Chapter 4: Company-Level Technology Roadmapping

In our chapter we are dealing with some practical questions of company-level technology roadmapping (TRM) based on the literature and our consultancies at medium-sized domestic and large multinational companies in Hungary. At first we introduce TRM briefly, covering the aim of the method, the dimensions of the analysis (represented by the layers of the roadmap), different application purposes, and customizing the method for the concrete case. We focus on the company-level application of the method, we do not cover the industry-level or global usage of TRM which are very different application areas. Second, we raise some organizational issues of TRM based on our practical experience. We cover different issues of the aims and key roles of senior management, the participants, time management, and some issues of the introduction of the method. In the third part we propose a broader scope of analysis of the environment using well-established tools, Porter’s 5 forces and STEP (social, technological, economic, political) instead of limiting the scope only to the market as suggested by some authors. In the fourth part we criticize the oversimplified usage of some methods by some consultants, such as SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis and scoring which we used in a full-scale, in-depth manner successfully during our TRM projects. This chapter is based on previously published journal papers (Pataki, Szalkai, & Bíró-Szigeti, 2010, 2011) with significant revisions and new materials included.