Technology intelligence can provide several benefits to organisations:

• Innovation: sparking new ideas that lead to the development of innovative products or services based on emerging technologies.
• Competitive Advantage: allowing your organisation first mover advantages over competitors
• Future-Proofing: Helps you prepare for the potential disruption caused by new technologies that competitors adopt, but you do not, ensuring your business remains resilient and competitive in the long run.

Technology intelligence focuses specifically on technologies and generally tends to take a long-range view, exploring emerging areas of technology, not yet mature enough to immediately impact solutions, and then tracking these technologies as they become more mature and commercially viable.

• Early Detection: Horizon scanning aims to identify early signals of change, often referred to as ‘unknown unknowns’.
• Preparedness: It helps organisations analyse whether they are adequately prepared for potential opportunities and threats, ensuring that policies and strategies are aligned with future developments.
• Market Engagement: Engaging with the market to discover new technologies and suppliers, thereby fostering innovation and staying ahead of competitors.

As the term technology intelligence implies, there is a constant scanning for emerging technologies and solutions, including:

• Horizon scanning: searching for unknown technologies, techniques and solutions that are emerging from research in organisations and academia
• Technology Assessment: benchmarking the properties of new technologies to profile them against existing solutions, establish their maturity and understand any related technologies that are required, or would unlock development
• Technology Monitoring: continuous tracking of known technologies for changes to their properties or technology readiness levels

Depending on the maturity of the technologies that are being sought, different content can be instructive in technology intelligence. The earliest publishing around technologies tends to be academic – as researchers share their new breakthroughs and ideas. From there patents tend to indicate a jump in maturity, as researchers seek to protect value (though this publishing is offset in public disclosure). Beyond this, startup organisations and increased press releases tend to indicate technologies reaching commercial maturity.

Initially a NASA tool, Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) have become a widely used standard for assessing technology maturity across various industries and organisations. They are useful in that they provide a common language and assessment of how close a technology is to being “operational”, though it is important to recognise that this does not mean a technology is valuable of viable for your use cases. TRLs are mapped across 9 levels, broadly broken into 3 groups:

• Low Levels (TRL 1-4): The technology is still in the early stages of development. Basic principles are being explored (TRL 1), and then concepts are formulated (TRL 2) and tested in a lab environment (TRL 3). By TRL 4, the technology is validated in a simulated environment.
• Mid Levels (TRL 5-7): The technology becomes more concrete. It’s validated in a relevant environment (TRL 5), and then a prototype is built and tested in that environment (TRL 6). By TRL 7, the prototype is demonstrated in an operational environment.
• High Levels (TRL 8-9): The technology nears completion and deployment. A qualified system is available (TRL 8), and it’s been successfully demonstrated in its intended operational environment (TRL 9).

Technology intelligence can serve as a useful indicator for organisations concerned about being usurped by organisations using more optimal technologies. For example, traditional vehicle manufacturers may monitor electric vehicle technologies to gauge the threat they pose to their existing markets. This is, of course, just a subset of both Technology and Competitor Intelligence.

Conversely to the threats of new technologies as a market disruptor, organisations who adopt new technologies at the opportune moment have the opportunity to benefit from the market changes. Technology intelligence in this case helps to identify both the correct technologies and the correct maturity level to invest in – be that research, intellectual property acquisition or acquisition/partnerships at a later stage of maturity.

Technology intelligence is inherently a strategic activity given the time ranges that some technologies take to mature over. Adoption of new technologies requires alignment across your organisation including, but not limited to:

• Product & Engineering teams – who will use the technology to produce solutions.
• Procurement & Supply Chain – who need to ensure resources are available.
• People & HR Teams – who should try to ensure skill sets are available to support the new technology.
• Finance Teams – who need to understand the unit economics.
• Legal Teams – who should assess potential risks of new technologies.
• M&A Teams – who may be required to acquire organisations or IP to unlock these capabilities.

The major challenge of technology horizon scanning is the breadth and complexity of identifying relevant technologies at an early stage of development and then tracking them to a point of maturity where they become relevant. This is challenging due to the volume of content and terms required to be tracked and the expertise required to understand each technology. Tools like AMPLYFI can support organisations to dramatically reduce the effort required to carry out technology horizon scanning.