2.DBA 1732 -MANAGING TECHNOLOGY CHANGE

DBA 1732 -MANAGING TECHNOLOGY CHANGE
ASSIGNMENT – I
1.Technology and creativity cannot be separated “-Discuss.

There is someone who designs the car. There is someone who drives the car. There is someone who builds the roads. There is someone who embellishes the destinations. There is someone who chooses where to go.
At a recent TED conference in New York, there was an impressive display of technology which could be used in education. The technology was there - but what the technology was being used for remained rather old-fashioned. New technology can create new concepts, but rarely does so by itself.
Technology is far ahead of the values that we ask technology to deliver. With the car analogy, we could have excellent cars and excellent roads, but the destinations and the choice of destinations would remain rather dull.
We put more and more effort into technological development because this is what we know how to do. We then use the technology to carry out existing concepts. Very rarely do we use the opportunity offered by new technology to develop new concepts. Creativity in technology is rather easier than creativity in value concepts.
INFORMATION
If your school is far from a major natural history museum, there is a high value in having a CD-ROM which brings the museum right into the classroom. You can see pictures of dinosaurs, examine each and every bone and read up more facts than any museum dares to offer.
If your school is in the same city as a major natural history museum, then you would be better off going to the museum. Information availability and information transport are the obvious advantages of technology. You can get your own dinosaur CD-ROM or you can access dinosaur information on the Internet.
But is information enough? Education has always been about information - because it was so difficult to get information that providing information became a major occupation of educators. Youngsters needed to know all there was to know. Today that is no longer possible.
Yet we still follow that tradition. The more you know, the better educated you will be. There are said to be over four million references to my own work contained on the Internet. It would take you about 15 years to spend one minute on each of the references.
EXPOSURE
Education still believes that 'exposure' is the key learning experience. It is, up to a point, but not beyond that point. Thinking is now becoming more important than information - because we are no longer short of information.
Thinking is needed to create value from information. Information has a high value if you specifically need that information to fill a gap. If not, then information has a general value, but this is actually quite low. More and more information may make you a better informed and more interesting person to talk to, but that is all.
DESIGN
Design is an important part of thinking, because it involves putting things together in order to deliver some value. In design there are constraints and specifications. For an artist there are relatively few constraints, but with design in the real world there are many (gravity, cost, acceptance, pollution, etc., etc.).
There is a huge difference between design and analysis. Analysis seeks to identify components and ingredients in order to understand something and to know what to expect (or how to deal with it). Analysis seeks to solve problems through identifying and removing the cause.
Analysis is all about 'what is'. Design is all about 'what can be'. In the case of the dinosaur, technology would allow youngsters to design their own dinosaur. These designs could be put together and then tried out in a simulated real world to see what would happen.
If it was not possible to allow a totally free design exercise, there could be a choice of options. In a parallel way a youngster might design a suitable environment for dinosaurs. This environment would then be tried out and the effect on the dinosaurs would be seen.
The above are relatively simple technological exercises. They do, however, shift the emphasis from just 'knowing' to 'thinking'. They are also the type of exercise which it would be very hard to do without technological support. Would it make sense to 'farm' dinosaurs? How much food would they eat? Compared to cattle, say?
Simple frameworks for working such things out could be provided. We might even ask why it is so important to know about dinosaurs. Many school children know all about dinosaurs, but virtually nothing about the world around them. They have not the slightest idea how the corner shop works.
VALUE CONCEPTS
As competence becomes a commodity, as technology becomes a commodity, the only things that will make a difference are value concepts. Where are they going to come from? Managers obsessed with cost cutting are not going to generate such concepts.
Technologists who are very creative in advancing technology are not usually motivated to design new value concepts. Inventors are more interested in hardware because that is easier to patent, to demonstrate and to licence.
As a result there is a serious gap in value concept design. Yet it is going to become increasingly important. In my book Surpetition (Harper Business 1992) I suggest setting up a 'Concept R&D' group. The function of such a group would be directly to focus on reviewing concepts and designing new concepts.
