1
Technology roadmapping: Industrial roots, forgotten 
history and unknown origins 
 
Clive Kerr * and Robert Phaal 
Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom 
 
 
ABSTRACT 
Technology roadmapping has an established and proven track record for helping 
organizations with their strategy, long-term planning, innovation and foresight activities. 
Technology Forecasting & Social Change has played a leading role in disseminating research 
on roadmapping and, so, for its 50th anniversary issue, this paper provides a historical 
account of the emergence of roadmapping from the practices developed and deployed by 
technological-based organizations. Motorola, BP, Philips, EIRMA, Lucent Technologies and 
the Semiconductor Industry Association have all made significant contributions leading to the 
modern form that embodies a temporal, multi-layered, systems-based approach underpinned 
by the ‘market-product-technology’ structure (i.e. why-what-how). However, the industrial 
roots of technology roadmapping can be traced back to an earlier period, which is, as of yet, 
unacknowledged in the technology and innovation management literature. There is the 
overlooked or, perhaps, forgotten history where organizations such as NASA, Boeing, GE, 
Lockheed, USAF, Rockwell International and the U.S. Department of Energy initiated and 
advanced the practice of roadmapping – through this publication, their contributions will now 
be given the credit they so rightfully deserve. 
 
Keywords: Roadmapping; Technology management; Strategy; Innovation 
 
 
1. Introduction 
 
Technology Forecasting & Social Change has published more roadmapping papers, with 
both academic and practice-oriented contributions, than any other journal and continues to 
play a leading supportive role. It is thus fitting as part of this 50th anniversary issue to provide 
a retrospective of how technology roadmapping emerged to become a recognized and 
established management tool. As such, this paper is not intended as a comprehensive review 
nor bibliometric analysis of the roadmapping literature; this has been attempted several times 
already by other authors such as Carvalho et al. (2013), Gerdsri et al. (2013), Letaba et al. 
(2015), de Alcantara and Martens (2018). Rather, this paper aims to provide a historical 
account of its beginnings within technological-based organizations. The focus is on the 
practice of technology roadmapping and its development to what is recognized as today’s 
modern form. 
The publication of ‘Motorola’s technology roadmap process’ (Willyard and McClees, 
1987) had a huge impact on awareness raising of the method/tool and its subsequent 
popularization. Since then the practice has spread to numerous different businesses and 
industries, and has been adapted for various diverse purposes. It has been applied to 
components, products, systems (and systems-of-systems), supply chains and networks, sectors 
                                                 
* Corresponding author at: Centre for Technology Management, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, 
   17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK. 
   E-mail addresses: civk2@cam.ac.uk (C. Kerr), rp108@eng.cam.ac.uk (R. Phaal). 
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(applications and technologies of every type), regions and nations (Phaal et al., 2010). 
Roadmapping is widely used to great affect by companies and government agencies in the 
context of strategy, innovation and (policy) foresight, despite the method having a lack of 
theoretical underpinning. Technology roadmapping is recognized at the highest levels. For 
example, from an institutional perspective, the United Nations endorses roadmapping and 
considers it an enabling tool for setting directions and determining associated actions in a 
goal-oriented manner (UNIDO, 2005). Additionally, within the political sphere, there is the 
example of the ‘Solar Technology Roadmap Act’, as legislated by the 111th U.S. Congress, to 
establish and support the creation and maintenance of a technology roadmap. That act 
directed the U.S. Secretary of Energy to develop a roadmap which “presents the best current 
estimate of the near-term, mid-term, and long-term research, development, and demonstration 
needs in solar technology” for the purposes of “meeting national priorities in energy security, 
United States competitiveness, mitigation of adverse environmental impacts, and energy 
diversification” (U.S. Congress, 2009a). 
In contrast, academic research into roadmapping has lagged well behind industrial practice, 
with interest developing in the late 1990s in the United States, Europe and Japan, starting with 
research groups that had high levels of industrial engagement – typically within engineering 
departments. Publications on roadmapping have steadily grown since and with three principal 
outlets for disseminating research, namely Research-Technology Management (RTM), 
Technological Forecasting & Social Change (TFSC), and the Portland International 
Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET). RTM were the first 
to publish a formal roadmapping paper, that of Willyard and McClees (1987) on Motorola’s 
approach. Furthermore, the relevance and importance of technology roadmapping is 
evidenced by the inclusion of a roadmapping paper reprinted in the 50th anniversary edition 
of RTM, published by the U.S. Industrial Research Institute (IRI) – an account of the Philips 
approach to technology roadmapping (Groenveld, 1997; 2007). The first roadmapping paper 
to appear at PICMET was in 1991 and entitled ‘Strategic technology planning: Developing 
roadmaps for competitive advantage’ (Nauda and Hall, 1991). In regards to TFSC, the first 
significant mention of roadmapping was by Joseph F. Coates in one of his ‘From My 
Perspective’ columns, where he pointed out a key shift taking place in strategic planning, 
usually a solely internal organizational function, to mutual sector-level activities with the 
uptake and collective generation of industry roadmaps (Coates, 2000). The first full papers to 
appear in TSFC were in the 2004 special issue on roadmapping (Volume 71, Issue 1-2); 
containing nine papers including a perspective from Bob Galvin, CEO of Motorola. 
To date, as identified in a bibliography maintained by Phaal (2019), there are more than 
1,110 publications dealing specifically with roadmapping (i.e. focusing on the 
method/tool/process as opposed to the content of the actual subject matter under 
consideration). Yet, it has to be stated in no uncertain terms, ‘we’ the research community 
have consistently overlooked and neglected to acknowledge that early efforts existed well 
before the first formal appearance of roadmapping in journal articles. Thus, the intent of this 
retrospective is to provide an account of technology roadmapping’s provenance, which is 
clearly and firmly rooted in industrial engineering practice, and also to challenge the orthodox 
account which some fellow academics cite without question, and encourage researchers to 
appreciate practitioner-based contributions and applied-research as ‘worthy’ for academic 
consideration. The aim of this paper is to highlight those forgotten/overlooked organizations 
and give them the credit due for their contributions, superseding some of the work in highly 
cited articles. Reflecting the point of view and efforts of these pioneering practitioners will 
not only encourage a wider appreciation of where technology roadmapping has come from, 
but enable a better understanding of its underpinning functions and value rooted in addressing 
‘real-world’ challenges of ‘world-class’ organizations. That said, there are still gaps and 
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remaining question marks in the story of roadmapping’s journey from obscure beginnings to 
powerful and increasingly popular management tool. 
 
2. ‘Established’ industrial roots 
 
Roadmapping, whether it be technology roadmapping, product roadmapping, business 
roadmapping or strategic roadmapping, has its roots firmly embedded in industrial 
engineering, with development of the method being led by practitioners (as opposed to 
academics). In the orthodox account of roadmapping’s evolution there are six organizations 
that deserve to be praised for their important contributions, namely: Motorola, BP, Philips, 
EIRMA, Lucent Technologies and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). These 
organizations represent the recognized body of knowledge for the modern practice of 
roadmapping, and they were influential in the subsequent uptake by other organizations and 
upsurge in interest by researchers. This retrospective provides the opportunity to critically 
draw attention to these seminal works, re-examine and reaffirm the power and flexibility of 
roadmapping, during a period when it was being established as a distinctly unique 
method/tool within the field of technology and innovation management. 
 
