Competitive Technical Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence:
Driving Innovation While Anticipating Competitors' Actions

Having the right technology at the right time is becoming an increasingly important part of business success. In our fast changing and competitive economy, firms need accurate and timely intelligence on their technical environment if they expect to manage their technical resources wisely.

This course gives you a structured approach to effectively and efficiently collect, assess, and act on the intelligence required to make sound technology investment decisions.

Key questions addressed:

	What advances are being made in our core technologies?
	What capabilities do our competitors have and how might they use them against us?
	Which of our key technologies are maturing and what will replace them?
	Are we about to be blind-sided? By whom? When? How?
	Who is working on technologies that could benefit us, and how might we access them?
	In short, where do we need to focus our technology investments to achieve competitive success?

Key Topics

This course focuses on:
	Planning a focused intelligence project to support management decisions where technology is important
	Using technology intelligence to anticipate competitors’ capabilities and intentions
	Selecting technologies to investigate and track
	Selecting appropriate sources of technical intelligence
	Cutting edge analytical tools and software packages to develop actionable intelligence from raw data
	Integrating technical intelligence into the strategic thinking and decision making of the organization
	Forming a Competitive Technical Intelligence (CTI) capability appropriate to your size and needs
	Protecting your information from other firms’ intelligence efforts
	Setting up a program to direct your intelligence effort

Course Agenda

Technical Competitive Intelligence and the Management of Technology
The art of CTI is knowing how and when intelligence can improve technical decisions and enhance innovation.
	Competitive technical intelligence defined
	The role of technical intelligence in effective technology management
	Driving innovation with technical intelligence
	A four-step ‘decision based’ intelligence process
	Case studies of representative collection projects
	Ethical issues in collecting intelligence

Exercise: Participants work in small groups on an exercise concerning the ethics of intelligence collection.

Focusing the Search
Learn to develop clear CTI requirement statements that balance breadth and focus.
	Defining where technical intelligence provides value
	Clarifying the assumptions and unknowns affecting decisions
	Anticipating technology shifts that can affect your operations
	Developing Key Intelligence Topics (KITs)
	Forming actionable intelligence questions to guide the collection effort

Sources of Technical Information
Knowing how to translate intelligence questions into collectible pieces of information (indicators) is key to selecting resources.
	Internal and external intelligence sources best suited for technical intelligence
	Source selection guidelines
	Organizing and using internal sources of intelligence
	Developing a comprehensive search strategy
	Collecting intelligence at conferences—steps to take before, during, and after the meeting
	Human intelligence collection: interviews, company visits, and expert panels
	Collecting information on private companies, divisions of major corporations, and non-U.S. firms
	Working with commercial sources of technical intelligence
	Anticipating emerging business drivers—techniques for identifying unarticulated customer needs
	Using counter-intelligence techniques to protect your secrets and information, and reduce intelligence collection efforts of your competitors
	Using the Internet, the World Wide Web, and portals

Exercise: Participants work in small groups to identify intelligence needs for a technology-based company and develop an intelligence search strategy.

Analyzing Technical Intelligence: Converting Raw Data Into Actionable Intelligence
Analysis puts collected information into context, thus helping decision makers understand its implications.
	Guidelines for selecting the right analytical framework
	Qualitative versus quantitative techniques: pros and cons
	Traditional approaches: profiles, trends, maturity and substitution curves, life cycle analysis
	Scenarios as tools to anticipate future technologies
	Technology forecasting fundamentals—detecting the antecedents of substitution and indicators of ‘disruptive technologies’
	Techniques for analyzing patents: patent citations and patent mapping
	Computer aided pattern assessment techniques, e.g., knowledge clusters, literature content mapping, and company relationships

Exercise: Participants have the opportunity to work with outputs from selected analytical tools.

Using Technical Intelligence Strategically
Ensure that information leads to meaningful actions.
	Translating intelligence into action: lessons from the best
	Getting started with CTI: the ‘Virtual CTI’ model
	Packaging intelligence output: strategies for reaching decision makers
	Building buy-in and commitment to action
	Putting it all together—keys to success

Who Should Attend

Persons involved in developing the intelligence for sound technology investment decisions, as well as technical and business development managers, will benefit from taking this course.

Special Feature

Participants are invited to attend a dinner the first evening of the course, providing an opportunity to share information and ideas with the instructor and other participants.

Instructor: Jay E. Paap, PhD
Fee: 2008 - $2495
Credits: 1.45 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
Dates: July 22-23, November 6-7, 2008
Time: 8:30am - 5:00pm 1st Day; 8:00am - 4:00pm 2nd Day
Dinner: 5:00pm 1st Day
Program Coordinator: Delores Lee, 626.395.4043