It would then be a matter of seeking out the technology to support such concepts. Recent research from INSEAD has indeed shown that corporations which focus on competition do add value, but those which focus on value creation do better.CONCEPT DESIGN
Ideas are easier to design than concepts. This is because ideas are specific. Ideas can be tested. You can imagine an idea in use. You can put together known ingredients to form an idea. Concepts, on the contrary, are vague and intangible. A concept has no practical value until it is turned into an idea. As a result many people are impatient with concepts. They ask for specific hands-on ideas. They want to know what to do, what to copy and what to modify. This is very limited creativity.
A good concept can breed many ideas. Some of these ideas will be much more practical than others. Some of the ideas will be more attractive and more profitable. Ideas do not breed ideas. Concepts breed ideas. Sometimes it is possible to design a concept directly by framing a process in a general way.
IDENTIFY THE CONCEPT
For instance, a way of dispensing cash at any time without people might have led to the ATM machines. There could be other ways of carrying through the same concept. At other times it is easier to take an existing idea and seek to identify the concept behind that idea. For example, behind the ATM idea there might have been the concept of 'coded access to cash'. This might have led to ideas of obtaining cash from shops through the use of authorising codes. Note that with this concept there is not the 'people-free' aspect there was with the first ATM concept.
One of the reasons why people find concepts difficult is that there is no one right answer. Both the above ATM concepts are valid. Each may breed rather different ideas. How can there be several possible concepts? In the same way as there might be several possible angles of view of a building. It depends what you are looking at.
If 'people-free' is a high value, then the concept should include this. If 'widespread' availability is a high value, the people-free part may not be so important. Just as a thinker plays around with different definitions of a problem, so a thinker tries out different concepts.
TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVER
Once the concept has been spelled out, then the idea is generated. Ways of carrying out the idea are explored. In many cases there is a need for technology to deliver the idea. In the case of the ATMs there is a need to have, and to verify, authorised codes. There is also a need to prevent abuse. These things could be done with low-level technology (carrying photo-identification, checking by telephone, etc.) but are much speeded up by a higher technology.
It is true that a good knowledge of the technological potential allows us to conceive and develop concepts we would otherwise have dismissed immediately. Being aware of the technological possibilities makes concept design easier. But technological knowledge by itself does not develop wonderful concepts.
So leaving concept design to the technological team is not a good idea. The result is too often clever ideas which deliver very little value. Because you 'can' do something with technology does not automatically mean that it is worth doing. The development of value concepts is a focus and skill in its own right - and demands more than technological know-how.
Technology has affected the way we create content. I remember the first time I wrote an html page, I had bought a tome of a book on HTML and familiarized myself with most of the commands before writing on a blank txt file. Yet, now if I were to write a Wordpress template, even though I don’t know CSS and I barely remember HTML, I wouldn’t consider reading up. I would start with an old template and work by trial and error, till I am happy with what I see.
So what has been the impact of modern technology on the way we create content? Have the changes been for better or for worse? And how can we maximize what is good about the new change while keeping the less desirable aspects to a minimum

2. How to overcome the resistance of technology adoption. Explain with suitable illustrations.

I get from CIOs and their direct reports is some heartfelt permutation of, "My IT group—our company—needs to become much more innovative. How can we do it? How should we do it? Help."
Those questions are invariably followed by a tragic but true innovation tale: The well-meaning Jedi Knights of IT are thwarted by organizational Darth Vaders ruthlessly intent on crushing digitally enabled change enterprisewide.
I nod sympathetically and brace for what’s almost always said next: "Michael, I really need to come up with better ideas faster."
Without hesitation, I say what I always say to these frustrated innovators: "No, you really don’t. Honest."
Nothing in the business world is more overrated than a "good idea." Nothing. I’ve never gone into an organization anywhere in the world that didn’t have—with a little prompting and encouragement—more good ideas than it could possibly use. Indeed, most firms enjoy a surplus—a glut—of good ideas. As a rule, a glut of something makes it less valuable, not more. Economics 101.
By contrast, I’ve never gone into an organization where the process of implementing good ideas was fast, cheap, easy and successful. There seems to be a terrible scarcity—a corporate famine—of good implementations.
Simply put, good ideas are cheap; good implementations aren’t. Experience teaches that aspiring IT innovators don’t need better ideas that make more sense. They need better implementations that make—or save—more money. If organizations can boost their "return on innovation" by investing more in good implementations than in good ideas, then that’s where their capital should go.
Despite the fervent hopes of bright people with brilliant ideas, successful innovation can’t be divorced from successful implementation.
