ABSTRACT
In the first 11 chapters you have learned the basics of organic electronics technology and should now have some familiarity with the materials, processes, and devices that are most important. You should also now be familiar with some of what are currently seen as the key applications for organic electronics and the technical requirements for them. In Chapter 12 you learned something about the innovation process and how it relates to developing products with organic electronics. In this chapter we want to look at what the organic electronics community sees as perspectives for the
field and the challenges to be encountered to get there. This kind of exercise is called road mapping and is a key activity in many fields, not just organic electronics. Therefore we will try to explain the procedures as well as the results. For this we will use primarily the results of the most recently completed road map developed by the Organic and Printed Electronics Association (OE-A, www.oe-a.org), an international industrial association with over 200 industrial and academic organizations as members. This chapter is an adaptation of the summary article and white paper for the fifth edition of the road map, published in the OE-A brochure in 2013, and is used with permission of the OE-A.
