Linking university's research to industrial practices
Strategic roadmapping is a graphical approach for strategic planning. It uses brainstorming and workshop methodology to help top-level management to generate strategic ideas, link strategy to action, and facilitate mutual understanding among managers. It is a simple, quick and efficient tool for market, product, technology, capability, and resource planning.
There are a lot of terminologies used by different organizations and individuals for strategic roadmapping. Among the most common terms used are strategic roadmapping and technology roadmapping. Others include supply chain roadmapping, innovation roadmapping, business roadmapping, technology route mapping, etc.
TO TRAIN MANAGERS TO USE THE KNOWLEDGE
Organizations and individuals use different terms for roadmaps too. Among the most common names are strategic roadmap, business roadmap, technology roadmap, and innovation roadmap. Others include technology route map, science roadmap, program roadmap, market roadmap, industry roadmap, R&D roadmap, customer roadmap, product roadmap, service roadmap, production roadmap, enterprise roadmap, application roadmap, supply chain roadmap, process roadmap, design roadmap, engineering roadmap, policy roadmap, infrastructure roadmap, risk roadmap, and investment roadmap.
The key benefits of strategic roadmapping process include the sharing of knowledge and the development of a common vision of where the company is heading. Nevertheless, these benefits can hardly be derived through conventional roadmapping process, which is mainly facilitated by a prescript and ‘hard’ approach. It is worth noting that the process needs to be integrated with the ‘soft’ aspects of management such as human resource management issues. Among the ‘soft’ aspects are top-level managers’ involvement and support, multi-disciplinary and -management layers team building step, training, and post-process arrangement. A new process, which incorporates the ‘soft’ aspect of human resource management, is developed to make the strategic roadmapping process better.
PRACTICAL WORKSHOPWorkshops are usually organised to operationalise the strategic roadmapping process. Workshops generally resemble a brainstorming session. The main benefit that can be derived from workshops is the opportunities to generate collective creativity and mutual understanding.
The traditional approach to strategic planning is usually top-down. The resistance level of adopting the strategic roadmap is found to be relatively high among the middle and first level management. Such resistance will delay or prevent the effective implementation of the developed strategies. Approach to strategic planning should be bottom-up. The workshops enable the strategy development to be a bottom-up process. Apart from that, workshops encourage breakthrough and build ownership and accountability among participants. Nonetheless, strong collective wisdom and experiences from the participants are needed to run the workshops successfully. If the workshop is effectively organized, strategy will turn into action, and better business performance will follow.
In general, workshop can be organized into two different levels, namely macro and micro level.
The process helps managers to generate roadmap for them to monitor and manage their technological development as well as strategic planning for technology. Roadmap is a graphical representation that provides a top-level strategic view of the company. In this research, the process of Technology Roadmapping was tested in a company. Field work using action research has been adopted to carry out the research. Managers of firms have been directly involved so that the application of Technology Roadmapping could be tested in a practical setting. Many useful insights and comments about implementation of the process were identified from the participating managers.METHODOLOGY: STRATEGIC ROADMAPPING WORKSHOP
The research is set up to test a proposed managerial process, Technology Roadmap Management (TRM-II) in the real-life industry environment using. As the nature of the real-life setting of the research whereby the environment cannot be detached from the research, action research is a suitable method for the research.Action research allows the researcher to investigate the effects of applying solutions to a company and whatever theories developed from the researcher are validated through practical application. Action research is especially important in situations where industrial participation is necessary. Action research has become increasingly popular around the world as a form of research methodology and professional learning. It has been particularly well developed in education, specifically in teaching, and is now used widely across the professions such as in business.
After the selection of action research as the methodology, the subsequent workshops were scheduled for the application of a proposed technology roadmapping technique, which has five stages. These are:Stage 1: Top-level management involvement and support;
Stage 2: Pre-process formal educational and training programs;
Stage 3: Team building workshops;
Stage 4: Technology roadmap process using T-plan;
Stage 5: Post-process continuous improvement.
The workshop using action research approach is educative, it encourages learning both at an individual and group level. By iterative modeling and group discussion, managers learn, modifying their understanding, ideas, beliefs and even their thought processes over time. The technology roadmap developed provides a way of capturing and recording the strategies of an organization in a 1-page diagram. All participants can visualize their parts and how their parts are related to other parts, as well as the overall strategies of the firm.