The best insights into innovation cultures don’t come from the quantity and quality of its ideas but in the nature of the resistance to their successful implementation.
Grasping the essence of an innovation culture is astonishingly easy. Simply fill in the blank. Whenever a good idea is proposed, you’ll find the core values of an innovation culture in the words that follow this common phrase: "We can’t do that because..."
Whatever reasons, excuses and evasions people use to explain away why good ideas can’t be implemented is the organization’s innovation culture. Period. We can’t do that because...it’s too expensive, the boss won’t like it, the lawyers won’t let us, it’s not in the budget, we don’t think it will work, the vendor will charge us too much for changing the code, marketing will take it from us if it actually succeeds, the woman championing it is a credit-hog, IT shouldn’t be leading this kind of initiative, it distracts us from our main mission and so on.
Technological innovation has long been central to improvements in healthcare. Whether in the form of new products, procedures and treatments, or health-related application of ICT systems, new technologies can help to make patient care more flexible and responsive, and ensure efficiency in use of scarce public sector resources.
Furthermore, technology ‘adoption’ by decision makers and professionals is increasingly supported by an evidence base relating to the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of new interventions.
Repositories of systematic reviews and economic evaluations are available from sources such as the Cochrane Collaboration, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) technology appraisals and clinical guidelines programmes, and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database.
Although uneven, these sources of research and analysis have gradually spread to non-pharmaceutical technologies and methods for assessing a greater range of innovations are being constantly refined. What’s more, recent times have seen a burgeoning literature focussing on how health care organizations and systems can respond to innovation in technology production.
The momentum behind the evidence-based movement in healthcare has been supported and promoted in government policy and independent reviews of NHS performance including Wanless 2004 [1], Cooksey 2006 [2] and Darzi 2007 [3].
The rationale for improving rates of technology adoption has a number of strands. Replacing outdated practices with more effective innovations will help deliver on the UK government’s plans for a ‘world class’ NHS which is at the forefront of quality in healthcare. New developments in telecare also promise to aid the shift from an acute-based service to one in which prevention, self-care and patient choice are to the fore.
The increasing need to make efficiency improvements in the NHS is also supported by investment in cost saving interventions and implementation of ICT-based record keeping and decision making systems. Underpinning each of these aspirations is the importance of technology in shifting from a monolithic and risk-averse system to one in which learning and innovation are actively encouraged in the pursuit of evidence-based practice.
Despite this context and an estimated annual spend of some £3 billion on medical devices, the rate of adoption of technology into healthcare practice in the UK is commonly considered to be poor. The English NHS is considered to lag behind adoption in non-healthcare sectors as well as healthcare systems elsewhere.
This has led to an increasing recognition that whilst generating an evidence base may be a necessary condition of technology adoption, more needs to be done. This is reflected in both the recently instituted ‘NHS Technology Adoption Hub’ and in the focus on implementation of best practice within NICE. Despite these developments, the adoption gap remains stubbornly in place. Research in this area suggests the existence of a number of barriers preventing the routine uptake of potentially beneficial and cost-saving innovations.
Individuals
Features of technologies themselves can trigger or inhibit adoption. Put simply, the message is that usefulness and ease of use are key factors. If the benefits of new practices are not clearly visible and/or its adoption requires substantial changes to professional practice, it will struggle to make an impact.
This is a tricky issue to negotiate as clearly one of the key objectives of technological advancement is to disrupt and, in time, to replace outdated practices.
However, the message remains clear: the extent to which new technologies require significant changes to job roles and practices will affect patterns of resistance and acceptance. If individuals believe their work will be adversely affected as a result of the technology, or if it is perceived to be difficult to implement, there is an increased likelihood that they will reject the new technology.
Indeed, research suggests that patients and the public are generally ‘readier’ for change than are those providing care. There are good reasons for this resistance. The range and volume of both information and reform that healthcare professionals are required to manage has increased at a phenomenal rate, leading to a reported overload. Subsequent uncertainty and fatigue will inevitably make adopters risk-averse. These concerns are often reinforced by concerns over the nature of the proposed implementation.
Organisations
Individual adoption is only one component of the diffusion of technologies and a number of aspects of organizational context have been found to impact on adoption.
