Archived - Progress Report and Contribution to Canada's Innovation Strategy: Overview

This document reports on the status of nine Technology Roadmaps (TRMs) underway during the winter of 2003, and the potential contribution of these TRMs to the elements of Canada's Innovation Strategy.

This study was conducted for Industry Canada's Industry Sector. However, the Nine TRMs involved several other federal departments, including Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the National Research Council (NRC), and others.

Overview of Technology Roadmaps

Technology Roadmaps (TRMs) are a process tool to help Canadian industries, or sectors within an industry, identify and address the technology challenges that are critical to their future. Developing and implementing a TRM involves a three-phase process, as follows:

• Phase 1: Developing a formal TRM for an industry, a sector, or common areas of interest. Results from this developmental phase are captured in a formal Technology Roadmap Report, which is an important deliverable from Phase 1 of a TRM initiative. A Technology Roadmap Report typically captures the following information that was developed during the Phase 1 process:
  1. The technologies that are critical to future competitiveness of an industry or of related industries, based on the participants' knowledge and analysis of future requirements;
  2. Technological requirements and opportunities for the industry's supply chain; and
  3. Recommendations for action on how multiple organizations from industry, academic institutions, research organizations, and governments can work together to crack those technologies.
• Phase 2: Selecting and undertaking projects identified in Phase 1 of the TRM to crack the identified critical technology challenges.
• Phase 3: The adoption by an industry, a sector, and/or other concerned organizations of a "culture of collaborative technology development" as part of their normal method of operation.

The life-cycle of all three phases of a TRM will most often cover a period of several years.

A key characteristic of TRMs is that they are "industry-led". This approach helps industry to buy into the results, and is a contributing factor for the initiative to proceed through all three phases, ultimately leading to ongoing collaborative technology development.

The process for developing a TRM typically involves several companies from an industry (or from one or more industrial sectors within an industry) that come together to identify the technologies that are critical to their collective future, and to establish a collaborative approach to developing those technologies. The key objective of a TRM initiative is to provide a mechanism to enable organizations within an industry or a sector to achieve a collective decision on future technology development, and to establish a commitment to work together in addressing the related technological challenges.

Some of the key intended results from TRMs are the following:

• New enabling technological solutions are developed
• R&D funding has been reconsidered and/or redirected
• New products or utilization of new products have been developed
• New exports, new export markets of the enabling technology have been identified and exploited
• Barriers to development and transfer of critical technologies are better understood and overcome
• The flows of information related to technology development and inter-firm projects are better understood and used
• Formal technology development projects and/or less formal spin-off projects are undertaken
  • Some industry-wide
  • Some between a small number of companies
  • Some may be on an individual basis
  • New, additional related roadmaps were initiated/created
• Other industries have become interested in undertaking TRMs.