GOAL

As input for the vertical technology planning, Huawei wanted to identify and evaluate technologies and important trends with a significant impact on the global transportation industry (air transport, railway, shipping, cars & truck, as well as last mile mobility) over the coming 5 years.

Based on an in-depth understanding of trend & technology impacts on the global transportation industry implications for the ICT business and business opportunities for Huawei have been defined.

CHALLENGE

• Identifying vertical technologies within transportation, an industry on the verge of disruption with many new players entering and changing ecosystems
• Identifying key verticals and anticipating relevant trends early
• Linking Huawei’s status quo and long-term goals in terms of R&D, market orientation, and technology investment with technology trends within transportation
• Finding a common ground across all important internal Huawei Research stakeholders

SOLUTION

Trend Discovery & Analysis: Using TD Reply’s proprietary data-driven trend research solution SONAR (www.trend-sonar.com) for trend discovery and analysis, TD Reply identified a list of 70 transportation-related trends. The SONAR platform enabled TD Reply to map all trends according to their maturity level (niche vs. established trend) which helped validating and prioritizing trends. This led to a zooming in on 50 trends. Within those 50 trends, 6 trend clusters with a high future impact on the transportation industry where identified.

Trend Prioritization: To select the priority trends for a further deep dive analysis, a workshop was held together with Huawei stakeholders, re-evaluating the list of 50 trends according to trend impact and certainty of trend. At the end, 9 final trends were prioritized for a further deep dive analysis.

Deep Dive Analysis: For the deep dive part, a mix of quantitative (using SONAR) and qualitative analysis was used to further analysis all 9 trends in terms of trend dynamics, historic developments, market overview and outlook, ecosystem and player analysis. An additional analysis of European research institutions related to the identified and analyzed trends was conducted, to better inform further Huawei R&D invests and potential partnerships.

Implications & Business Opportunities: The deep dives were presented and discussed at a one-day workshop with top Huawei technology planning researchers and executives. Based on the final research results, implications and business opportunities for Huawei have been refined, enhanced and prioritized and innovation projects were defined.