2.1. Motorola 
 
Motorola were pivotal in elevating the profile of roadmapping and championing its use. 
Credit must be given to the 1987 Willyard and McClees publication, as the first journal paper 
on technology roadmapping. It reflected work in the mid-1970s focused on the alignment of 
expensive program investments in fast-changing technologies against the commercial 
aspirations for product innovations. Robert ‘Bob’ Galvin, who was CEO at the time, provided 
the much cited “a roadmap is an extended look at the future…” definition (Galvin, 1998). He 
additionally provided the following powerful statement, which positioned roadmapping as a 
highly credible management tool: 
“Roadmaps communicate visions, attract resources from business and 
government, stimulate investigations, and monitor progress. They become the 
inventory of possibilities for a particular field, thus stimulating earlier, more 
targeted investigations. They facilitate more interdisciplinary networking and 
teamed pursuit. Even ‘white spaces’ can conjure promising investigations. In 
engineering, the roadmapping process has so positively influenced public and 
industry officials that their questioning of support for fundamental technology 
support is muted ” (Galvin, 1998, p. 803). 
In 2004, as a special practitioner’s update for Technology Forecasting & Social Change, 
Galvin further remarked that “roadmaps allow industry leaders to communicate in a 
convincing and coordinated way with colleagues within business and government 
policymakers who provide targeted support to national science and technology policy and 
appropriations” (Galvin, 2004). Such statements from a senior industrialist have done much to 
cement the role of roadmapping and have greatly promoted the method. According to 
Willyard and McClees (1987), technology roadmaps became fundamental tools for Motorola 
because they could be used to maintain a proper balance in terms of “the amount of attention 
paid by our business managers to short-range issues versus long-range issues; to operating 
versus strategic matters; and to technology versus the many other professional disciplines that 
must be managed in a successful company”. Additionally, it was readily acknowledged that 
“the greatest value is not necessarily in the finished document, but rather in following the 
discipline of the technology roadmap process” (Willyard and McClees, 1987). This was also 
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emphasized by Galvin (1998), who stated that “the optimal process for gathering and 
selecting the content of roadmaps is to include as many practicing professionals as possible in 
workshops periodically in order to allow all suggestions to be considered and to objectively 
evaluate the consensuses that will more often than not emerge. Equal treatment should be 
given to minority views and individual advocacies”. 
In regards to the specifics of what Motorola were actually doing, details are only provided 
through two publicly available sources: Willyard and McClees (1987) and DeGregorio 
(2000). Willyard and McClees (1987) reported that Motorola used two types of technology 
roadmaps, namely ‘emerging technology’ and ‘product technology’. The emerging 
technology roadmap dealt with a single technology, providing a forecast of its progress, an 
evaluation of Motorola’s capabilities, and a comparison of those capabilities against 
competitors both today and in the future. The main contribution of Willyard and McClees’ 
(1987) seminal paper was to outline the product technology roadmap, which was in effect a 
“compilation of documents that provides a comprehensive description of the product line – 
past, present and future – of a division or operating group”, and it consisted of eight parts: 
1. Description of the business (including market expectations and competitive environment). 
2. Technology forecast (trending of performance levels and underlying characteristics of 
future products). 
3. Technology roadmap matrix. 
4. Quality considerations. 
5. Allocation of resources (engineering and financial). 
6. Patent portfolio. 
7. Product descriptions, status reports and summary charts. 
8. Minority report. 
Two elements significantly stand out. First, the ‘technology roadmap matrix’ shown as a 
single visual depiction combining the product plan and technology forecast (i.e. product 
evolution with corresponding functionalities against the backdrop of an explicit timeline) that 
“provides management with an excellent review of product direction and technology timing” 
(Willyard and McClees, 1987). Second, a ‘minority report’ was used to bring a potentially 
beneficial product or process lacking firm consensus or backing from a persuasive advocate to 
the attention of senior management and hopefully ensure it did not “slip through the cracks” 
(Willyard and McClees, 1987). 
Gary DeGregorio, from Motorola’s Software & System Engineering Research Laboratory, 
provided a description of another powerful type of roadmap representation. DeGregorio 
(2000) recognized that to support a ‘best-in-class’ technology management capability, 
roadmaps needed to embody “decision alternatives (business scenarios) over time”. So, a 
roadmap schematic was developed which consisted of main layers for each primary set of 
scenarios under consideration, and then individual rows/swimlanes for each specific scenario 
(containing the “evolutionary threads of technologies, capabilities, etc.”). The roadmap also 
included a ‘multi-period’ time scale in the sense that the timeline was framed against a 
planning horizon segmented into the near-term (“viewed at one-year intervals”) and with the 
far-term/long-range segment shown as a single interval. As remarked by DeGregorio (2000), 
such a representation “supports the common ‘rolling wave’ method of planning in which 
greater detail and precision is applied to near term elements”. 
Three further remarks were made about Motorola’s approach that had significant influence 
on the modern form of roadmapping. One was that “documents are inefficient containers for 
the information and knowledge created by key business and engineering processes” and thus 
“a roadmap may be thought of as a compact method of summarizing and communicating” 
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(DeGregorio, 2000). Another was that “an organization that desires to achieve effective and 
comprehensive use of roadmapping should promote a ‘One Roadmap’ vision. This vision 
does not imply a single, very large roadmap. Rather, it signifies that an integrated set of 
roadmaps can be used as a focal point to align goals and strategies across the organization” 
(DeGregorio, 2000). The third remark was that roadmapping enables strategic alignment and 
this occurs across two dimensions: (i) “roadmap linkages may be used to align strategies 
within a business unit ‘end-to-end’ across all parts of the research-to-product value chain”, 
and (ii) “roadmap linkages may be built between business units to capture commitments for 
technology, capability and product sharing and reuse” (DeGregorio, 2000). 
A further roadmapping paper was published in 2004. It provided a general overview of the 
efforts to develop an ‘Enterprise Roadmap Management System’ (ERMS), i.e. a collaborative 
enterprise-wide platform. The ERMS was to provide “a common roadmapping process, a 
common software solution, and a common information architecture for all of Motorola” 
(Richey and Grinnell, 2004). In the last paragraph of the paper, the authors stated that: 
“Within the personal communications sector, it has been estimated that the use of 
roadmaps has saved the corporation hundreds of millions of dollars in the supply 
management area. Also, the roadmapping models indicate that more than a half 
billion dollars over the years have been brought to Motorola’s bottom line as a 
result of the institutionalization of these common roadmapping processes and 
tools ” (Richey and Grinnell, 2004, p. 41). 
 
2.2. BP 
 
Barker and Smith, published an overview of BP’s roadmapping foresight approach in 1995 
– unfortunately this work has not been cited as often as would be expected, considering it is a 
foundational paper. It is worthy to note that this publication appears to be the first to formally 
state that roadmaps can be constructed ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’, and that both modes are 
essential. The BP approach consisted of two principal parts. The first was concerned with 
“deriving technical missions from the business”, i.e. unpacking corporate strategy (vision and 
strategic goals) leading to the identification of priorities for the ‘technology’ part of the 
organization (Barker and Smith, 1995). For those organizations adopting the balanced 
scorecard method and wanting to relate it to roadmapping, this work provides the earliest 
known indication on how these two tools could be integrated. The second part of the BP 
approach was orientated to the research, development and engineering programmes needed to 
enable commercial success; whereby the technical needs were prioritized by the business and 
linked to the development/engineering activities, core technologies, underlying sciences and 
underpinning research skills (Barker and Smith, 1995). 
According to the account provided by Barker and Smith (1995), the advantages of 
deploying roadmapping “stem primarily from the combination of logical analysis, widespread 
consultation and discussion, and use of graphical techniques”. More specifically, and in 
contrast to other methods/tools, roadmapping: 
 Places greater emphasis on participation, and “provides practical assistance to facilitate the 
construction of the plan by enabling all the participants, whether technically expert or 
otherwise, to play a full part in the process”. “Its very nature greatly facilitates the 
involvement of a wide range of topics and staff, from senior management to (relatively) 
junior members, and from marketing manager to fundamental researcher”. 
 Facilitates the ‘structured dialogue’ essential to the process of reaching a consensus, i.e. 
enabling “the sometimes conflicting and perhaps qualitatively different views, priorities 
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and concerns of the participants to be compared, merged, and synthesized into a coherent 
set of outcomes”. 
 “Enables the overall impact and relevance of individual technology components of a 
business strategy to be assimilated rapidly and reliably”, and “greatly facilitates 
identification of gaps and/or duplications of effort”. 
 “Greatly aids communication, both at the operational commercial and technical level, and 
with senior management too”. 
 “Further, the audit trail aspect can be quite important in giving management confidence in 
the validity of R&D programmes”. 
Credit must be given to Barker and Smith (1995) for the coherent articulation of these 
features – they remain deeply embedded in roadmapping practices today and are often 
considered as being at the heart of the roadmapping process and its most beneficial properties. 
BP were also the first to formally acknowledge and explicitly recognize the visual form of 
a roadmap as being essential to the method. In regards to the act of roadmapping, the visual 
side “has been found to help greatly in making this consensus-building process both efficient 
and effective” (Barker and Smith, 1995). And in terms of communicating the outcomes, the 
“emphasis on graphical aspects offers several benefits, including ease of understanding, 
ability to compress extensive and complex information into a small space, and aiding the 
process of checking for consistency of the data” (Barker and Smith, 1995). Further, Barker 
and Smith (1995) provided a number of compelling remarks about the power of visual 
presentation: 
 “The visual nature of the maps has been especially helpful in obtaining structured 
discussion and constructive debate about the shape of future R&D programmes”. 
 “The visual presentation feature helps informed discussion and facilitates objective 
examination of options and routes to implementation. It addresses and integrates both 
commercial and technical issues and shows the inter-relationship between the two”. 
 “The maps can also help persuade general management, who may not be fully conversant 
with or even sympathetic to technical arguments, that money is well spent on the R&D 
programmes, including those underpinning ones which may sometimes be in danger of 
being regarded as esoteric and not suitable for company funding”. 
However, their paper did not show an actual roadmap visualization (so we do not have a sense 
of what ‘good’ might look like); and the two figures that were shown are, admittedly, 
‘strategy maps’ (as there was no explicit timeline/timing points or implicit phasing). 
Additionally, there was only a single mention of ‘time’ in the whole publication. These are, 
perhaps, reasons as to why the work has not been cited as often as it should. 
 
