Technology roadmap management. Choy Leong Yee. Abstract

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1 Technology roadmap management Choy Leong Yee Abstract The issue of technology management is becoming increasingly important and critical in delivering competitive advantage to companies. The effective management of technology in both explicit and tacit technological knowledge requires appropriate methods or systems such as a technology roadmap process, which can support the development and implementation of integrated strategic business, product and technology plans. This paper reviews the rapidly increasing literature on technology roadmap process. Based on the literature on a Technology Roadmap (TRM) process developed by Cambridge s manufacturing group, a gap is identified within a few implementation problems of the process in practical settings, especially concerning human resource management issues. A new method is proposed to overcome the problems and fill this gap. The paper is divided into four major parts. Firstly, a general review on technology management. Secondly, an illustration of technology roadmap processes in terms of their types of format, purposes and architectures. Thirdly, the issues and challenges of applying technology roadmap process are discussed and a gap is identified within the literature on the existing TRM process. Lastly, the paper concludes with a proposal for a new method, Technology Roadmap Management (TRM-II), to fill the gap. The implications of the proposed method to both the industrialists and academics are discussed. Key words: Technology management; TRM process; human resource management; top-level managers; Technology Roadmap Management (TRM-II). INTRODUCTION Technology can be considered as a specific type of knowledge that may appear in explicit or tacit form (Gaynor, 1996; Phaal et al., 2004). Explicit technological knowledge can normally be codified in terms of texts, drawings, or formulas; embodied within a physical artefact, such as a machine, equipment, or product which always associated with hard sciences or engineering ( Hard technology). Tacit technological knowledge cannot be easily articulated, and normally appear in the forms of experiences and skills. It is normally associated with the soft aspect of technology such as innovation processes, organisational learning processes, and new product development and introduction processes (Phaal et al., 2004).

2 The management of technology is becoming increasingly important in today global competitive environment (Gaynor, 1996). According to the European Institute of Technology and Innovation Management, technology management addresses the effective identification, selection, acquisition, development, exploitation and protection of technologies (product, process and infrastructural) needed to achieve, maintain [and grow] a market position and business performance in accordance with the company s objectives (EITM). This definition highlights the importance of establishing linkages between commercial and technological functions in order to achieve the business objectives. This requires effective knowledge management and supported by appropriate management tools or processes (Gaynor, 1996). However, there is lack of effective processes to technology management. Consequently many technological investment projects, such as on robotics, computer integrated manufacturing, and flexible manufacturing systems had failed (Gregory, 1995). The failure is not due to the technologies itself, but because the links between technology and strategy to satisfy the business needs were not well understood (Gregory, 1995). As a result, companies today are aware of the importance of technology strategy and concern about how to deploy and manage technology to support the goals of the business. Clearly, there is a need to understand the potential of existing and new technologies, integrate and exploit them to provide new capabilities, products and process in the context of business and corporate strategy (Roussel et al., 1991). Furthermore in a fast changing technological age, the frequent interaction between users, manufacturers and scientists to provide innovative capabilities is getting important. Periodical technological review may be changing from annual to day-to-day basis. Companies managers need to build-in the technology management process into their daily operating system and routine in order to ensure critical changes are closely monitored. In order to do that, there is an increasing industrial focus on management tools or methods that can satisfy the above needs (Phaal et al., 2004). An important aspect of such a method is that it encourages collective discussion among managers from different functional departments such as 2

3 commercial and technology, and linkages between technology resources and company objectives. A technology roadmap process is an example of such a method that can be used for exploring and communicating the linkages between technological resources, company products, and business requirement. TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP PROCESS Characteristics of Technology roadmap process Technology roadmap process is a powerful method for supporting technology management and planning. It has been widely used in industry (Barker and Smith, 1995) but consists of various types of format. For example a roadmap may appear in the forms of multiple layers, bars, texts, time, pictorial representations, flow charts, or arrows (see figure 1). A roadmap may not appear in the form as shown in figure 1 but may contain many different kinds of combination (of these formats) to suit a particular business situation. The diverse ways of roadmap construction may be due to a lack of clear and accepted standards or guidelines for managers (Phaal et al., 2004). Nevertheless a few organisations have successfully developed an effective roadmaps, such as Motorola s technology roadmap (Willyard and McClees, 1987) and Cambridge s technology roadmap (TRM). The purposes and architectures of these roadmaps are discussed in the following paragraphs. 3

4 Figure 1: Examples of technology roadmap types (format) According to Willyard and McClees (1987), the Motorola s technology roadmap is used to define technological capabilities, analyse engineering and financial resources, determine whether the technological priorities are correct, and help to track the progress in product and process development. The process of roadmap development aims to encourage business managers to pay significant attention to their technological future, increase communications between R&D and the marketing personnel. The roadmap is a compilation of documents, charts, matrices, and graphs that provide a comprehensive explanation of the product line from past to future, in supporting the process of planning and managing the complex technological environment. The technology roadmap has eight sections and each of them can stand alone as a separate piece of information, but the benefit lies in the combined usage of each section. Each section is representing tools used for the management of technology. An example is shown in Figure 2. As refer to figure 2, the roadmap shows whether the company has committed or remain caution in terms of different critical technology in the development of different product family. 4

