The wisdom of technology experts

This paper presents a new approach to monitoring technological developments within industrial organisations based on three dimensions that aim at an improved integration of the know-how of technology experts. The first of these dimensions covers a structured approach to defining relevant technology fields. The second concerns organisational roles and responsibilities that support employees in the monitoring of technologies. Finally, third dimension is the implementation of a collaborative IT tool based on a semantically enhanced wiki-system. The approach presented is tested and validated by a case study on Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co. KG.