TeknoRoadmap, an approach for depicting emerging technologies

•An approach for depicting and forecasting emerging technologies is proposed.•The approach combines bibliometrics, data mining, web mining and roadmapping.•The approach is applied to Cloud Computing technology.•A technology roadmap which shows the technology's evolution and forecast is provided.

One of the biggest challenges for current enterprises is the adoption of emerging technologies as soon as these provide competitive improvements. In this sense, several types of technology forecasting and surveillance activities are present in their daily activity. From the academic point of view, technology forecasting activities involve the combination of methods of a diverse nature, with which the technology is depicted and its potential future paths are discussed. Within this conceptual framework, the present work aims at describing a novel approach, known as TeknoRoadmap, which combines bibliometrics and technology forecasting methods to depict emerging technologies. Thus, this contribution aims to widen the scope compared to those provided by previous works within the field, and to that end, the depiction of emerging technologies is provided based on two main elements, namely: the profile of the research activity; and a complete technology roadmap. The approach combines consolidated methods such as text mining and roadmapping, and novel ones such as web content mining, with special attention given to forecasting activities. The work provides a detailed description of the steps on which the approach is structured, as well as the results of one specific application to a cutting edge emerging technology: cloud computing.