Technology intelligence
Technology Intelligence (TI) is an activity that enables companies to identify the technological opportunities and threats that could affect the future growth and survival of their business. It aims to capture and disseminate the technological information needed for strategic planning and decision making. As technology life cycles shorten and business become more globalized having effective TI capabilities is becoming increasingly important.[1]
In the United States, Project Socrates identified the exploitation of technology as the most effective foundation for decision making for the complete set of functions within the private and public sectors that determine competitiveness.[2]
The Centre for Technology Management has defined 'technology intelligence' as "the capture and delivery of technological information as part of the process whereby an organisation develops an awareness of technological threats and opportunities."[3]
The Internet has contributed to the growth of data sources for technology intelligence and this is very important for the advancement of technology intelligence.[4] Technology intelligence gives organizations the ability to be aware of technology threats and opportunities.[3] It is important for companies and businesses to be able to identify emerging technologies in form of opportunities and threats and how this can affect their business. In the past two decades, there has been massive growth in the amount of products and services that technology has produced and this is because it is a lot easier and cheaper to acquire and store data from different sources that can be analyzed and used in different industries.[5] This analysis can be used to improve and further the growth of a business. The need to shorten the time lag between data acquisition and decision making is spurring innovations in business intelligence technologies.[5]
History
Technology intelligence is not new but is more important now that organizations and societies are being disrupted by the shift to an information and networking-based economy. [6] Also known as Competitive Intelligence, there are different stages of the evolution process.[6] The interest started in 1994 with numerous publications on the topic, government efforts to encourage competitive intelligence and the origination of competitive intelligence courses and programs in universities.[6] Then in the 1980s, the work of Michael Porter on strategic management renewed this interest.[6] Between the 1970s and 1980s, a few companies started adopting technology intelligence processes but were not successful. This still causes a great uncertainty on how companies can adopt these practices. However, over the past few years, there is a still a growing interest in technology intelligence processes.[7]
The first generation of technology intelligence occurred when there was no long-term strategic framework for R&D management. So a number of inefficient innovations were created, due to the fact that there wasn’t much coordination between the central research department and their technology needs.[7] Technology monitoring was introduced to the central research department but still, there were errors. The recommendations were not efficient and their presentation was poor and this didn’t do much for the resource allocation process.[7]
See also
References
- ^ Technology intelligence: Identifying threats and opportunities from new technologies Archived 2008-04-03 at the Wayback Machine Mortara, L. and Kerr, C. and Phaal, R. and Probert, D., University of Cambridge (2007)
- ^ Smith, Esther (1988-05-05). "DoD Unveils Competitive Tool: Project Socrates Offers Valuable Analysis". Washington Technology.
- ^ a b A conceptual model for technology intelligence. International Journal of Technology Intelligence and Planning Volume 2, Number 1, pp. 73-93. ISSN 1740-2832, Kerr, C. I. V.; Mortara, L.; Phaal, R. & Probert, D. R. (2006)
- ^ Veugelers, Mark; Bury, Jo; Viaene, Stijn (February 2010). "Linking technology intelligence to open innovation". Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 77 (2): 335–343. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2009.09.003.
- ^ a b Chaudhuri, Surajit; Dayal, Umeshwar; Narasayya, Vivek (1 August 2011). "An overview of business intelligence technology". Communications of the ACM. 54 (8): 88. doi:10.1145/1978542.1978562.
- ^ a b c d Bergeron, Pierrette; Hiller, Christine A. (2005-02-01). "Competitive intelligence". Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. 36 (1): 353–390. doi:10.1002/aris.1440360109.
- ^ a b c Lichtenthaler, Eckhard (2003-09). "Third generation management of technology intelligence processes". R and D Management. 33 (4): 361–375. doi:10.1111/1467-9310.00304. ISSN 0033-6807.
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- Technology Intelligence systems: how companies keep track of the latest technological developments, ifM Briefing, University of Cambridge, 2007
- Technological change and the technology intelligence process: A case study. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management,Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 331–348, Lichtenthaler, E. (2004)
- Putting competitive technology intelligence to work. Research-Technology Management Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 23–28, Norling, P. M.; Herring, J. P.; Rosenkrans, W. A.; Stellpflug, M. & Kaufmann, S. B. (2000)
External links
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