. Road-mapping leads to portfolio development, which provides for division-level project evaluation, as well as company-wide technology assessment. "The best companies maintain roadmaps that define the next technologies they will pursue and the requisite timing of each. These technology roadmaps are matched to their product roadmaps to ensure that the two are synchronized; at least two generations of technologies, products, and services are always tracked.. The technology roadmaps not only identify technologies but define a migration from one to another, as well as within the company."²

Introduced in 1970s, road-mapping approach at the beginning, it was simply used to provide short-term and long-term technology and innovation forecasting. Then it became an ordinary planning instrument used for coordination of innovation processes within or among companies.  Recently, road-mapping reemerged as a powerful integrated device for improving the quality of technology management and integration of various activities. A good technology road-mapping could perform more generic technology management functions.

The task of the technology roadmap team is to evaluate commercial opportunities arising from technology developments. Technology roadmaps help you to identify new business opportunities, validate internal knowledge and communicate ideas, improve your technology portfolio decisions, and develop effective technology strategy. They identify the place of the technology in the commercialization cycle, thus enabling you to adjust your appropriate level of investment. Technology roadmaps also identify the leading technology players and help you to create effective linkages in order to get the best product to market at the appropriate time.

Delphi-Scenario Writing (DSW) Approach to Technology Road-Mapping

The Delphi-Scenario Writing (DSW) method is an integrated method that provides a systematic approach to developing a strategic scenario for promoting the innovation process. It is a well-known intuitive method. The advantage of the Delphi forecast resides in its simplicity and convenience to use.

The DSW method consists of the eight steps... More

Strategic Licensing Out

By licensing out its technology, a company may generate income from unused portions of its intellectual property. In addition to making this potential energy kinetic, licenses enable a company to exploit other markets by allowing the licensee to apply the existing technology to a different market. When an invention is useful to several industries, licensing can prove profitable to both the licensor and the potential licensee as experts in separate fields... More