Your future is Technology

Title: The success and failure of Technology Roadmapping initiatives: perceptions of participating managers.



Purpose:
The issue of effective technology management is becoming increasingly important and critical in delivering competitive advantage to companies today. The effective management of technology requires appropriate methods or systems such as Technology Roadmapping (TRM), which can support the development and implementation of integrated strategic business, product and technology plans. As a result, there is a growing use of TRM by many firms in Malaysian. However, not all TRM initiatives result in technology roadmaps being adopted and used to manage the technology. This research aims to investigate the success and failure of TRM initiatives and it has the following objectives: (1) to explore differences between companies that implement TRM and those that did not, (2) to investigate main drivers and perceived factors that block implementation, (3) to identify implementation problems of the detail process of TRM, and (4) to test the application of a refined TRM in a practical setting.


Design/methodology/approach:
The research was conducted in three main stages. Initial pilot case studies were conducted to explore differences between companies that implement TRM and those that did not as well as to investigate main drivers and perceived factors that block implementation. Then, an in-depth case study was conducted to identify implementation problems of the detail process of TRM in a firm that has successfully used TRM for a relatively long period of time in its technology planning process. Finally, a field test using action research was carried out in a company with their managers’ direct involvement in order to test the application of a refined TRM in a practical setting.

Findings:
Many issues and challenges of applying technology roadmapping were identified and discussed and a gap is identified within the existing TRM process.

One of the major findings of implementation problems is that many companies had stopped using the process after having tried it for just once and the reasons are related to the process itself (it is difficult to fit the process into the current strategic planning system for technology). In addition, it is difficult to keep the record up-to-date on an ongoing basis due to time consuming and perceived unimportant of the process. It is difficult to understand the terms used and follow the process, and rely heavily on outside expert to guide the whole implementation process. Managers have no previous experiences, lack of confident, lack of skills and knowledge, etc. A knowledge gap exist which caused many misinterpretation and confusion. A detail report is produced from this research about all grievances, comments and perceptions from managers.

The full value of TRM process can only be realized if it is used continuously and the information is kept current. This requires a feature that can build-in the process into the organization’s daily operating system. A careful consideration to add this feature is important to ensure the process could integrate with other parts of the organization, 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 management is especially important but was neglected by the existing TRM process. This is because the existing TRM process is facilitated by a ‘prescript’ and ‘hard’ approach. The process needs to be integrated with the ‘soft’ aspects of management. A new method is proposed and it has incorporated ‘soft’ aspect of management in order to make it a better approach.

Relevance/contribution:

The findings from this research are of interest of many TRM initiatives. This research is relevant because the findings provide useful guidelines for managers to implement TRM in future. The implications of the findings to both theory and practice are discussed in this paper.

Many issues and limitations were raised in this paper about the implementation problems with the existing and proposed TRM. The proposed method may not be able to solve all of the problems however a few managers believe that it could reduce obstacles, commit resources, and reward improvement. These are the necessary steps to fully realize the benefits of the method and bring the method forward. In the academic community, such a method could invite debate from many contrasting views. For industrialists, only benefits over its cost can justify such a method. Therefore, further research is needed to test the wider applicability of the proposed method.

TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
-Technology Roadmapping

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).

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 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.

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