2.3. Philips 
 
In 1997, Pieter Groenveld from Philips Electronics published the influential and highly 
regarded paper ‘Roadmapping integrates business and technology’. This was very much the 
European counterpart to the U.S. example from Motorola as it also focused on ‘product-
technology’ roadmapping “in order to develop a stronger awareness of how to serve important 
markets with the right products at the right time and to improve the cross-functional processes 
required for new product creation” (Groenveld, 1997). Philips took a more holistic view of 
what constitutes product-technology roadmapping in that it may be “applied to systems, to a 
product range, to individual projects, to components, or to production processes”. More 
crucially, they modified the layout of the roadmap to create an integrative schematic that 
could encapsulate the full set of potential interactions across the market-application-product-
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technology-project development chain. This format has led directly to the form which is most 
widely recognized today, i.e. the three-layer roadmap structure (with layers for markets, 
products and technologies). Philips appears to be the first organization to formally use the 
concepts of ‘market pull’ and ‘technology push’ within the roadmapping method – “building 
product-technology roadmaps requires the simultaneous consideration of market pull, 
technology push and their interaction over time” (Groenveld, 1997). A decade later, when the 
Research-Technology Management journal was celebrating their 50th year of publication (and 
to mark the occasion reprinted the most frequently referenced articles), the paper was updated 
to include the author’s reflections. Groenveld (2007) then stated that “the original description 
‘product-technology roadmapping’ has been replaced by ‘business roadmapping’ to 
emphasize the objective of this type of roadmapping, i.e. the development of a medium-term 
(5-7 years) vision of how the business is likely to develop when markets and product 
characteristics as well as technology get equal emphasis”. 
In regards to the deployment of roadmapping, Groenveld (1997) remarked that 
“management may consider roadmapping to be merely another approach or tool for 
improving the strategy definition and communication processes” and proposed starting the 
roadmapping process ‘bottom-up’ as it helps to demonstrate the benefits (so hopefully gaining 
buy-in and commitment for further roll-out). Very critically, Groenveld (1997) stressed that 
“roadmapping must be seen as an ongoing process that is a part of the business cycle”. 
An outline of the roadmap-building process was shown based on a double workshop 
sequence; where the first workshop was used to share information, and thus establish a 
‘common’ view between the participants, followed by generating the actual roadmaps at the 
second workshop. It was emphasized that the “detailed implementation of this roadmap-
building process will differ from one group to the other” (Groenveld, 1997). For instance, 
Philips Lighting established small roadmap drafting groups for each market segment in order 
to better define application needs; whereas Philips Semiconductors organized large 
multidisciplinary workshops in order to “stimulate cross-communication among the various 
product groups that were serving related markets and using the same technology base”. 
Philips provides the first reported example of combining roadmapping with the QFD tool. 
Quality Function Deployment is used to elicit the functional (customer) requirements and 
translate these into appropriate (technical) product characteristics. According to Groenveld 
(1997), “QFD offers a reliable starting point for roadmapping” feeding in to the drafting of 
the roadmaps were full attention can then be devoted to the time aspect. Philips also inferred 
the need to generate roadmap depictions with different levels of granularity and suggested a 
dual-tier approach, i.e. “both high-aggregation-level roadmaps (serving business strategy 
discussions) and related specific roadmaps (oriented toward the operational business)”. 
 
2.4. EIRMA 
 
Also in 1997, the European Industrial Research Management Association (EIRMA) 
published a guidance document on technology roadmapping. EIRMA is a member-led body 
that concentrates its activities on helping members to learn from each other, in terms of what 
works well and then translating such learning into a generalized form – which is indeed what 
they did in respect of roadmapping. At EIRMA, the ‘Working Group’ is an essential means of 
bringing a group of members together over a period of one to two years to report on a key 
aspect of industrial R&D management. For roadmapping, Working Group #52 (WG52) was 
established (and active between March 1996 and September 1997) to explore the range of 
roadmapping approaches that existed within its membership. In WG52, some 27 companies 
were involved including ABB, BASF, BICC, Daimler-Benz, Ericsson, ICI, Krupp, Philips, 
Siemens, Statoil, Unilever, United Technologies and Volvo. Specific case studies were 
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provided by ABB (roadmapping since 1991), Hoogovens (roadmapping introduced in 1996), 
LucasVarity (first used roadmapping in 1990, followed by group-wide application in 1993 as 
part of their annual budget process) and Philips (who started roadmapping in 1993 “with a 
small-scale pilot which has extended throughout the company over the years” leading to 
integrated business unit approaches). 
Through sharing and building upon the diverse roadmapping experiences of its members, 
EIRMA (1997) outlined an eight-stage roadmapping methodology. However, the greater 
contribution of the EIRMA work was to produce a generic roadmapping framework that 
brought together the essential components as a single conceptual whole – clearly this was 
heavily influenced by the Philips ‘market-product-technology’ structure, so perhaps it is better 
to say that EIRMA built upon the Philips structure and ‘fleshed out’ the multi-layered 
roadmap representation. The generalized form documented by EIRMA consisted of layers for 
the external influences, deliverables (desired requirements or expected performance 
characteristics of the product or process), technology (technologies and actions needed to 
permit the deliverables to be attained), skills/science/know-how (required to deliver the 
technologies), and resources (i.e. intellectual, physical and financial assets). Critically, the 
Working Group on roadmapping regarded “time as the prime parameter of a TRM” – if there 
is no time, then it is not a roadmap. 
EIRMA (1997) also outlined the ‘backwards’ and ‘forwards’ methods: 
 Backwards in time (i.e. from the future) – “When working backwards in time, the targets 
are defined at the beginning” and the roadmapping activity “involves finding out how to 
reach a given target (which could be a business goal, a product, process, fulfilment of a 
legislative requirement, or a technology)”. This method “is more natural for a marketing 
driven business”; and when introducing roadmapping to a company, “it is better and easier 
to begin with backward TRM”. 
 Forwards (i.e. to the future) – “When working forwards, the targets are the result” of “the 
process of building upon technologies”; it involves trying to “evaluate the potential of a 
given technology, the possibilities it opens up for the satisfaction of future needs”. This 
method is “more natural for a technology driven business”; although “it is more difficult to 
interest people from outside R&D to participate in a ‘forward’ type of discussion”; “input 
from ‘Marketing’ is essential for forward TRM-discussions”. 
EIRMA (1997) shared the same sentiment as Motorola in that “the greatest value of a 
TRM comes from the business processes that have to be put in place to create it, rather than 
the possession of a TRM in itself”. EIRMA also provided an important clarification to its 
position on this – a roadmap “is not something that can be purchased from a consultant, or 
created by a single individual. It must be the output of an empowered team activity, supported 
by commitment from senior management”. Additionally, the concept of a roadmap as a 
‘living document’ is attributable to EIRMA (1997): “a TRM is a living document and is 
constantly evolving as circumstances change. It is quite different from a project plan with its 
precisely defined milestones and objective to deliver a completely specified outcome”. 
 