5 Figure 3: An example of Motorola s technology roadmap (source: adopted from Willyard and McClees, 1987) An example of a TRM is show in figure 3. The TRM shows how a firm s resources and technologies are linked to the development of its product which ultimately meeting the business objectives and market needs. Figure 3: An example of a TRM (Source: Phaal et al., 2004) Clearly, a TRM is used to support technology strategy and planning. The TRM is a high-level planning tool that can be used to support the development and implementation of strategy and plans, as well as communication of the plan (Phaal et al., 2001). However, unlike the Motorola s technology roadmap process, there is no detailed guidance on how to develop the TRM. An attempt was made to fill this gap by the development of a T-plan fast start guide (Phaal et al., 2001). 5

6 T-Plan As discussed in the previous sections, many companies are struggling with the application of technology roadmap process to develop effective roadmaps because there are too many types of format, which often have to be tailored to the specific needs of the firm and its business context. Companies are normally forced to reinvent the process because there is little practical support and guidance available. A practical fast-start process, T-plan, has been developed to fill this gap (Phaal et al., 2001). It aims to: 1. Support the start-up of company specific TRM. 2. Establish key linkages between technology resources and business drivers. 3. Identify important gaps in market, product and technology intelligence. 4. Develop a first-cut technology roadmap. 5. Support technology strategy and planning initiative in the firm. 6. Support communication between technical and commercial functions. T-Plan has been successfully applied in a number of organisations. DISCUSSION Issues and challenges within the technology roadmap process Based on a literature survey on TRM process application that facilitated by the T-plan in various industries, a few implementation issues were reviewed and analysed. These can be summarised in the following points: 6

7 1. Many companies had stopped using the process after having tried it for just once, and the reasons are not well understood. 2. It is difficult to keep the record up-to-date on an ongoing basis. 3. It is difficult at the initial start-up stage of the process. 4. It is difficult to build a comprehensive and robust roadmap. 5. There are too many alternative roadmap formats available, the selection criteria are not well understood and the used of tacit knowledge in selection is more preferred over codified knowledge causing difficulty in understanding how one format is better over another. 6. The process was facilitated by experienced and well trained academics from the university. Industrial managers who participated in the research had not initially equipped with the relevant process knowledge, and thus a knowledge gap exist which caused misinterpretation and confusion. 7. In addition to the 6 above, there is lack of formal education procedures in the process as a result the managers took time to grasp the fundamental concepts of new knowledge. The identification of a research gap The full value of TRM process can only be realised if it is used continuously and the information is kept current. This requires a feature that can build-in the process into the organisation s daily operating system. A careful consideration to add this feature is important to ensure the process could integrate with other parts of the organisation, compliment with other systems, and work well under a specific environmental context, e.g. culture, in order for it to be used on an ongoing basis. In this sense, it was believed that the soft aspect of the technology roadmap process such as human resource management issues is equally important but was neglected by the TRM process. Thus, a research is needed to refine the existing TRM process. 7

8 For example, top-level managers support and involvement could enhance enthusiasm for use of the process, ensure resources are made available, improve involvement and workshop attendance, and removed administrative and other barriers. The existing TRM process brought together people from marketing/commercial and technology functions, but not top-level managers. As a result, the danger of the process was that it would be done in isolation of the needs of the company. The process may resulted in many impressive technology roadmaps and potential strategies but either irrelevant to the business needs or neglected by the management. Due to low involvement, the management lack of understanding of their roles and positions and resulted in lack of interests and delayed necessary actions identified by the process. Consequently, it is difficult to build-in the process into the existing company system and use it on an ongoing basis. For another example, linking operational issues to strategic making process has been important but far too often the TRM process over emphasised on the hard aspect of visible coordination and information sharing ignoring other key processes such as human resource management. A lack of focused on the human resource management such as the cultural environment, teamwork, and other soft system issues could reduce the effectiveness of the process and always resulted in discontinuity of usage. That was the reason why ownership of the process output, i.e. roadmap, is critical. Phaal et al (2004) suggested using a well-trained person to manage the TRM process in order to increase process ownership however it has not been proven successful. A potential solution is to fit the process into the current organisational system organically. An organic organisation has less mechanistic design and contained more consideration on human social s needs (Burns and Stalker, 1961). A consideration of how to integrate the process into the people s system is vital. From a top-down perspective, the toplevel managers imposed the process but may not be followed by the lower level personnel. From a bottom-up perspective, where the evidences of success to be communicated upwards 8

