small and medium enterprises (SME) and have been shown to work in particularly to give directions to clusters of SMEs. Planning and business development context The process of technology roadmapping fits into corporate strategy, corporate strategic planning, technology planning and the business development context. Three critical elements should be connected: needs, products, and technology. Knowledge and skills required Consultant with skills Creating a technology roadmap requires certain knowledge and skills. Some of the participants must know the purpose of technology roadmapping. Next to this group-process and interpersonal skills are required since the process includes a lot of discussions and finding out what the common need is. If the number of participants is really large there might be need for a consultant or facilitator. Purpose Product planning in roadmapping This is the most common type of a technology roadmap: linking the insertion of technologies into products. Programme planning This type is more directed to the implementation of strategy and related to project planning. Figure 5 shows the relationships between technology development phases, programme phases and milestones. Formats Bars: Almost all the roadmaps are (partly) expressed in bars for each layer. This makes the roadmaps very simple and unified, which makes the communication and integration easier. Graphs: A technology roadmap can also be expressed as a graph, usually one for each of the sub layers. (e.g. IMEC uses the second method). Case studies Documented case studies include: ABB Mining Motorola Philips Siemens See also Work breakdown structure Requirement prioritization Software product management Product strategy Enterprise systems engineering Information technology planning Strategic management Strategic technology plan Technology life cycle Business plan Project network References Further reading Public Domain Roadmaps. Further information: Roadmapping Bibliography. Further information: Planning Technology forecasting