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Technology Surveillance an essential practice in the Innovation process

Technology Surveillance is a tool for innovation. Through research and systematic analysis of technological areas; organizations can decide the best business strategy, based on a prior knowledge of the products and technologies developed by competitors, which may create opportunities or threats.
Since mid-twentieth century developed countries started betting on technological innovation, as a key factor of economic growth.

A clear example is South Korea, whose leap in education, employment and quality of life that occurred in the last thirty years is clearly anchored to a strong investment in technological innovation.

There is no coincidence that, Korean brands such as “Samsung”, “LG”, “Kia”, among others, increasingly conquer the markets of traditional brands in an unprecedented speed.

Thus, in a world where the development cycle of new products is shrinking, there is an additional pressure for organizations, not only to innovate and introduce new products or new versions on the market, but also to make it faster and more efficiently than their competition.

The Technology Surveillance arises, in this context, as a tool for innovation through research and systematic analysis of technological areas; making it possible for an organization to decide the best business strategy, based on a prior knowledge of the products and technologies developed by competitors, which may create opportunities or threats for the organization.

Moreover, through a Technology Surveillance, one can identify the most appropriate technological solutions to solve specific problem within the organization.

Technology Surveillance is an organized, selective and constant gathering of technological information that provides information on:

The state of the art of determined technological area(s);
The identification of competition and/or potential partners and their products;
The identification of the main markets of interest;
The contents of patents developed by competitors: news, description and use of technology, technical drawings, claims, among others.

This knowledge enables companies to maintain their competitiveness and avoids investments in redundant R&D. Such analysis can be accomplished through:

Timely Surveillance: which includes the search for granted patent and/or patent pending applications, scientific publications and press articles in a particular technology area or published by a specific organization(s), in a given period of time
Periodic Surveillance: an alert system that like the timely surveillance includes a complete selection of relevant documents related to a particular technology area or organization, which will be updated periodically, by providing its evolution over time.

Technological innovation in organizations and their practices should be, especially in times of global financial crisis, taken seriously by the management of organizations, so that they can provide better services or products, faster, cheaper and with higher quality, and thus gain a competitive advantage over their close competitors.

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Carmen Sánchez-Puelles