Technology roadmapping

A science or technology roadmap is like a highway roadmap in that it describes how one might proceed from a starting point to a final destination. As a highway roadmap shows the intersections between roads, a science or technology roadmap shows the intersections between scientific steps or technologies. It is forward-looking and forecasts the paths that might be followed to a final or desired achievement. Thus, it is both a normative forecasting tool and a planning technique. Two studies involving chains of events were conducted in the late 60s when the National Science Foundation funded a groundbreaking study known as “Traces” and the Department of Defense ran a parallel study called “Hindsight” in which the objective was to trace the interactions among scientific discoveries and technical breakthroughs that led to a present achievement. These studies mapped the path to progress; the hope behind the work was to learn, if possible, how basic research and synergies- whether deliberate or serendipitous - took place and contributed to the system under study. In short, the studies were designed to discover how prior work contributed to a particular system or breakthrough. The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) also contributed to this method. The charts used in PERT can depict alternate paths, and from these a critical path can be discerned. This critical path method (CPM) was used in the 1950s and later by the U.S. Navy to advantage in managing the Polaris missile project. Since then, the method has been used extensively, not only in defense projects but in construction, manufacturing, and new product introduction. Important variations on PERT have been developed, including charts with probabilistic estimates of the time to move from one node to another, permitting the chart to be used to estimate a range of time to completion. A number of variations on this theme have been developed, including Technology Sequence Analysis, described below. In planning, science and technology roadmaps can be used to identify strategies––that is, critical steps that must be achieved before an end result can be realized. Roadmaps can also be used to assist in R&D funding decisions by identifying which path to a goal is most cost-efficient or least time-consuming. Roadmaps also help in identifying competitive advantage by attributing future achievements that comprise the nodes of a roadmap to the organizations that are likely to accomplish them. In futures research, roadmaps can be used in scenario-based projects to serve as maps of complex developments and their causal interactions, and serve as a kind of scenario outline. When the paths connecting the nodes are assigned probabilities, they can be used to forecast the steps that will be achieved and the nature of the course to a goal. The paths between nodes may also be used to indicate timing between one step and the next; this application leads to the ability to estimate the timing of the system under study. The construction of roadmaps also promotes a dialog between contributors who might otherwise not understand the needs and uses that might flow from their activities, since the roadmap is an integrative tool. In Europe, a roadmap study has been conducted across many sciences (including social sciences and humanities, environmental sciences, energy, biological and medical sciences, materials and analytic facilities, and the physical sciences) to examine how projects in one discipline interact, support, and reinforce one another. Although some science roadmaps have been prepared, most of the roadmapping that has been accomplished to date is “technology push”; in the future, this technique will be applied more frequently to broad S&T and commercial areas, and to the steps involved in pursuing policies or solving issues. It should also be noted that sociotechnical roadmaps, where steps of technological advances or breakthroughs are put into social context, are also gaining ground.