Every innovation team needs a technology radar - a systematic way to track emerging technologies relevant to your business. But most radars I’ve seen are either too abstract to be useful or too reactive to provide real foresight.

Here’s the process I’ve developed for building and maintaining an effective tech radar. It’s not complicated, but it requires discipline.

Step 1: Define Your Relevance Filters

Not all emerging technologies matter to all organizations. Before you start scanning, you need to define what “relevant” means for you.

The questions to answer:

What problems would transformative technology solve? List the top 5-10 business challenges where technological improvement could create significant value. Be specific. “Better customer experience” is too vague. “Reduce customer wait times for service inquiries from 15 minutes to under 2 minutes” is actionable.

What value chain stages do you care about? A retailer might care about logistics, inventory management, and customer interaction technologies. They probably don’t need to track advances in semiconductor manufacturing unless they’re selling electronics.

What’s your time horizon? Some organizations need to know about technologies that could impact them in 2-3 years. Others care about 10-year horizons. This affects which signals you watch.

What’s your capacity to adopt? Be honest about organizational constraints. If you can’t realistically deploy experimental technology, there’s less value in tracking bleeding-edge developments.

Document these filters. Review them annually. They should evolve as your strategy evolves.

Step 2: Identify Your Signal Sources

Where do you learn about emerging technologies? The quality of your inputs determines the quality of your radar.

My recommended source mix:

Academic research (weight: 20%) - ArXiv, key journals in your relevant fields, conference proceedings (NeurIPS, ICML for AI; specific conferences for your industry). This shows what’s technically possible before it’s commercially available.

Patent filings (weight: 10%) - What are major players and innovative startups patenting? Patent databases can be noisy, but they signal commercial intent.

Startup activity (weight: 25%) - What are VCs funding? What are accelerators accepting? What’s getting traction on Product Hunt? Crunchbase, PitchBook, and angel investment announcements are useful here.

Industry analyst reports (weight: 15%) - Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and domain-specific analysts. Take their specific predictions with skepticism, but they’re useful for identifying consensus views you might want to question.

Practitioner communities (weight: 20%) - Hacker News, specific subreddits, industry Slack groups, LinkedIn discussions from respected practitioners. This is where people share what’s actually working.

Direct conversations (weight: 10%) - Talks with founders, researchers, and practitioners. Nothing replaces direct interaction for understanding nuance.

Set up systematic ways to monitor each source. RSS feeds, alerts, scheduled time for reading. This shouldn’t be random browsing - it should be a structured information diet.

Step 3: Create Your Assessment Framework

When you encounter a potentially relevant technology, you need a consistent way to evaluate it.

I use four dimensions:

Technical maturity: Where is this on the development curve?

• Theoretical (works in papers)
• Laboratory (works in controlled settings)
• Prototype (works in demos)
• Pilot (works in limited production)
• Production (works at scale)

Commercial viability: Is there a path to economic sustainability?

• What does it cost now vs. what will it cost at scale?
• Who’s the paying customer?
• What’s the business model?
• Are there fundamental economic barriers?

Strategic relevance: How much does this matter to your organization?

• Which of your challenges does it address?
• What’s the potential impact if it works?
• How does it affect your competitive position?

Adoption barriers: What stands in the way?

• Regulatory constraints
• Integration complexity
• Skills requirements
• Organizational readiness
• Dependency on other technologies

For each technology you track, rate these dimensions on a simple scale (high/medium/low is usually sufficient). The ratings should evolve as the technology develops.

Step 4: Structure Your Radar

The classic radar format (pioneered by ThoughtWorks) has four rings:

• Adopt: Technologies ready for mainstream use
• Trial: Technologies worth piloting
• Assess: Technologies to investigate further
• Hold: Technologies to monitor but not invest in yet

I add a fifth category:

• Watch: Technologies too early for even assessment but potentially significant

The radar should include:

• Technology name and brief description
• Current ring placement
• Key developments since last update
• Specific actions you’re taking (if any)
• Owner responsible for tracking this item

Update the radar quarterly. This is frequent enough to capture meaningful changes but not so frequent that it becomes busywork.

Step 5: Connect Radar to Action

A radar that doesn’t drive decisions is just an expensive newsletter.

Each ring should have associated actions:

Watch items: Assign someone to monitor and report back quarterly. No resource commitment beyond information gathering.

Assess items: Dedicate time for deeper investigation. This might mean reading papers, talking to vendors, attending demos. Small time investment, no budget commitment.

Trial items: Run actual experiments. This requires budget and capacity. Define success criteria upfront. Be willing to kill trials that don’t show promise.

Adopt items: Develop deployment plans. Integrate into roadmaps. Commit real resources.

The key discipline: Don’t skip stages. Technologies should progress through the rings based on evidence, not enthusiasm.

Step 6: Build Organizational Buy-In

A radar is only useful if people use it. This requires:

Executive sponsorship: Someone senior needs to care about the radar and reference it in decisions.

Broad input: Involve people across the organization in identifying and assessing technologies. The R&D team’s perspective differs from operations’ perspective.

Transparency: Make the radar accessible. People should know what the organization is watching and why.

Connection to planning: Reference the radar in strategic planning processes. If it’s disconnected from how the organization makes decisions, it’ll be ignored.

Common Mistakes

Too many items: A radar with 100 technologies is useless. Be ruthless about what deserves a spot. 15-25 items is usually enough.

No culling: Technologies that don’t progress should eventually be removed. If something has been on “Watch” for three years without development, drop it.

Hype-driven additions: Just because everyone’s talking about something doesn’t mean it belongs on your radar. Apply your relevance filters.

No ownership: Every item needs someone responsible for tracking it. Unowned items become stale.

Infrequent updates: The radar should feel alive, not like a dusty report. Quarterly updates are minimum.

Building an effective tech radar isn’t glamorous work. But organizations that do it well spot opportunities earlier, avoid dead-end investments, and make better-informed strategic decisions. It’s one of those capabilities that compounds over time - the longer you maintain it, the more valuable it becomes.

If you’re starting from scratch, begin simple. A dozen technologies, a spreadsheet, quarterly reviews. Sophisticate over time as you learn what works for your organization.