2.5. Lucent Technologies 
 
Albright and Kappel, in 2003, described the approach taken by Lucent Technologies whose 
product-technology roadmaps were centered at the level of ‘product lines’ and provided the 
basis for its corporate technology planning. Such positioning enabled Lucent to look across 
the roadmaps to identify “common needs that may be met by a single development program 
or technology acquisition”, opportunities for reuse, overlaps, hidden gaps, weaknesses, and 
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“key strengths that can be deployed in other areas of the business” (Albright and Kappel, 
2003). It is readily apparent that Lucent were taking an informed portfolio lens. 
In a very similar fashion to Motorola, Lucent’s roadmapping was organized into a number 
of parts: 
1. Market section – Competitive assessment, market segmentation and trends. 
2. Product section – Product drivers, experience curve forecast, product roadmap and product 
evolution plan. 
3. Technology section – Technology roadmap (product/manufacturing) and forward costing 
model. 
4. Summary/Action plan – Strategic summary (action strategy) and risk roadmap. 
The visual depiction of Lucent’s technology roadmap was similar in layout to the style of 
Motorola. However, there was one critical difference that set it apart and means that it must 
be recognized as a seminal example in the roadmapping body of knowledge – Lucent had not 
only embedded portfolio data on their roadmap, they had in effect integrated the well-known 
2x2 tool into the roadmap structure (by splitting the matrix and overlying it as two vertical 
columns, with the ‘bubbles’ from the classic bubble chart being aligned against the 
corresponding horizontal rows of the roadmap). The example shown compared the 
importance of the technology (low/medium/high for both current and future states) against the 
organization’s competitive position (lag-lead, currently and in the future). According to 
Albright and Kappel (2003), “movement along either scale suggests a changing investment 
level and becomes the highlight for an executive summary of technology”. As such, “the 
technology roadmap then becomes a vehicle for making all funding decisions”. Furthermore, 
“creating the roadmap story means explicitly describing the why’s for each key decision in 
the plan” (Albright and Kappel, 2003). 
Lucent appear to be the first organization to develop a risk-based roadmap – this is a very 
unique artifact and even today it remains an underutilized, even rare, practice. The format has 
layers/swimlanes for market, technical, schedule, financial/legal, and resource-based risks. 
For instance, “market risks include assumptions about market growth” and “are placed on the 
timeline where one would expect to learn the validity of key assumptions”. Albright and 
Kappel (2003) stated that “uncertainty on a roadmap has a common-sense meaning of how 
sure we are about something” and is shown as a probability; “risk then combines that 
uncertainty estimate with the consequences of failure”. As such, the roadmap highlights the 
major ‘risk events’ which need to be monitored during the implementation and the ‘show 
stoppers’ to successful execution. The intent was not to ‘scare’ managers by showing them 
risks scattered across their roadmaps; as emphasized by Albright and Kappel (2003) “risk can 
be managed using this chart” and the risk mitigation measures should be depicted on the 
roadmap. 
As a final observation, Lucent appears to be the first to coherently deploy a range of 
different types of roadmaps across the organization as a formalized set of templates. “Much in 
the way that standardized financial reporting permits a rapid dissemination of financial 
information, the roadmap template creates a common language for executive review of 
technology, enables cross-roadmap planning, and builds common roadmapping skills. At 
Lucent, having a standard template amounted to a starting point – a minimal set of 
information to describe an integrated product and technology strategy. Individual teams were 
free to embellish as the situation dictated” (Albright and Kappel, 2003). 
 
 
 
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2.6. Semiconductor Industry Association 
 
In the orthodox account of roadmapping’s evolution, there is a very significant landmark 
that must be highlighted, namely, in 1999 the publication of the International Technology 
Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), which represented the first international roadmap. 
Behind this achievement there was obviously considerable effort, and also a lengthy 
trajectory, with the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) playing a pivotal role. 
The nucleus for the ITRS can be traced back to an originating workshop in 1991, 
cosponsored by the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Semiconductors (NACS) and the 
Office of Science and Technology Policy. According to historical analysis by Schaller (2004), 
this workshop was the “first legitimate attempt at an industry roadmap exercise involving 
broad participation from industry, universities, research consortia, government agencies and 
labs”. The workshop brought together ninety participants who were tasked with creating 
“technical roadmaps that, if followed, would contribute to the U.S. semiconductor industry’s 
efforts to develop advanced technology throughout the next decade, and that would help 
propel the industry to a world leadership position by the year 2000” (NACS, 1991). 
The following year, this roadmapping initiative went from being government-sponsored to 
industry-led, with the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) taking over the coordination 
role – for an in-depth account see Schaller (2004). Where the original 1991 roadmap set the 
challenge of achieving the next generation of technology by 2000, the SIA considered that if 
the United States were to continue to lead the industry then they would have to look out five 
succeeding generations (Spencer and Seidel, 1995). In November 1992, 178 participants took 
part in a 3-day workshop; the format of which included general plenary and breakout sessions 
involving 11 technology working groups (Schaller, 2004; Spencer and Seidel, 1995). As a 
result of this workshop, two documents were published in early 1993 to represent the 1992 
version of the roadmap (SIA, 1993a; 1993b) – these were made freely available world-wide. 
Two further iterations were produced in 1994 and 1997, and classed as the National 
Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (NTRS). 
In 1998, what was a domestic practice went global at the World Semiconductor Council, 
where five trade organizations (from the United States, Europe, Korea, Japan and Taiwan) 
agreed to cooperate and led to the publication of the first International Technology Roadmap 
for Semiconductors (ITRS) in 1999. Since then, the ITRS has followed a consistent rhythm of 
being updated in even-numbered years and with the next completed edition released in odd-
numbered years, leading to the impressive long running 1999-2001-2003-2005-2007-2009-
2011-2013-2015 series. Quite the historic feat involving thousands of participants over the 
years and for a truly underpinning field of technology. 
The principal objective of the ITRS was to capture and present the consensus view of the 
industry’s research and development needs over a 15-year timeframe. Schaller (2004) 
highlighted that the roadmap “attempts to communicate requirements to two distinct 
audiences: near-term (suppliers with a 6-year horizon), and long-term (research with a 6 to 15 
year horizon)”. Moore’s Law served as the basic planning assumption and the ITRS roadmaps 
were put together in the spirit of a challenge, i.e. what capabilities need to be developed in 
order to continue to realize Moore’s Law? 
The 2015 edition was the last ITRS – the semiconductor industry was no longer the 
industry it used to be… In recent years there has been an attempt to ‘reboot’ the ITRS through 
the IEEE’s International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS). “Compared to the ITRS, 
the IRDS takes a broader perspective on technology” and the new name “reflects an expanded 
focus on applications and systems that drive the need for semiconductor devices” (Wright and 
Conte, 2018). 
 
