A standard part of game design is the Tech Tree; or the skill tree. Of course, the tech tree is more or less complex depending on the game, the one below is from Civilisation, which as the name suggests is all about getting your team up the tree as quickly as possible.

So how does this help the modern corporation? Well, consider that most companies need to decide where they’re going to put their R&D dollars, can partner themselves into complete branches of the tech tree and more importantly have little idea of the technologies that they need.

Google understood this early with the legendary map of google future…

Of course, having access to a technology is also only part of the problem. The organization also needs to be able to exploit, produce and benefit from it. That’s a matter of training, tools and investment.

So apart from Google, where are the technology maps. What does it look like for an insurance company, or a pizza resturant?

I may spend a few hours translating the Gartner hyper curve into a Tech Tree!!!