With the looming threat of recessionary times ahead and predictions that 70 percent of today's revenue generating products will be obsolete by 2012, the advent of 2008 brings some unwelcome challenges to business. While many companies are hunkering down, understanding the coming change is stimulating renewed discussion among executives on how to establish a culture that drives sustainable innovation to build value in lean times. Yet, executive commitment to an innovation culture does not necessarily translate into high performance execution of the innovation agenda. Surveys from leading consultancies and analyst firms also confirm that most companies are lacking in leadership or tools to innovate successfully and consistently.

In January 2007, an analyst from the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) embedded at Fort Drum, N.Y., noticed soldiers welding hooks onto the doors of military vehicles — an ad hoc solution for extracting people from vehicles hit by roadside bombs. This innovation, the analyst realized, could be useful in all sorts of attacks and could be fabricated anywhere. Working with the Fort Drum team, the analyst put together a series of instructions for designing and installing the hooks, complete with photographs, and circulated the digital blueprint over a vast information network that links bases and installations worldwide. Within 48 hours, the equipment modification had been adopted at numerous U.S. Army facilities.

That the information for this simple solution to a life-threatening problem benefited so many people so quickly represents an important success story. The Army’s bureaucracy has taken hits over the years for impeding the ability to communicate essential knowledge quickly throughout the organization. To address that concern, the Army developed the CALL network in 2006, a surprisingly supple Web-based collaboration system through which new bottom-up concepts like the Fort Drum door hooks are disseminated instantly to those who can benefit from them. In its first year of operation, the network shared more than 15,000 lessons from combat operations. Of these, more than 4,000 led directly to improvements in unit preparation and training for deployment. 

The Army’s success should serve as a lesson to the private sector.

What do we mean by "product roadmapping"? And how does it differ from other business processes? Most of all, why is it imporant?  Here, we attempt to answer the most frequently asked questions about roadmapping - what it is, who is and should be using roadmapping processes, and why your organization should consider implementing a roadmapping process to generate greater returns from your R&D efforts.