 11
3. ‘Forgotten’ history 
 
Motorola, BP, Philips, EIRMA, Lucent Technologies and the Semiconductor Industry 
Association have all made significant contributions – there is no detracting from their rightful 
place in the history of roadmapping. That said, there are much earlier applications of 
technology roadmapping well before this core set of practices and publications. Through 
archival research, we have uncovered a number of significant roadmap examples that existed 
well before the first formal accounts of the topic reported in journal articles – we have now 
traced technology roadmapping back to the early 1960s. Furthermore, we discovered many 
activities that actually constitute roadmapping despite different expressions being used at the 
time. It has to be remarked that even given the flexible, integrative and powerful nature of the 
technology roadmapping approach for business, the technology-oriented prefix can be 
tactically and strategically unhelpful in terms of organizational acceptance and deployment of 
the method/tool. 
Roadmapping came from industry and it must be stressed that practitioners are ‘busy doing 
their day jobs’ (e.g. developing and applying roadmapping in companies) and so, of course, 
they would have little time or energy left which might be expended on publishing papers in 
technology and innovation management journals. Fortunately, the evidence of their 
roadmapping activities does exist (should academics and researchers ‘really look’). It is not 
possible to give a full account of our findings given both the amount and richness of the 
documents found (to date), and also the space constraint of a journal paper. However, we have 
endeavored to identify those organizations that should be credited for their early works and 
now provide a ‘headlines’ account of some of their unique, interesting and potentially ‘world-
first’ contributions to technology roadmapping. 
 
3.1. NASA 
 
NASA were already actively deploying roadmapping two decades before the first journal 
paper describing technology roadmapping. Consider Fig. 1 which was produced in 1963, and 
found in the ‘Lecture Series on Nuclear Propulsion’ under a presentation by Finger et al. 
(1964) entitled ‘Nuclear rockets based on graphite reactor technology: Their applications 
and development status’. Fig. 1 is a 3x3 matrix and the authors state that it “is a coarse 
roadmap of space missions”. When looking at this format, and noticing that there is no visible 
(explicit) timeline, and before criticizing the depiction (perhaps saying that it is not a 
roadmap), it is first necessary to consider how the authors describe the representation: 
“I do not intend to go through this chart in detail; the important thing it infers is 
the flow, in both time and technology, from the comparatively low-energy, low-
payload missions we are doing now to more ambitious missions in the lower 
right-hand half of the matrix” (Finger et al., 1964, p. II-1). 
That quotation implies ‘roadmapping’, and time is implicit in Fig. 1; if unconvinced, then 
consider the following (Finger et al., 1964): 
 “The three regions of space flight are arranged in columns: Earth orbit, lunar and 
planetary”. There is “a progression in each region from unmanned missions (at the top) to 
early manned developmental flights and, finally, operational manned flights. Current 
authorized programs are marked by asterisks”. 
 “The integrated nature of unmanned and manned programs for lunar and planetary 
exploration should be noted. Unmanned flights come first with both special scientific 
purpose and a vital role in preparing for manned missions”. 
 12
 “There is also a horizontal dependency on the chart: both the long-duration manned lunar 
missions and the manned planetary missions will lean heavily on human and systems 
experience in Earth orbit”. 
 “Although dates are not shown on the chart, the general timing of the missions is worth 
some comment. Anything worthy of the name lunar station or base should probably be 
placed in the latter half of the 1970’s. Similarly, in the planetary program, manned flights 
to Mars or Venus are probably post-1980, and planetary operations would be 
correspondingly later”. 
Such a description does constitute roadmapping. Not only was NASA an early user of 
roadmapping, their mode of deployment was through workshops. Consider an example from 
1976, on the subject of electronics, it involved running a series of 2-day workshops held at the 
relevant program offices and research centers, where participants were tasked with: (i) 
identifying technology needs and opportunities (in relation to prospective missions/systems); 
(ii) outlining major technology areas/themes; and, (iii) exploring which technologies might be 
appropriate/available for future flight experiments and payloads – all against the overarching 
ambitions of a 1,000-fold mission capability increase and a 10:1 lifecycle cost reduction 
(NASA, 1976a). Fig. 2 shows an example of one of the roadmap outputs from that initiative; 
this ‘sensing and data acquisition’ roadmap brings together three technical areas (microwave, 
infrared and multispectral scanning) and their respective technologies. Note the convergence 
of passive radiometry and active radar technologies, leading to phased array antennas, then 
with the development path opening out again, leading to the two options of low-noise and 
high-power, moving toward the specific program goals of 1/10th cost and 10x sensor 
performance. Note also the use of dashed bars to indicate these are estimated developments 
over the future timeline. There is a complete set of such roadmaps, all sharing the same style 
of template, and packaged in a report containing background and supplementary information 
(NASA, 1976a). 
In roadmapping, the concept of ‘windows’ is often used in regards to technology push and 
market pull against the time dimension, e.g. ‘windows of availability’. The language of 
‘window’ and the popular phrase ‘windows of opportunity’ seems to have been coined by 
Honeywell in the late 1990s (Whalen, 2007). Although the underlying idea might be 
attributable to NASA in the sense that they were roadmapping technologies, against ‘mission 
requirements’ and ‘flight readiness’ for final payload flight dates, whilst trying to synchronize 
with available ground/flight demonstrator programs and shuttle testing schedules (NASA, 
1975).  
Recently in the software/agile/digital ‘space’, there has been a lot of interest and promotion 
of roadmapping with books such as ‘Strategize: Product strategy and product roadmap 
practices for the digital age’ (Pichler, 2016) and ‘Product roadmaps relaunched: How to set 
direction while embracing uncertainty’ (Lombardo et al., 2017). However, three important 
comments need to be made. Firstly, these so-called roadmaps are actually product release 
schedules. Secondly, there is a whole body of knowledge that exists from technology 
roadmapping that could be applied/adopted/adapted, i.e. the multi-layered, systems-based, 
roadmapping approach arising from ‘hardware’ can be applied to ‘software’ to good effect (by 
ensuring the process cycle time fits within the demands of the agile practices). Thirdly, it 
appears NASA were already applying roadmapping to software systems and applications – 
see Fig. 3 for an example. 
 
 13
 
Fig. 1. A coarse roadmap of space missions (Finger et al., 1964). 
 
 
 
 
 
Fig. 2. Sensing and data acquisition roadmap (NASA, 1976a). 
 
 14
 
Fig. 3. Software development roadmap (NASA, 1976b). 
 
3.2. Boeing, GE, Lockheed, USAF 
 
NASA does not operate in a vacuum – at least not in the organizational sense – so, within 
the space, aerospace and defense sectors, there has obviously been some spreading and 
sharing of practices. Boeing’s Space Division may have been roadmapping since the late 
1960s, although they are much less explicit with the use of the term ‘roadmap’. For instance, 
in a 1967 ‘Voyager spacecraft system studies’ report where the term was used only once in 
the whole document, Boeing did show and describe charts which do appear to be roadmaps. 
Fig. 4 was presented as a ‘postulated evolution chart’ for scientific instruments (Boeing, 
1967). The accompanying text stated that “this type of chart is used to plan the science 
missions for the various opportunities” and the task was to “determine the ways in which 
science payloads may evolve from the 1973 Voyager Mars mission to the subsequent 1975-
1977-1979 missions” (Boeing, 1967). 
There is some evidence that the Space Division of General Electric had been roadmapping 
too – i.e. “providing a time-phased tabulation of key management information” including 
trigger points for decisions, risks, alternatives, special facilities, unique manpower, etc. and 
combining these into a “single, time-phased plot” (General Electric, 1973). General Electric 
and Lockheed (Missiles & Space Company) have definitely been involved in roadmapping 
since the early 1980s (Hunt and Fisher, 1982). There are also examples of the United States 
Air Force producing roadmaps since the early 1970s, e.g. the ‘Digital flight control 
technology roadmap’ (Blatt, 1973). 
There is a unique report, produced in 1976, by the Research and Development Division of 
Lockheed, under contract by NASA, entitled the ‘Civil uses of remotely piloted aircraft’. The 
executive summary of that report opens with the paragraph: 
“The intent of this study is to identify and assess the technology effort required to 
bring the civil uses of RPVs to fruition and to determine whether or not the 
potential market is real and economically practical, the technologies are within 
reach, the operational problems are manageable, and the benefits are worth the 
cost. To do so, the economic, technical, and environmental implications are 
 15
examined. The time frame for application is 1980-85” (Aderhold et al., 1976, p. 
1). 
The significance of this report for roadmapping is the inclusion of a diagram which appears to 
be a multi-layered, systems-based, roadmapping framework embodying a ‘market-product-
technology’ structure – approximately two decades before Philips (1997) and EIRMA (1997). 
Lockheed’s schematic (Aderhold et al., 1976) is shown in Fig. 5 and was drawn to represent 
“the overlapping sequence of events which will be appropriate and necessary in order to bring 
RPVs to the civil marketplace in the coming decade” (RPVs - Remotely Piloted Vehicles). 
Consider the features and different perspectives contained in this figure, there is/are: 
 “Three end user classes” (i.e. markets) for the RPVs, namely federal agencies, state/local 
government agencies, and private firms/consortia. 
 A block (or layer) for R&D, technology and subsystems development (funded by NASA 
and other federal agencies). 
 A block (or layer) for ‘utility’ demonstrations (supported by DoD hardware). 
 Elements for certification, resolution of regulatory implications and insurance/warranty 
provisions. 
 Sub-layers for ‘Systems A-B-C’ (corresponding to the three markets) and the relative time 
phasing for the development, production and delivery/use of each product type. 
 A layer for the transfer of know-how from the government sponsored projects into the 
private sector. 
 The promotion, confidence-building and acceptance by firms to invest their own capital 
into the development, modifications, production, distribution and servicing of RPVs. 
 The potential establishment of a network of lending institutions providing loans for more 
speculative private sector RPV applications. 
 
