Towards new success factors in technology intelligence evidence from a european benchmarking study

As a reaction to the fast changing, complex business environments of today, many technology-driven firms rely on technology intelligence - an integrated process of searching, assessing and disseminating relevant information and insights to decision makers within an organization. Despite this, many firms fail at assessing the relevant trends of their business appropriately. This paper addresses the underlying problem and examines antecedents of successful technology forecasting. Using the consortium benchmarking method and questionnaire data from more than 200 European firms, the generic success factors of technology intelligence are derived and discussed with regard to the existing literature. The three generic success factors are: systematization, understood as the establishment of transparent, goal-oriented process, rules and activities within tehcnology intelligence; bindingness, understood as the degree to which deliveries of technology intelligence are being incorporated in the firm's strategic decisions rather than being purely interest-driven and participation, understood as the company-wide involvement and inclusion of employees outside formal intelligence units in the technology intelligence process. The authors elaborate hypotheses on how implementing the three success factors can lead to better results in technology intelligence. Subsequently, conclusions are drawn and directions for further research are outlined.