9 and horizontally in an organisation, but could be time consuming. Combining top-down and bottom-up approaches could improve the success rate of people and process integration. In addition, the value of human potential working in multi-management layer team is not fully realised in the TRM process. Thus, a proper team-building step that involved top-level managers with operational personnel should be incorporated into the process. As a result of the weaknesses of the TRM process, further development of the process is required. CONCLUSIONS In general, key benefits of technology roadmap process are the sharing of knowledge and the development of a common vision of where the company is going. These benefits can hardly be obtained by the TRM process that facilitated by a prescript and hard approach, i.e. T-plan alone. The process needs to be integrated with the soft aspects of management such as human resource management issues. Among the issues identified in this text are the top-level managers involvement and support, multi-disciplinary and -management layers team building step, training, and post-process arrangement. However, the existing TRM process has been successfully tested in a number of industries and poses some useful experiences and a few important features. Thus, grounded on the existing TRM process, I suggest a new method that incorporating the soft aspect of human resource management into the process to make it a better approach. The new method is renamed as Technology Roadmap Management (TRM-II). The TRM-II can be divided into 5 stages: Stage 1: Top-level management involvement and support Stage 2: Pre-process formal educational and training programs 9

10 Stage 3: Team building workshops Stage 4: Technology roadmap process using T-plan Stage 5: Post-process continuous improvement Stage 1. The first stage is the top-level management involvement and support. In this stage, a team is formed. The team members should consist of representative from various functional departments such as sales, marketing, and product and process technology. The team should also involved top-level managers. At this stage, full support from top-level managers should be obtained prior to the process. Stage 2. The second stage is to provide formal lectures on the foundation of technology management specifically on the technology roadmap process. The purpose is to educate the team about the detailed procedures, background knowledge and concepts of the process. At the end of this education stage, the team should be familiar with the terms used and the steps involved and able to use the tool with confident. Stage 3. In stage 3, a number of team-building workshops will be organised to improve the relationships of team members. Social scientists will possibly play an importance role in this sense. A number of proven and available techniques in team-building such as T-group (Huse and Cummings, 1985) will be adopted. Stage 4. In this stage, top-level managers should seek to clear obstacles of the process. It was expected that various obstacles may appear such as the non-cooperative behaviour from many part of the organisation or person in providing data for constructing detailed maps. It was believed that top-level managers have the influence and power to remove these obstacles. Stage 5. The greatest value of any managerial tool is not the immediate outputs, but rather the following discipline that built-in the existing organisational system. Therefore, in order 10

11 to avoid a one-off process, top-level managers in the team are responsible to sell the outputs to the whole organisation. They should first identify the resources required for improvement. They should then to market the process to the whole organisation. They should also develop policies to bring the process forward, set direction for all of the activities relevant or contributed to the process, and reward improvement. In this paper, I propose an improved process that incorporated the soft aspect of the human resource management issues such as a team-building feature, the top-level management involvement, and the post-process arrangement. In this sense, the existing TRM process was enriched with the soft aspect of human resource management and developed into a more strategic domain called Technology Roadmap Management (TRM-II). Many issues and limitations were raised up in this paper about the earlier approach, the TRM process. The proposed method may not be able to solve all of the problems however involving top-level managers could reduce obstacles, commit resources, and reward improvement. These are the necessary steps to fully realise the benefits of the process and bring the process forward. In addition, the team building step could increase ownership of the process. It is possible to believe that, at least in theory, the new approach, TRM-II, will be able to overcome a few problems inherited by the existing TRM process. However, a possible downside of the proposed method (TRM-II) is that due to its more strategic focused and additional steps involved, it may be seen to be even more time consuming. In the academic community, such a method could invite debate from the contrasting views. For industrialists, only the benefits over its cost can justify such a method. Therefore, a research is needed to test the new method. 11

12 References Barker, D. and Smith, D.J.H. (1995) Technology foresight using roadmaps, Long Range Planning 28(2), pp Burns, T. and Stalker, G. (1961) The Management of Innovation, Tavistock: London. European Institute of Technology Management (EITM), Gaynor G.H. (Ed.) (1996) Handbook of Technology Management McGraw-Hill: NewYork. Gregory, M.J. (1995) Technology management: a process approach, Proceedings of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 209, pp Huse, E. and Cummings, T. (1985) Organisation Development and Change, 3 rd. ed. West: St. Paul, Minn. Phaal, R., Farrukh, C.J.P. and Probert, D.R. (2001) T-Plan The Fast-Start to Technology Roadmapping: Planning Your Route to Success, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Roussel, P.A., Saad, K.N. and Erickson, T.J. (1991) Third Generation R&D Managing the Link to Corporate Strategy, Harvard Business School Press: Boston, MA. Willyard, C.H. and McClees, C.W. (1987) Motorola s technology roadmap process, Research Management Sept.-Oct., pp