 
Fig. 4. An evolution chart for scientific instruments (Boeing, 1967). 
 
 16
 
Fig. 5. Lockheed’s roadmapping ‘framework’ (Aderhold et al., 1976). 
 
3.3. Rockwell International 
 
Rockwell International is an interesting company when looking at the history of 
roadmapping as this organization bridged the space and energy sectors due to their work on 
nuclear reactor technologies. There is a 1965 report, by Atomics International (a division of 
the North American Aviation company, later acquired by Rockwell), where the term 
‘roadmap’ is explicitly used to describe a specific form of visualization, which depicted a 
number of technical systems and functional components across the backdrop of a timeframe 
(Teresa, 1965). However, rather than charting the development in terms of R&D activities, 
the chart is from the testing of the actual systems in relation to a simulated flight sequence 
(and the roadmap only had a timeline of 5,500 seconds!). So, as such, it does not constitute 
technology roadmapping. However, from the accessible records, it appears Rockwell have 
been involved in actual technology roadmapping since the early 1980s. In a 1982 technical 
report on the development of future space nuclear power systems, Rockwell proposed the 
creation of a technology roadmap using a ‘bottom-up’ approach and showed a conceptual 
outline consisting of three levels, namely: technologies/capabilities to system building blocks 
to missions (Anderson, 1982). Such a proposal is akin to the ‘market-product-technology’ 
structure. 
There is an extensive report from 1983 that contains a number of relevant and interesting 
elements (Anderson et al., 1983). It indicates that Rockwell have deployed a dual ‘bottom-up’ 
and ‘top-down’ approach to their technology roadmapping – a decade before the BP 
publication (Barker and Smith, 1995). They also made use of an interlinked grid-based tool to 
support their roadmapping – in a comparable fashion to Philips with QFD (Groenveld, 1997). 
In this case, the grid used by Rockwell had a time element (whereas QFD does not) – there 
were sub-columns for current technology (late 1980s to early 90s), improved technology (mid 
1980s), and advanced technology (late 1990s) – and was used to indicate technical capability 
and compatibility with the schedule requirements, i.e. ‘what could be done’ and on ‘what time 
 17
frame’. The interlinked grid was then analyzed and updated in terms of ‘what needs to be 
done’, feeding into technology roadmaps for planning the development paths. To aid 
communication (to a non-technical audience), Rockwell used simplified pictorial 
representations – an example is given in Fig. 6. Each circle in the sequence depicts a step in 
technology (with the specific details defined inside the circles) and ‘branching’ was used to 
indicate possible alternatives in the long-term future. 
As an interesting aside in regards to ‘corporate memory’ (and typically the lack thereof), in 
the very first special issue of a journal dedicated to the topic of technology roadmapping 
(RTM Volume 46 Issue 2) there was a paper entitled ‘Roadmapping: Agent of change’ about 
Rockwell Automation (McMillan, 2003). It stated that “senior Rockwell management was 
introduced to technology roadmapping during a Motorola visit in 1995” and that “Rockwell 
had no formal technology management processes at this time”. And, it was then “decided that 
technology roadmapping would be pursued as an initial pilot program in the company” 
(McMillan, 2003). But the archives do show that Rockwell already had some really good 
roadmapping practices and tools a decade earlier. 
 
 
Fig. 6. ‘Next step’ technologies plot (Anderson et al., 1983). 
 
3.4. U.S. Department of Energy 
 
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has also had an important role in roadmapping, 
either leading the process of roadmap development or sponsoring the numerous initiatives and 
workshops over the years. The DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy 
has been very active and influential – and continues to be so today. 
The accessible archives position the DOE’s (and associated organizations) involvement 
with roadmapping to the mid-to-late 1970s, although it could be earlier given some of the 
practices that appear to have been already established during the period. For instance, the 
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (1977) were applying a form of retrospective roadmapping, 
 18
and with clear layers between the products/systems and underpinning activities such as 
engineering/physics/materials research, and with layers explicitly labelled ‘What’ and ‘How’. 
Yet, reflect upon the following quotation from the System Studies Group contained within a 
1,070-page report: 
“We have developed a plan which provides for optional technical paths to 
commercial fusion power. The plan is not a roadmap of the most direct route to 
the program’s end goals. Rather, it is a dynamic tool which will allow 
management to control the pace of the program effectively and keep it in line with 
changes in technical progress, national needs, and the nation’s commitment to 
fusion” (Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, 1977, p. 7-7). 
It is unfortunate wording; perhaps a better phrasing would have been ‘a roadmap is not a 
plan’, i.e. the plan being the direct route and the roadmap being the dynamic tool depicting 
the optional technical paths. Then 47 pages later in the same document, they show a good 
example of a roadmap (over a timeframe of 1980-2008) with a ‘cautious plan’, ‘aggressive 
plan’ and ‘accelerated plan’ overlaid. Then for these ‘plans’, there is a follow-up set of 
separate visuals called ‘time schedules’. Even today the language of ‘roadmap-plan-schedule’ 
is still problematic. 
Consider Fig. 7 which is from a 1978 report produced by the Solar Energy Research 
Institute (SERI) – now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It was merely 
titled the ‘Federal solar heating and cooling program’ (SERI, 1978). The term ‘roadmap’ was 
not used anywhere in the report, but it is a roadmap. The visual depiction might appear 
simplistic, but it does appear to embody a ‘market-product-technology’ structure – nearly two 
decades before Philips (1997) and EIRMA (1997). Note the flow of technologies from R&D 
down into demonstrators toward the market development layer; there is even a row for 
standards development (which is fairly rare even today). And, in the report, there were 
sections labelled ‘Problems, Uncertainties, Dissenting Views’ – a decade before Motorola’s 
minority report (Willyard and McClees, 1987). Additionally, John Neal (Acting Assistant 
Director, Division of Fossil Fuel Utilization, DOE) presented a number of vugraphs/slides at a 
conference in 1979, describing them as showing the “20 year transition strategy graphically”. 
Again, not called or labelled as roadmaps, but they are. Fig. 8 shows one of the examples; 
note the layers for current, 2nd and 3rd generation technologies, and the fuels layers with 
parallel trajectory connected to the 2nd-3rd generation pathways (Neal, 1979). It is a good 
visually structured roadmap for the purpose of communicating a high-level overview. 
Similar to NASA, the DOE were roadmapping well before the first journal papers, and 
have been continually involved with technology roadmapping since those early years. Making 
the jump to 1997, the Sandia National Laboratories (operated by the Sandia Corporation, a 
Lockheed Martin Company, for the DOE) published a well-known guide to roadmapping 
(Garcia and Bray, 1997) – which heavily referenced the roadmapping activities of the 
semiconductor industry. The Sandia guidance was published about 7 months before the 
European guide by EIRMA (1997), and so it appears that 1997 may be the pivotal year in the 
historical evolution of roadmapping, as it marks the coming together of the separate threads 
between the ‘orthodox’ and ‘forgotten’ accounts, at just about the same time as academics 
were starting to apply research effort to the method/tool. This then leads us into the current 
‘modern’ era where the multi-layered, systems-based framework has become the established 
reference point for the practice of roadmapping. 
 