Although organizational context is understood in different ways by different research traditions, all agree that it is central to achieving change in line with best practice or evidence. There needs to be a fit between the technology and the prevailing decision making environment, and with: existing technologies; workflow; the environment, and; other social systems.
Healthcare organizations are complex and difficult to change. Without a clear vision of how all aspects of the organization are implicated in the introduction of new practices, it is difficult if not impossible to make the necessary changes. Path dependence at both organizational and institutional level can be a powerful antidote to change.
Once the system has ‘locked onto’ a specific path it is difficult to change direction. As such, services may have a tendency to continue to operate in a particular way, rather than adopting what might seem rationally to be a useful innovation to adopt.
Bridging the gap
Evidence dissemination
A number of strategies are available for disseminating evidence about the benefits of new innovations. These include conferences or workshops to disseminate best practice in the adoption of technologies, and more commonly, guidelines for practitioners.
Of these, the evidence suggests that clinical guidelines are marginally more effective in facilitating behavior change amongst professional groups, although little is known about their cost effectiveness.
More recently, electronic support for technology adoption has been developed, including electronic guidelines, medical informatics, decision support and reminder systems, and computer-based record keeping.
These offer some extra benefits when compared to traditional paper-based approaches. However, although it is notoriously difficult to measure the impact of such strategies (primarily due to the complexity of health care organizations) the overall message appears to be that they do not adequately overcome the aforementioned barriers to adoption.
Networks and knowledge exchange
One of the keys to triggering greater rates of adoption appears to be moving from transfer of knowledge to facilitation of knowledge exchange.
A number of studies and reviews have indicated that social interaction is a key catalyst of change management and best practice dissemination.
Direct interaction with researchers and product manufacturers is thus likely to be critical in overcoming uncertainty and resistance. Furthermore, the reassurance provided by ongoing interaction with peers and experts might address concerns relating to the risk of technology adoption.
Successful adoption depends on individuals’ capacity to buy into the changes required and this cannot be wholly imposed through a top-down model of dissemination.
Skills and leadership development
It seems likely that improving the information-processing capacity of implementing organizations will help to overcome some of the current barriers to information access, interpretation and evaluation of technology outputs.
Well designed training programs have been shown to promote end user acceptance of technology both through improved understanding and increased feeling of involvement in decision making. The identification and nurturing of adoption ‘champions’ and ‘leaders’ will also help to overcome resistance to change.
Implications for manufacturers
Overall, the evidence suggests that adoption depends on the creation of a receptive context. The ability of organizations to absorb and act on new knowledge will be influenced by effective leadership, strong networks (both formal and informal) and an appropriate knowledge and skills base.
A compatible strategic vision and a favorable approach to risk taking and experimentation are also important. Investment should be targeted towards multi-level tools and frameworks for technology adoption which take enhancing ‘absorptive capacity’ as their primary focus.
Development of technology-adoption training should also be investigated, alongside programmers for nurturing adoption champions and leaders.
However, there is also a role for the technology-manufacturing sector. Firstly, it is important to recognize that developing an evidence base is only the start. Ease of implementation is of equal if not greater importance.
Technology producers should incorporate the principles of knowledge management in the design and production of innovations and actively plan for adoption and implementation.
Key questions to ask prior to introduction of new technologies are:
• what is the value added of the innovation?
• is it easily evident to those who carry it out as well as to those for whose benefit the innovations have been introduced?
• can the added value be demonstrated?
Learning from the diffusion of innovation literature suggests that adoption strategies need to engage those responsible for adoption as active change agents rather than passive implementers.
People actively seek out, experiment with, evaluate, learn about, work around, discuss and modify technologies, and each of these activities will influence both feelings and behavior regarding adoption. End-user participation in all stages of technology design and implementation will make adoption far easier.

I could not agree more, but much of the debate has tended to focus on how individuals within an organisation innovate, rather than analysing how an organisation itself can utilise the talents of its employees

ASSIGNMENT- II

1. How to nurture innovations?

The concept of 'intrapreneurship'
How can an organisation help foster innovation? And how does a large organisation deal with entrepreneurs when they are on the inside?
According to Gifford Pinchot, a Harvard academic and expert on innovation, the answer is to foster what he calls "intrapreneurship" - people who focus on innovation and creativity within the organisation.