Unlike experiments that are carried out in laboratories in which the variables are strictly controlled, the research assumes that events cannot be detached from human influence. Thus, a natural experiment is designed because the environment under studied cannot be detached from the reality. Natural experiment conducted in this real life environment is scientific and useful. Researchers who work in this tradition tend to focus on meaning and holistic viewpoints, use qualitative approach, and emphasize theory development.
Action research used in this study is taking a different epistemological stance. It is adopting a prescriptive approach. It concerns with application knowledge and addresses the question of ‘how to’ implement new systems or solve practical problems. The aim of this methodology is to create knowledge within an applied science regime rather than traditional science or social science paradigms. Research of this type sets out to develop and test tool, and then to operationalise the frameworks or theories, and finally provide managers with practical approaches to improving their work or operations. Testing the tool in this sense does not have the same type of rigour as testing in the true scientific sense. This is mainly because there is no control over extraneous such as in an experiment.
Strategic roadmapping workshop at MIMMacro level workshop aims to generate national or industry level strategic roadmap. It can also be used to generate supply-chain level or corporate level roadmaps.
Macro level focuses more on the application of strategic roadmapping at the high-level of national, industry or corporate world. It encompasses a broader scope of management than its micro counterpart. It aims to explore and identify key national/industry/corporate issues. It is usually being used to develop national policy, industry directions, corporate or SBU strategies. It can accommodate up to 30 participants, originating from different background such as government, corporate, experts, or academics. The macro level strategic roadmapping workshop usually uses a three layers architecture, which consists of business/market, product/services, and capability/resource.
Macro level focuses more on the application of strategic roadmapping at the high-level of national, industry or corporate world. It encompasses a broader scope of management than its micro counterpart. It aims to explore and identify key national/industry/corporate issues. It is usually being used to develop national policy, industry directions, corporate or SBU strategies. It can accommodate up to 30 participants, originating from different background such as government, corporate, experts, or academics. The macro level strategic roadmapping workshop usually uses a three layers architecture, which consists of business/market, product/services, and capability/resource.
Micro level workshop aims to generate firm level strategic roadmap. It is also suitable for developing departmental or product level or even technology level roadmaps.
Micro level workshop is applied at the product or technology level of an individual firm. It is usually designed for a single product or technology. It usually accommodates between 5 and 15 participants, with representatives originating from different departments such as marketing, R&D, human resource, finance, production, and engineering. The duration of the workshop normally takes four working days. Micro level strategic roadmapping workshop usually uses the four-layer architecture, which comprises of market, product, technology/capability, and other resources.
According to action researcher, the tool is not independent of the test, and the test is not repeatable. However, in the realm of action research methodology, industrial managers more concern about practical results and are more interested in development and improvement than in the more experimental trial testing required by the principles of natural science. Thus the testing becomes as much a refining and developing activity as a verification activity. This clearly illustrates the gap which still exists between action researcher and the rigorous positivist paradigm. The scientist will clearly feel uncomfortable with action research approach. However, because the methodology was developed to meet the requirements of managers and as such is much more akin to the paradigm of the natural sciences (i.e. hypothesise and test), than to the more descriptive work typical of many of the social sciences.
Micro level workshop is applied at the product or technology level of an individual firm. It is usually designed for a single product or technology. It usually accommodates between 5 and 15 participants, with representatives originating from different departments such as marketing, R&D, human resource, finance, production, and engineering. The duration of the workshop normally takes four working days. Micro level strategic roadmapping workshop usually uses the four-layer architecture, which comprises of market, product, technology/capability, and other resources.
According to action researcher, the tool is not independent of the test, and the test is not repeatable. However, in the realm of action research methodology, industrial managers more concern about practical results and are more interested in development and improvement than in the more experimental trial testing required by the principles of natural science. Thus the testing becomes as much a refining and developing activity as a verification activity. This clearly illustrates the gap which still exists between action researcher and the rigorous positivist paradigm. The scientist will clearly feel uncomfortable with action research approach. However, because the methodology was developed to meet the requirements of managers and as such is much more akin to the paradigm of the natural sciences (i.e. hypothesise and test), than to the more descriptive work typical of many of the social sciences.