 19
 
Fig. 7. Federal solar heating and cooling program (SERI, 1978). 
 
 
 
 
Fig. 8. Heat engines and heat recovery development strategy (Neal, 1979). 
 
 20
4. ‘Unknown’ origins 
 
Today, an internet search for ‘roadmapping’ will reveal a bewildering array of examples – 
reports and images, and other related and unrelated material, of varying quality and 
provenance. There are numerous instances of the use of the terms ‘roadmap’ and 
‘roadmapping’ in other contexts and taking other formats – it is, after all, an attractive 
metaphor for a journey (of various kinds). For example, pictorial ‘roadmaps’ are frequently 
used in the education sector to communicate the student journey to and through college; and 
‘roadmap’ flowcharts are often found in research dissertations to outline the narrative 
structure of the thesis. In the popular press, the term ‘roadmap’ is strongly associated with the 
‘Roadmap for Peace’ (Middle East Quartet, 2003). There is even a book titled ‘A roadmap of 
time’ (Steiger, 1975). As a further complication, slightly different terminology can be found, 
e.g. the term ‘route map’ is sometimes used in Europe. The following sections will highlight 
the uncertainty as to the exact/true origins of ‘roadmapping’. 
 
4.1. Organizational 
 
From an organizational perspective, there are gaps in this ‘updated’ historical account. 
According to Probert and Radnor (2003), “it was Motorola and Corning that first championed 
roadmapping approaches in the late 1970s and early 1980s” and that “Corning advocated a 
critical events mapping approach to corporate and business unit strategy”. However, there is a 
lack of documented evidence for Corning’s activities and approach – Morone (1993) only 
acknowledges that “Corning’s practice of continuing innovation is similar to Motorola’s 
technology roadmap process”. There are also indications that the U.S. Electric Power 
Research Institute (EPRI) were roadmapping in the late 1970s and early 1980s (SERI, 1978; 
Bauman et al., 1983). Schaller (2004) noted that IBM and Texas Instruments were deploying 
roadmapping around the same period as Motorola. In an interview with an IBM executive, it 
was stated that “Japanese firms like Toshiba and Hitachi had been using roadmaps since the 
late 1970s” (Schaller, 2004). Additionally, roadmaps in the form of a matrix of technical 
difficulties and solutions might have been presented to senior management within JVC in the 
early 1970s (Rosenbloom and Cusumano, 1987). So, there remain a number of question 
marks in regards to which organizations were early adopters and what approaches they were 
taking. 
At the sector level, there are a number of well-known initiatives in addition to the eminent 
‘International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors’ (ITRS). Industry Canada, the 
government department responsible for industrial development, launched a sectoral level 
technology roadmapping initiative in 1995, and which ran until 2011 (Nimmo, 2013). During 
that period, Industry Canada co-sponsored 40 technology roadmaps involving “more than 
2700 companies and more than 200 non-industry partners (universities, research institutions 
and associations)” (Nimmo, 2013). Another notable national example is the Ministry of 
Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in Japan, who have been producing a consistent set of 
roadmaps since 2005 (Yasunaga et al., 2009), and with the process ongoing. Those are two 
prominent cases, but there lacks a thorough historical analysis of technology roadmapping 
applied at the sector, regional and national levels. In regards to Japan, de Laat and McKibbin 
(2003) identified that their first sectorial technology roadmap was published in 1996 by the 
Optoelectronics Industry and Technology Development Association (OITDA). Further, 
Probert and Radnor (2003) stated that roadmapping “had its early roots in the U.S. automotive 
industry” and Schaller (2004) implied that automotive research roadmaps were sponsored by 
the government in the late 1970s. So, again, more open question marks. Sector level roadmaps 
are usually one-off initiatives and reports, and this leads to another consideration – the 
 21
involvement and roadmapping practices developed by consulting firms. For example, during 
the mid-to-late 1990s and well into the 2000s, Energetics were commissioned to facilitate 
numerous roadmapping activities and produced roadmap reports for various 
sectors/industries. So, potentially, another rich vein for historical analysis. 
A separate account will be needed to trace ‘business roadmapping’, i.e. there are other 
early mentions of the term ‘roadmap’ in a general business sense. For example, there is a 
1969 article published in the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly that 
states: “for the food service industry, the question is not will we grow but how will we grow”, 
“what’s needed is a roadmap to where you’re headed”, “are there any roadmaps? Only those 
we develop for ourselves” (O’Malley, 1969). That does seem to imply roadmapping. Whereas 
the paper entitled ‘The corporate road-map: Planning at Babcock & Wilcox’ (Allio, 1972), 
which was published in Long Range Planning, outlined an approach to corporate planning but 
it did not constitute roadmapping. In the Business and Society journal, there is a paper from 
1976 that used the following phrase: “a plan is a roadmap or blueprint of the future. It always 
has a futuristic orientation” (Harrison, 1976). As noted by Kappel (2001), “all kinds of 
forward-looking documents are sometimes called roadmaps”. And there are also numerous 
mentions of the term ‘roadmap’ but with no clear description of their intended form/format. 
For example, Clifford (1975), a Director at McKinsey & Company, stated that “strategic 
planners are abandoning single scenarios for strategic ‘roadmaps’ reflecting a fuller range of 
economic and market probabilities”. Furthermore, there are other forms/formats which are not 
called roadmaps but could potentially be viewed as such. For instance, in a report to the U.S. 
Secretary of the Navy dating from 1959, Arthur D. Little produced a ‘schematic model of the 
development of a field of technology’ for the purpose of showing “at a glance the typical 
manner in which, following its initial discovery, a whole field of technology evolves with 
time through basic research” (NRAC, 1959) – this could be seen as a form of retrospective 
roadmapping. 
 
4.2. Educational 
 
The term ‘roadmap’ is frequently used in the field of education, where it also appears to 
have a long history. For instance, there is the book entitled ‘Gifted education: A 
comprehensive roadmap’ (illustrated with flowcharts) about how to develop an educational 
program and curriculum (Alexander and Muia, 1982). Other early examples include: 
 Journal of Planning Education and Research – A roadmap of subjects/themes which can 
be constantly referred to as students move through the material (Davidson, 1986). 
 Teaching Exceptional Children – A roadmap of the curriculum to plot where students have 
been, where they are and where they are going (Goldstein, 1986). 
 California Management Review – A roadmap to provide a tangible proof of progress and 
what has been accomplished through the course syllabus (Culbert, 1977). 
 Journal of Accountancy – A roadmap as a series of flowcharts to help students decide 
which professional development courses to take depending on their intended career path 
(Lux, 1975). 
The ‘roadmap’ metaphor is obviously very strong. An early and related example dates to 1969 
where Calvin Gould of Martin Marietta Corporation (which later merged with Lockheed to 
form Lockheed Martin) gave a talk entitled ‘Anatomy of a presentation’, where he showed a 
‘roadmap’ flowchart for creating and delivering different types of presentations and lectures 
(Gould, 1969). 
 
