TRM and CEO

Using Technology Roadmapping for strategic planning

Yee Choy Leong1 and Kenny Teoh Guan Cheng2
1Graduate School of Management
2Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Management
Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel: 03-89467731, Fax: 03-89486188, e-mail: yee@econ.upm.edu.my




Abstract

The issue of effective technology management is becoming increasingly important and critical in delivering competitive advantage to companies today. As the pace and complexity of technological innovation has increased, the top-level managers requires rapid, flexible, and ‘1-page’ bird-eye view methods such as Technology Roadmapping (TRM), which can support the development and implementation of integrated strategic business, product and technology plans. TRM is a 1-page graphical representation that provides high-level strategic view of the company’s plans and actions. As a result, there is a growing use of TRM by many firms. This paper reports an application of TRM in a manufacturing firm. A field work using action research-based methodology is adopted to carry out the research. Managers of firms were directly involved in order to test the application of TRM in a practical setting. Many issues and challenges of applying TRM were identified and discussed. The findings from this applied research are of interest of many managers as well as academics.

Keywords: technology roadmapping; strategic planning; action research