A Toolbox of Elements to Build Technology Intelligence Systems

In response to the need to achieve a consistent view on how to organise technology intelligence (TI) activities, a generalised framework to support the creation of TI systems was developed by Kerr et al. [2006]. This paper generalises the structure of TI systems by observing and abstracting from real life examples. As a result, a toolbox of system elements is proposed, which can be used to structure and characterise any TI system. The different choices of system elements can be attributed to the model’s four modes of searching: Mine, Trawl, Target and Scan. With the exception of the Trawl mode which features just connector elements, all the TI modes are supported by management, source connectors, repositories of information and search elements. All these elements can be either people’s roles, activities or characteristics, or physical infrastructure. TI social networks are eminently important elements for any TI system; a reasoned overview on how companies can build their own TI networks is presented