Integrating fuzzy-set theory into technology roadmap development to support decision-making

Abstract

Technology roadmap has long been regarded as a useful tool for linking business to technologies. Accordingly, establishing the relationships between market, product and technology elements is an essential part of successful technology roadmap development. Despite the significance as of analysing such relationships, however, few previous attempts have been made to address this issue. To overcome the limitations of previous studies, therefore, this study focused on the relationships between the diverse roadmap layers and aimed to develop a decision-support tool to investigate these relationships. To this end, fuzzy inference was applied to determine the relative importance of link between the roadmap elements, considering the degree of significance as well as the degree of relationship between the two. This study is expected to contribute to the existing roadmap literature by emphasising the value of relationship analysis, and can also be useful in practice by improving the quality of information on technology roadmap.