Technical Marketing - Helping You Develop Your Product Roadmap

Even till date, most of the hi-tech world has been split into 2 main forces - Technical and Marketing. Technical Marketing is a specific and niche area which taps on the synergy of both sets of these expertises to achieve a project success and customer win.

Hi-technology market has its own set of specifics & uncertainties which need to be addressed. Technical marketing here can be split into 2 phases – the first in which marketing is needed to help define the product/R&D/technology road map and the second phase where it helps push the product out to the market.

Hi-tech Market research spans from Incremental to Breakthrough innovation. Midway between the two are 2 very useful techniques – Empathic design and Lead Users. Being market oriented in high tech markets means that observation of customers (what they do) is often more useful in developing novel insights than in asking direct questions to the customers (what they say). Empathic design is a research technique based on the idea that users may not be able to articulate their needs clearly. Access to conducting an empathic design includes Customer Observation, Date capturing, Analyze/Brain storm and developing prototypes of possible solutions.

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Customers’ requirements gauged thus are then mapped onto the product/technology roadmap. Steps in the development of a technology roadmap include Technology identification, making decisions about technology additions, deciding on what to sell strategy and an ongoing management. Two strategies for a company to maximize its chances for success in its development of new product or technology roadmap are (a) Market Driven and (b) Technology Driven - the two are not exclusive and can be optimally combined. Companies can leverage on a number of available tools and strategies to define their optimal product/technology roadmap.

For more information and learning, please see our Essentials of Technical Marketing course http://www.dreamcatcher.asia/training/courseprofile.php?id=TM144

Meenu Sarin

DreamCatcher Technical Training

Sept 2010