2.5 Technology Roadmapping
2.5.1 Introduction
An organization involved in product development faces a number of challenges related to its future. One of the most critical tasks is to define short-term and long-term product strategies that can be transformed into specific plans. To understand which products and technologies have to be planned for future development, especially within the long term, organizations need to forecast the evolution of their products. Any product or technology is created to meet certain needs and demands of the person or system for which it is to be developed. No technical product is developed to exist independently of the context in which it is supposed to be used: A product always delivers a function or a number of functions requested by its surrounding systems or environment. For instance, a battery is developed to provide electronic and electric devices with energy, and a flashlight's purpose is to deliver a function targeted at a higher system: a human being who wants to use the flashlight to illuminate a certain area of space.
To stay innovative, a company that produces flashlights has to therefore continuously follow the evolution of three areas: the (1) evolution of human or societal needs with respect to the functionality of devices producing light, (2) evolution of technologies that make it possible to create flashlights to meet these particular needs better, ...
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