Supporting this intrapreneurial behaviour is often the best way to promote company-wide innovation. But this debate has yet to trickle down into public discourse or policy discussion.
This is important, because across the UK we are faced with a new business reality. It is one in which networks and relationships are facilitated online, and collaboration is the norm. In this new reality, people entering the workforce expect a more fluid hierarchy and a greater level of autonomy.
It is part and parcel of an economy that is increasingly dominated by knowledge and where businesses are reliant on the flow of information. In this new business reality, innovation is more important than ever.
Employee empowerment that allows intrapreneurial behaviour is the first step in expressing innovation. Chris Adams, one of Microsoft's graduate trainees in the Information Worker Business Group, said to me that "All the people I work with ask questions about what we are doing, how it is being done, and whether it could be done better. We are not afraid to challenge the status quo."
However, this necessitates new operational systems for managing a worldwide organisation to help intrapreneurs thrive. Intrapreneurs are eager to see change and progress, and if they are held back they can quickly become disenchanted.
Systems and processes, therefore, need to be designed to channel that energy into a meaningful reality. But many organisations still fail to grasp the importance of providing the infrastructure to capture the great ideas that intrapreneurs have.
Operational innovation
The conventional wisdom of recent times has been captured in the three Ds: de-bureaucratise, de-layer and decentralise. But centralised, commanding systems and procedures are among the hallmarks of large organisations. They help deliver the accountability, transparency and efficiency that make a business run effectively. These processes can at times be cumbersome and inhibitive, but they can also be a facilitator of intrapreneurship.
Research conducted by the Centre for Innovation through IT (CIIT) concluded that "The impact of organisational culture on innovation cannot be overstated. Strong leadership that develops a culture supporting innovation is pivotal. An environment that encourages communications and knowledge-sharing across organisational boundaries is vital."
As the CIIT research suggests, an organisation's culture is decisive in creating successful innovation. A culture is delivered by leadership, but also by the structures and procedures that are put in place. One way Microsoft has done this has been by setting up business groups such as the Information Worker Greenhouse.
This group is a small incubator within Microsoft charged with fostering new products. Ideas are pitched to the group, good ideas are prototyped, and eventually the Greenhouse team looks to commercialise the product.
An example where this process has delivered tangible and marketable innovation is through the Knowledge Network for Office Sharepoint Server 2007, which facilitates networks in businesses and organisations by automating the sharing of undocumented knowledge and relationships.
This product has been something of a virtuous circle of innovation: it is a product delivered by intrapreneurial innovation, but is also a tool that helps other organisations capture and replicate creativity through greater collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
The Greenhouse incubator is important because it is an open and transparent process built around an organisational initiative to find space for creative thinking.
To stimulate competition and entrepreneurial thinking, we have also started a Dragons' Den-style internal panel where new ideas can be pitched for funding. In addition, we have an online intranet site called "My Ideas" on which people can log suggestions about ways to improve the business.
These tools and structures are important facilitators, but crucially they send out a message to employees that they should be acting entrepreneurially and challenging established norms.
Taking a break to innovate
This type of leadership in an organisation is critical to establishing an experimental culture. At Microsoft, Bill Gates has done a great deal to create a vision for innovation in the business. Two or three times a year, he sets aside dedicated time to think about the future.
Ahead of these "Think Weeks", there is a call for white papers from across the business - an invitation open to anyone. This initiative is a strong signal that the leadership of the company is listening to ideas and thinking about the big questions. But more importantly, it sends the message that dreaming is not only okay, but highly valued.
As much as anything, these initiatives stir people's emotions, which is important in making sure our people stay engaged. Hiring more "emotionally intelligent" and entrepreneurially-minded people does, of course, bring with it certain challenges in terms of management. Experience has taught us that these people need to feel they are making a difference - that their ideas and actions are changing people's lives.
John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor, stresses the significance of speaking to people on an emotional level to engender change and innovation. He says, "Not only is an emotional pull more inspiring, it also encourages people to connect and collaborate to problem solve."
Getting the most out of intrapreneurs in a business asks for a strong philosophy, but there is also a need to provide an inspiring physical space that sets the stage for creative exchange. At Microsoft we have designed office space that includes anarchy areas: informal, fun and playful places designed to encourage networking, idea generation and imagination. They also function as a space where people can have a break, unwind and recharge. In our experience some of the best ideas are born when you are away from your desk.
