Technology Intelligence: Collecting Intelligence

One of the areas of competitive intelligence we are often engaged for is technology intelligence: for example, patent search or determining how advanced a competitor’s product development is. There are different aspects to technology intelligence but where Aqute fits in most closely is in collecting intelligence information.

In technology intelligence, collection tends to concentrate on information showing where a technology is developing, who is backing it, how mature it is and whether it might create an opportunity or a threat.

Common sources include:

  • patents

  • scientific papers

  • evidence from repos

  • user group discussions

  • technical standards

  • product documentation

  • conference material

  • supplier websites

  • regulatory filings

  • job postings

Each tells you something different. For example, patents can show you where companies are exploring ahead of any serious product launch. Scientific papers show where the research is heading. Job postings start to be useful when the product is being built. Product pages and documentation show the product evolving into a real market offering.

Good collection is guided by clear questions. A company might want to know whether a competitor is building a new technical capability, whether a technology is close to adoption, or whether a new entrant holds credible intellectual property. Those are separate questions and they call for separate sources: say, a patent search suits one or technical documentation depending on how mature the development is. Any one source can be a clue, but not conclusive in itself. For example, a patent does not mean a product is being, or may ever be, developed. A research paper may be just the work of an employee with no plan to commercialize. Part of the collection process involves determining what’s a serious signal and what is not - filtering and source scoring are useful in technology intelligence, especially if the target is a company like Microsoft or Apple with thousands of patents, technical papers, etc.

If we are doing technology intelligence across multiple competitors, one of the first steps we’ll implement is to create a structured approach that we can apply similarly across all of them. That can be as simple as a spreadsheet. If we track patents outside the US for one company, for example, we want to do it for all the competitors to be consistent, even if some competitors don’t have that signal.

Technology intelligence can come from primary or secondary intelligence:

  • Primary can involve interviews, expert calls, trade shows, product testing, supplier conversations or attending user groups. These work well in early stages, and when public documentation is thin. They require careful consideration of ethical guardrails.

  • Secondary information can include patents, regulatory filings, press articles and social media.

Collecting intelligence information is the research-intensive stage of technology intelligence. It should build a base for analysis, making recommendations and ultimately taking action.