Morphology analysis for technology roadmapping: application of text mining

The practice of technology roadmapping (TRM) has received much attention from researchers and practitioners, to support planning and forecasting in companies and sectors. However, little research has focused on the support of well‐organized information for more effective roadmapping and the presentation of in‐depth configurations of new products or technology. This paper proposes a roadmapping methodology to assist decision‐making by applying a systematic approach based on quantitative data. To this end, key information is extracted from documents such as product manuals and patent documents by text mining, which is then used to identify the morphology of existing products and technology. Morphology analysis (MA) also plays a crucial role in deriving promising opportunities for new development of product or technology by matching product and technology morphology. Therefore, MA‐based TRM can enable the effective exploitation of large quantities of significant information that might otherwise be left untapped, supporting innovation by generating a comprehensive set of detailed product and technology configurations. The proposed MA‐based TRM approach can be applied to both incremental and radical innovation, supporting both market pull and technology push. The method is illustrated with a detailed example for mobile phones to demonstrate its practical application.