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4.3. Political 
 
It is in the political arena where the term ‘roadmap’ garnered the greatest worldwide 
attention, and entered the public lexicon, with the publication of the seven-page ‘Roadmap for 
Peace’ (Middle East Quartet, 2003) – a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – 
which opened by stating: “the following is a performance-based and goal-driven roadmap, 
with clear phases, timelines, target dates, and benchmarks aiming at progress through 
reciprocal steps by the two parties”. It was a text-only document that outlined a timetable, 
comprised of three phases, aimed at a permanent status agreement. The ‘performance-based’ 
nature of the roadmap signified that the rate of progress would “depend upon the good faith 
efforts of the parties”, and “their compliance with each of the obligations” as outlined in the 
roadmap (Middle East Quartet, 2003). Otterman (2005) highlighted a crucial detail (especially 
for a roadmap), namely, “the Palestinians, Israelis, and other parties in the Middle East were 
consulted, but did not directly participate in the plan’s creation”. 
There is also the ‘Roadmap to End Global Hunger’. This is actually a U.S. congressional 
bill to address global hunger and improve food security (U.S. Congress, 2009b). There are the 
unanswered questions of how the term ‘roadmap’ came to be used for such documents and 
whether their authors were influenced by seeing other usages of the term? There may even be 
a separate ‘parallel world’ of roadmapping. For instance, there is a report entitled ‘Energy 
strategy: Roadmap to consensus’ published in 1990 by the American Energy Assurance 
Council (AEAC) which looked into improving policy-making and negotiated agreements, for 
developing national energy strategy, through more effective consensus-building dialogue-
based processes (AEAC, 1990a). They piloted an approach involving 126 senior-level 
executives, from twelve energy stakeholder groups, with a 1½-day workshop format using 
both large plenary and small working groups (i.e. caucuses and negotiation sessions). It 
appears to be very much akin to the ‘fast-start’ technology roadmapping approach (Phaal et 
al., 2013). Those involved with organizing and facilitating roadmapping workshops can 
appreciate the following remarks by the AEAC (1990a) and draw the necessary parallels: 
 “The definition of stakeholder groups is extremely important, and is also very difficult to 
get exactly right”. 
 “The overriding process challenge has to do with the effective use of time”. 
 “All scheduling should be designed to facilitate (whether directly or indirectly) caucusing 
and coalition-building”. 
 “A degree of informality and flexibility should be built into the overall process”. 
 “The number of participants, and negotiating tables, is an important consideration”. 
 “All negotiation sessions should end with short debriefings, allowing participants to go on 
record – out loud, and in front of each other”. 
 “A sense of closure is important. It is not satisfactory simply to run out of time, and have 
participants leaving to catch planes. The risks inherent in this haphazard wind-down are 
twofold: first, that valuable lessons may be lost; and second, that the negotiation output 
may be accidentally trivialized”. 
In a follow-up to their initial approach, the AEAC (1990b) published an adapted process for 
undertaking ‘consensus-building dialogue’ which involved a series of four 2-day events, 
alternating between executive staff workshops to prepare and draft materials followed by 
convening the principals to review/revise/approve. To complete the process, the principals 
were then to take the outcome agreements and brief “the appropriate U.S. Congressional and 
Senate committees and relevant federal cabinet officials” (AEAC, 1990b). 
 
 23
4.4. Legal 
 
The term ‘roadmap’ has also been used in a legal context. For example, in a 1961 paper 
entitled ‘Law and policy in state labor relations acts’ (in regards to “racketeering unions and 
unscrupulous firms which exploit their employees”), the New York State Labor Relations 
Board issued “a roadmap charting five ways to challenge paper locals and sweetheart or 
collusive contracts” (Kramer, 1961). Their ‘roadmap’ appears to be a set of procedures. 
Additionally, the University of Illinois Law Review contained a paper entitled ‘Prison 
overcrowding and the courts: A roadmap for the 1980s’ (Smolla, 1984) which explored “the 
jurisprudential conflicts that make prison overcrowding cases difficult for courts to handle, 
and then maps out the factors that appear to govern judicial decision making in prison 
overcrowding cases” – their mapping took the form of a written retrospective. So, their usage 
of the term is strongly procedural-based and, obviously, relevant given the context. 
 
4.5. Financial 
 
The earliest usage of the term ‘roadmap’ appears to be from 1945 with the paper entitled 
‘Reappraisal of depreciation and obsolescence’ published in the Harvard Business Review. 
That article examined the accounting method for depreciation and obsolescence in relation to 
repairs/replacement/rebuilding of production machinery and changes in technology. 
According to the author “there is no convenient road map for the analysis of these problems 
or their solutions in all companies” (Massel, 1945). 
In 1972, there was a much more explicit usage of the term ‘roadmap’ in reference to 
financial planning for executive compensation and benefit packages (Petrie, 1972): 
 “The final step in providing a total financial plan would be to detail all the 
recommendations and the thoughts expressed in the discussions in a comprehensive report 
– a blueprint for the future”. 
 “The complete plan would be an admirable financial roadmap as long as things remain 
unchanged, but total financial planning involves as many moving parts as a fine watch, and 
it’s up to the financial planner to see that they are kept almost as well synchronized”. 
Then in 2005, there is a coming together of the financial and technology perspectives by 
Miller and O’Leary (2005), who analyzed “the implications of interfirm and intrafirm 
investment coordination” by focusing “on a hitherto neglected mechanism – the technology 
roadmap”. The authors recognized that “while the existence of roadmapping practices has 
been noted in the literature outside accounting, their role in investment appraisal has not been 
explored to date”. Miller and O’Leary (2005) positioned roadmaps as ‘coordinating 
mechanisms’ in the capital budgeting processes because they provide “the dynamic 
coordination of expectations where there is recurrent intra- and interfirm investment” and “in 
aligning capital spending decisions across sub-units of the firm and across firms” – “thus 
facilitating the ‘active management’ of investment programmes”. They conducted a multi-
year study with Intel looking at the firm’s capital budgeting, appraisal and investment 
coordination practices (involving technology roadmapping). According to the authors, 
“ensuring that individual investment decisions are congruent with the relevant roadmap is 
afforded the highest priority by Intel’s executive officers”. In an interview with the President 
and CEO, he remarked: “we obviously do ROIs on products and things of that sort, but the 
core decisions the company makes, the core decisions are basically technology roadmap 
decisions” (Miller and O’Leary, 2005). 
 
 24
5. Summary 
 
Technology roadmapping has established itself as a powerful and popular management tool. 
Its unique differentiating feature is the structured visual representation, underpinned by the 
‘why-what-how-when’ framework, which is used to enable dialogue and consensus building 
and for ongoing synchronization across the relevant stakeholders. Without employing the 
framework as a primary lens, there is little to differentiate roadmaps and roadmapping reports 
from other strategic plans and business cases. Roadmapping emerged from industry through 
practitioners developing methods and approaches, with a strong technological focus, to ensure 
investments and research/development projects were aligned with expected functional 
performance and commercial expectations for products/systems. Motorola, BP, Philips, 
EIRMA, Lucent Technologies and the Semiconductor Industry Association have been 
recognized for their significant contributions to the practice of technology roadmapping. They 
played a key role in raising the profile of the tool, through providing compelling 
demonstrations of what can be achieved by adopting roadmapping processes. However, the 
practice of technology roadmapping is much older than acknowledged in the literature and 
there are a significant number of erroneous citations as to its origins. So, in addition to 
providing a retrospective on roadmapping’s emergence as a tool/method, this paper identifies 
its roots in 1960/70s industrial engineering management. Organizations such as NASA, 
Boeing, GE, Lockheed, USAF, Rockwell International and the U.S. Department of Energy 
were all deploying a form of roadmapping and made significant contributions that pre-date 
some of the well-known, highly cited and seminal papers. There is also the danger that we are 
perhaps guilty of overlooking even earlier significant work that could lay claim to 
roadmapping’s provenance as a management tool/method. Furthermore, it needs to be stated 
that the definitions of ‘roadmap’ and ‘roadmapping’ are not universally agreed; maybe this 
reflects its unclear origins. And to add to the difficulties of understanding what constitutes 
roadmapping, there are other legitimate usages and claims to the term ‘roadmap’, including 
those from politics, law, finance and education. They all, however, appear to share the 
common underlying feature of the ‘roadmap’ being both an attractive and powerful metaphor. 
 
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