Sustaining disruption
For businesses, all this effort is a worthless exercise unless it contributes to the bottom line.
This is a conundrum that has been characterised as a conflict between disruptive and sustaining innovations. The products that evolve out of a company's medium to long term investment in research and development are different than new, cheaper and simpler products or services brought to market swiftly.
Although they both challenge, and frequently transform market assumptions and norms, disruption is a quicker and more intense change.
The assumption is that large companies do not need to be disruptive to be innovative, that improvements will happen organically. We have never subscribed to this belief. Even large companies need to adopt the agility and disruptive approach of smaller organisations to stay competitive they sometimes need to act smaller to be bigger.
To help establish a culture of disruption, we have invested in a research laboratory closely linked to Cambridge University. It is here that some of our most exciting product developments have taken place, such as the Microsoft Surface platform.
But these initiatives are not only hubs of innovation in themselves, they are also part of a broad strategy to engage with educational institutions and tap into some of the cutting-edge research taking place externally.
Our emerging business team provides a similar function, tasked with harbouring start-ups outside the company and helping them succeed through the networks and expertise our business can offer. Reaching out externally is a way of injecting fresh thinking and new ideas internally.
The Microsoft journey
As Microsoft has grown, it has experienced the same challenges that many large multinationals face in the 21st century. Growth creates complex communication and decision-making lines, which demand an increase in management processes. Balancing this with the need to cultivate the entrepreneurial side of employees can be tricky.
As a global company, we need to provide room for connecting ideas across geographical boundaries. The integral role Microsoft's research lab in Cambridge played in the development of Microsoft Surface is an example of how our best skills can come together successfully, regardless of location.
We have made efforts as we have grown to foster a global culture of collaboration built on the principle that the best skills in the business should be used to meet the appropriate challenge. Global gatherings, such as the Microsoft Techfest, bring together researchers from around the world to learn and share knowledge face-to-face through demonstrations and lectures from the company's leading innovators.
One of the most effective ways to foster more innovation is to keep intrapreneurs engaged. These people need to feel that they can ask the demanding questions, be creative and action their ideas.
Importantly though, to profit from innovation, people must be able to make their ideas come to life. As Bill Gates once said, "Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time." Our challenge is to make this promise a reality.

2. How technology road mapping (TRM) is done in IT companies

The successful company concentrates on its customers and markets, the technologies on
which its products and services are based, and the continual improvement of the business
processes it uses to deliver value to the customers. It has a long term perspective, and
strives to deliver what the unformed markets may not yet realise they will require. Industrial
companies are both participants in, and creators of, the future, and therefore the correct
anticipation and exploitation of events in time gives them a significant competitive
advantage.
The techniques known collectively as Roadmapping are increasingly used by companies to
both derive and express their business visions, and to describe the linkages and actions
necessary for delivery through time.
The essential elements of a Technology Roadmap (TRM)
The essential elements of a TRM can be summarised as follows :
i) Time. A TRM must have predictive value and the Working Group therefore regards
time (present and future) as the prime parameter of a TRM.
ii) Deliverables (Product or process characteristics). The desired or expected
performance characteristics of the product, or process, from the current performance to
some future performance, and the intermediate targets. Associated with this will be
knowledge of the benefits of achieving the targets and recognition of the impact of external
influences on the company.
iii) Technologies. The groupings and interactions of technologies needed to permit the
deliverables to be attained. Each in its turn will provide the objectives of the programme of
supporting projects, either directly or through a hierarchy of sub-TRM's. The technologies
Market Information 1a.
Product-Market Analysis 2a.
4. 5. 6.
3. Product-Technology Roadmap Defined Project
Options Evaluation Creation Targets Proposals
Technology Assessment 2b.
Identification of
Technology Available/Feasible 1b.
need not be resident in the organisation. Their identification effectively defines the actions
required.
iv) Skills/Science/Know-how required to deliver the technologies. Again these may or
may not be resident within the organisation. The issue is one of access.
v) Resources. All aspects of human, intellectual, physical and financial assets, together
with the identification of the internal and external sourcing requirements. This part of the
TRM is the expression of the costs.
