Intelligent Technology Scanning: Aims, Content, and Practice

In business or government operations, surprise is rarely a good thing. Although sometimes positive, the effects of unexpected events and developments can take a variety of difficult forms – from being simply inconvenient to disastrous. However, foreseeing the future accurately is a difficult process, especially futures that involve dealing with emerging technologies. Further, unexpected new technology developments can produce significant surprises. The main response to this uncertainty is to establish early warning systems that help anticipate technological surprises. However, many specific internal company early warning efforts set up to anticipate technological surprises are often not effective. Even when successful, early warning alerts can end up not being enough. Not only are responsive actions by managers essential to dealing with potential surprises, but real benefits can occur when a future technology warning is turned into a company advantage through deliberate actions that arise from the warning process. Incorporating the full set of technology intelligence (TI) practices is an important element of creating a business edge by managing and potentially exploiting surprises. This paper provides an overview of technology intelligence (TI) as practiced by many organizations today, from the private, government, and international sectors. The discussion begins with describing TI objectives and process and then presents several elements of how TI operations are conducted, focusing on TI customers, descriptions of TI needs, and how to address them.