Technology strategic planning for an R&D institute: The case of Taiwan Textile Research Institute

Taiwan Textile Research Institute (TTRI), a government-sponsored R&D institute in Taiwan, has conducted a technology strategic planning in September, 2009 to find its future R&D directions from 2011 to 2015. The Cross-SWOT methodology, which is analogous to TOWS, developed by IBM was adopted to arrange a series of educational seminars and brainstorming workshops for TTRI managing team. The information of global opportunities and threats (O/T) was collected from five aspects, i.e. social, technological, economic, ecological, and political (STEEP), whereas, the strengths and weaknesses (S/W) were identified by comparing TTRI with its five benchmarking organizations based on organizational capabilities. 24 people from TTRI managing team were divided into 2 groups. Each group consisted of 6 members from functional department heads and 6 members from cross-departmental project leaders and administrative staff. Through rational discussions and debates by providing proven data or reasons, 5 strategies and strategic areas (SA) were pinpointed: 2 attack strategies by maximizing TTRI strengths and external opportunities (S/O); 1 market creation strategies by utilizing TTRI strengths to avoid the threats (S/T); 2 transformation strategy by improving TTRI weaknesses to grab external opportunities (VWO). 5 strategic areas (SA) were further linked with 9 T-Plan themes to develop technology roadmap from 2011 to 2015.