Many companies will have individual elements in existence, e.g. production plans and
technical plans. The figure below shows how these elements can be brought together in a
structured fashion to create a TRM. In many companies, early TRM‘s were generally
produced by the engineering function and tended to consist of isolated plans with little
l inkage.
The Value of a TRM
A Technology Roadmap (TRM) provides a framework for discussion between the
component functions of a business (e.g. Marketing, Manufacturing and Technical) that leads
to the conscious integration of all aspects of technology into business strategy. In bringing
together the critical business processes it enables realistic decisions to be taken more
quickly and implemented with more confidence. It is an effective mechanism for gaining
commitment to the chosen strategy throughout an organisation. The greatest value of a
TRM comes from the business processes that have to be put in place to create it, rather
than the possession of a TRM in itself. The TRM must be the output of an empowered team
activity, supported by commitment from senior management.
The essence of a TRM is exploring possible future scenarios and at the same time
identifying, quantifying and minimising the risks and uncertainties of that future view. These
futures are linked to immediate requirements for action by the Technical, Marketing and
Manufacturing functions. Missing science and technology becomes evident and the need
for its acquisition will be highlighted. Working with a TRM ensures that the longer term
projects are viewed with a realistic perspective in the total portfolio of activities of a
business.
Characteristics
Different industry sectors are more or less market (customer) or technology driven and will
therefore have different processes to draw up TRM's. They will also use them differently.
• industries close to the consumer respond to targets set by the market place and use
TRM's predominantly in a "needs driven (backwards)" fashion, i.e. they must define the
technologies needed to meet these targets.
• industries further from the consumer set their own targets as a consequence of
developing scientific knowledge and use TRM's predominantly in a "needs searching
(forwards)" fashion, i.e. they must define the targets that the available technologies make
achievable.
In all cases, the form of the TRM is likely to be very similar, though companies in different
industry sectors may focus on different levels of the TRM. At the same time, there will be a
hierarchy of TRM's at different levels, and these will be spanned by a single umbrella TRM :

An illustration of the scope of TRM's at different hierarchical levels is given below:

The distinction between projects and roadmaps is important. The project is the level of
highly specified activities, well defined in time, usually over a shorter time period, and with a
low level of uncertainty. Roadmaps are used as one progresses up the strategic hierarchy
in terms of complexity, and where there may be more than one available option to follow.
The place of technology roadmapping in the formulation and delivery of
strategy
Business strategy can be considered to arise from the fusion of market, technology and
financial strategies, supported by human resource and Information Technology / Information
System strategies. In its turn, the technology strategy encompasses R&D with its
knowledge base, enabling skills and intellectual property, Engineering with its design and
project management capabilities and special skills, and Manufacturing with its operations
and the related asset performance. At the interfaces between R&D, Engineering and
Manufacturing activities such as product/process development, maintenance and project
implementation, and process improvement and process analysis will occur. Here, the TRM
can be thought of as addressing :
• the interfaces between the Technology, Marketing and Financial strategies
• the interfaces of the R&D, Engineering and Manufacturing functions
and clearly the more the composition of the team drawing up the TRM reflects this fusion of
functional interests, the higher the quality of the business processes and the greater the
value of the TRM.
Methodology
The report sets out a methodology which is intended to help those who plan to introduce
TRM or those who try to improve their established method of technology roadmapping. The
essential steps are seen to be :
1. Pre-project phase
2. Setting up the team
3. Preliminary plan for the TRM-project
4. Processing of the inputs
5. Compression to a working document ("the" TRM)
6. Checking, consulting, communication planning
7. Formulation of a decision document (optional)
8. Update
The scheme encompasses all the general aspects of TRM, without giving too much
attention to very special cases. The methodology's step by step presentation should make
it easier to find answers to particular problems.
The use of TRM as a tool should be a recognised and supported business process with total
management support. To gain commitment when TRM is being introduced, it may be
preferable to start on a small scale as a pilot with a case where the initiator expects a
maximum of new insights for the company.
The report goes into all eight steps of the methodology in detail. Real life examples of the
creation and use of TRM's are provided in the form of case studies.
Previous EIRMA reports on related topics:
Working Group N° 47 "Evaluation of R&D Projects" (1995)
Working Group N° 50 "Long-term planning in a continuously changing world" (1996)
Workshop N° VII "Core competences and R&D" (1996)