There is an interesting article in BusinessWeek (Special Report, May 4, 2007; The World’s Most Innovative Companies) regarding the innovation fatigue that CEOs are starting to feel, perhaps from innovating harder, not smarter. It is an important reminder for internalizing that innovation is a marathon, not a sprint. With that, it requires different training methods, tools and perspectives. Roadmapping is one of the strategic planning tools that will help with your innovation journey, identifying capabilities and assets that are required for success.

As I mentioned before, there are many types of roadmaps. This blog specifically focuses on the product-technology roadmaps and roadmapping process. Product-technology roadmaps lay out the evolution of a product over time, and articulate vision, product strategy, and strategic intent that the firm wants to achieve at a future point in time. The planning activity links three critical elements: customer/market needs, products and technologies.

The roadmapping process is an organizational commitment: the process is iterative, requires patience, and takes an average of 3-6 months. It should be driven by a clearly articulated business need. You should consider developing a product-technology roadmap when you need to:

• Integrate your market, product and technology business and investment decisions;
• Make the transition to customer or market focused product development from technology-driven development;
• Expand into new markets, explore platform strategies and identify alternative technology investments;
• Explore new business models, markets or customer segments by leveraging existing assets and capabilities;
• Discover ways to leapfrog your competitors, establish barriers to entry, and identify sustainable competitive advantages to build upon;
• Develop project plans to ensure that required technologies and partnerships will be available when needed;

The process should answer the why-what-how-when questions: Why are we doing this? What do we want to achieve? How will we get there? and When do we need it? Your process should be designed to answer these questions effectively and efficiently. The roadmapping process can be broken into 3 phases: initiation, development and dissemination. In follow-on posts, I’ll dive into each of these three phases in more detail.

• Initiation — This phase is your foundation and it is critical to the successful outcome of the roadmap initiative. Critical success factors for a good foundation are to build the right team and team structure, establish executive sponsorship and commitment, and clearly define scope and boundaries of the initiative. At the end of the phase, the team should have a well defined operating model, a good understanding of expectations, boundaries and timelines, and an established communication plan to enable the collaborative process within the organization and with partners.
• Development — The development phase is all about answering the what-how-when questions. The process deep dives into analysis of market, customer and technology trends and drivers, and outlines differentiation opportunities, key products and technologies, partnerships, dependencies and risks. The roadmapping may start with the needs of the market and customers, customer/market focused roadmap, or maybe focused on identifying markets and customer segments that could be served with a specific product or technology, product/technology focused roadmap. The outcome of this phase is a product-technology roadmap that is ready for dissemination.
• Dissemination — This phase is all about communication and implementation of the developed roadmap. Roadmaps and implementation plans should be regularly reviewed and updated. As a roadmap extends in time, associated uncertainty also increases. The review and update cycle provides adjustments to a roadmap and its implementation plan based on the latest available information. The review cycle may be based on the organization’s planning cycle.

As they say, that’s all folks. In summary, roadmapping is a flexible process that can benefit your firm greatly. However, before you dive into the process, please keep in mind the following 9 critical factors for successful roadmap outcome.

• Clearly articulated business need.
• Committed sponsorship, senior management participation and dedicated funding.
• Accountable, competent, dedicated, cross-functional and diverse team that is also objective.
• Time commitment and focus of everyone involved.
• Good facilitation to drive the process, coordinate interaction among the team and guide deliverables.
• Collaborative process that drives ownership within the organization.
• Access to the needed information and knowledge: market, customer, technology;
• Skills, experience and expertise in planning, analysis, processes, technology and product areas.
• And finally, don’t short-cut the communication and implementation plan. This is just as important as the actual roadmap development.

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