Technology roadmapping: Industrial roots, forgotten history and unknown origins

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

An exploration into the visual aspects of roadmaps: The views from a panel of experts

Roadmapping is an established and popular method for strategic planning. Its strength is often characterised in terms of the visual way in which it can embody future plans and present pathways to realising an organisation's vision. However, although a roadmap is a visual management tool, the visual aspects from a graphic design perspective have been largely overlooked. In order to explore this perspective, a panel of experts was brought together for a research workshop which consisted of a focus group activity and a visual critique. The focus group elicited the good vs. bad visual features of roadmap visualisations. This was followed by a critique exercise where a sample set of representative roadmaps were examined in terms of their structural layout, graphical objects and population with content. These roadmaps were also empirically assessed (scored and ranked) to give an indication of their 'visual design goodness'

Roadmaps to Utopia: Tales of the Smart City

Notions of the Smart City are pervasive in urban development discourses. Various frameworks for the development of smart cities, often conceptualized as roadmaps, make a number of implicit claims about how smart city projects proceed but the legitimacy of those claims is unclear. This paper begins to address this gap in knowledge. We explore the development of a smart transport application, MotionMap, in the context of a £16M smart city programme taking place in Milton Keynes, UK. We examine how the idealized smart city narrative was locally inflected, and discuss the differences between the narrative and the processes and outcomes observed in Milton Keynes. The research shows that the vision of data-driven efficiency outlined in the roadmaps is not universally compelling, and that different approaches to the sensing and optimization of urban flows have potential for empowering or disempowering different actors. Roadmaps tend to emphasize the importance of delivering quick practical results. However, the benefits observed in Milton Keynes did not come from quick technical fixes but from a smart city narrative that reinforced existing city branding, mobilizing a growing network of actors towards the development of a smart region. Further research is needed to investigate this and other smart city developments, the significance of different smart city narratives, and how power relationships are reinforced and constructed through them

Redox-freezing and nucleation of diamond via magnetite formation in the Earth’s mantle

Diamonds and their inclusions are unique probes into the deep Earth, tracking the deep carbon cycle to >800 km. Understanding the mechanisms of carbon mobilization and freezing is a prerequisite for quantifying the fluxes of carbon in the deep Earth. Here we show direct evidence for the formation of diamond by redox reactions involving FeNi sulfides. Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction identifies an arrested redox reaction from pyrrhotite to magnetite included in diamond. The magnetite corona shows coherent epitaxy with relict pyrrhotite and diamond, indicating that diamond nucleated on magnetite. Furthermore, structures inherited from h-Fe3O4 define a phase transformation at depths of 320–330 km, the base of the Kaapvaal lithosphere. The oxidation of pyrrhotite to magnetite is an important trigger of diamond precipitation in the upper mantle, explaining the presence of these phases in diamonds

Group support systems features and their contribution to technology strategy decision-making: A review and analysis

Collective decision-making processes require careful design considerations in organizations. On one hand, the inclusion of a greater number of actors contribute to a wider knowledge base, on the other, it can become a diffuse process and be distorted from the principles initially established. This paper observes a specific collective decision making process in organizations—technology strategy formulation—and, through a critical review of the literature, analyzes how the advances in features of group support systems support improvements in different stages of this process. This paper also discusses the implications of GSS appropriation in group dynamics.This research was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/ BD/ 33727/ 2009), within the framework of the MIT Portugal Program.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio