Global Multinational Company are increasingly applying Product roadmapping as a management technique/approach to support the business strategy, policy and innovation (create the most competitive product portfolio for the future) at firm, sector and international levels.
A key benefit of the approach is the communication associated with the development and dissemination of roadmaps, particularly for integrating technology and commercial perspectives, balancing market-pull and technology-push and securing the right and timely innovations for the markets.
There are many types of roadmaps and different ways of developing them, the most general and flexible approach comprises a visual time-based, multi-layers chart, enabling the various functions and perspectives within an organisation to be aligned, and providing a structured framework to address key questions as: Where do we want to go? Where are we now? How and when can we get there?
The roadmap framework can be considered as a dynamic business skeleton for strategy and innovation, with the architecture of the roadmap providing a coherent and holistic structure within which the evolution of the business system and its components can be explored, mapped and communicated.