Technology scouting software helps companies to track emerging technologies, startups, patents, and market trends. This provides insights that can be used to develop and adopt new technologies, gaining a competitive edge and protecting against disruption.
However, with over 10 years of experience as innovation consultants setting up technology scouting systems, we've identified fundamental flaws in how most companies approach technology scouting.
Typically, companies purchase scouting software with databases containing thousands of technologies. R&D usually owns the process, tasked with filtering through the data to identify promising opportunities.
There are two key problems with this approach:
Technologies in these databases are often generic, hype-driven, and not aligned with the company's priorities or initiatives. As a result, companies end up tabling most insights.
Manually sifting through thousands of insights is time-consuming, making it nearly impossible to act on opportunities quickly.
Moreover, even if the company surfaces promising insights, most software doesn't offer guidance on how to refine, evaluate, validate these opportunities, making it difficult for companies to turn insights into implemented ideas. Promising insights remain untouched and fail to generate value.
In contrast, companies with the most effective technology scouting systems leverage the expertise of their entire workforce. They educate employees on the areas of focus and ask them to share relevant insights. This crowdsourcing approach delivers more relevant, higher-quality opportunities than a database of generic technologies.
We recommend considering the following factors in technology scouting software:
Ability to scout technologies using the brainpower of the entire company: By crowdsourcing technologies, companies tap into the experiences and expertise of hundreds of individuals. Employees working in IT, marketing, finance, engineering, etc., can enlighten top management on potential opportunities and threats.
Features that automatically aggregate news from online sources like competitor websites, authority publications, and government agencies: However, companies should be intentional with the insights it surfaces — if it uncovers any and all industry insights, it overwhelms participants and becomes nothing more than noise.
Access to outside innovation participants: Companies shouldn't have to build an innovation network from the ground up. Technology scouting software should offer an existing network of innovation participants from which companies can scout.
Systems to shape and manage the progression of scouted technologies: Software should have the systems to prioritize the most promising technologies, validate early-stage technologies, and measure their financial impact. This ensures companies realize benefits from scouted technologies.
This guide breaks down the five leading technology scouting software solutions.
We begin by covering InnovationCast's technology scouting features and how it meets each of the criteria mentioned above. Then, we discuss alternatives like HYPE Innovation, Traction Technology, Itonics, and Wellspring Worldwide, so you can evaluate and compare their feature sets against the factors outlined.
Book a free demo to discover how InnovationCast can help you implement an effective technology scouting system.
1. InnovationCast
Innovation Management Software That Helps Companies Identify Opportunities & Adopt Technologies That Address Them
Here’s how InnovationCast, our innovation management platform, fulfills the four criteria outlined above:
Companies can invite the workforce and any outside users to InnovationCast, prompting them to identify promising technologies.
Companies can automatically fetch relevant insights from startups, competitors, government websites, and other sources, compiling them for everyone within the company to view. Innovation participants are encouraged to share their thoughts, refine concepts, and transform them into tangible opportunities for innovation.
Companies can leverage our partnership with HeroX to access a network of thousands of outside experts (e.g., researchers, startups, students, universities) to source technologies.
Companies can use our workflows to evaluate and score technologies, prioritize the most impactful ones, validate whether they meet standards, and track their impact.
Let's break down each of these features further.
Signals & Scouting: Features to Scout the Latest Technologies
Signals & Scouting allows innovation participants to easily share resources about new technologies, startups, competitor developments, and market inefficiencies with the entire company at the click of a button.
If companies don’t yet have a thriving innovation culture, our open innovation partnership with HeroX gives them access to a pre-existing community of innovation participants to source industry resources.
These resources — whether white papers, news articles, case studies, webinars, or any content on the web — are automatically displayed on the InnovationCast news feed for others to see.
Participants can review resources, vote on them, and comment on their urgency and whether they require attention. If a Signal is deemed urgent enough, top management can prioritize it and initiate ideation by inviting participants to propose scouting solutions.
By giving innovation participants access to their colleagues’ contributions and encouraging co-creation, companies can:
Refine concepts using the expertise of the entire workforce: Since everyone can see technology insights, companies can leverage the competencies of all participants. Lawyers, programmers, IT technicians, engineers, etc., can all contribute to their colleagues' insights.
Filter out noise: By having employees with different skill sets to reflect on technologies, companies can filter out flawed or hype-driven ones.
Our innovation platform automatically organizes insights into different categories, making it easy to search for technologies related to a specific category.
To make visualizing technologies even easier, users can leverage our Radars feature to get a visual overview of Signals being submitted across the board, along with their urgency, maturity, and potential impact.
Read more: How to Create a Collaborative Innovation Process and Network
Features to Automatically Pull Insights From Online Resources
Companies can automatically source insights from competitor websites and industry news outlets, aggregating them on the InnovationCast activity feed for innovation participants to review.
However, unlike most software that pulls in all insights related to your industry, creating more noise and overwhelming everyone, we recommend being as specific as possible with your searches.
With InnovationCast, you can pull real-time data exclusively from select sources (such as authority news publications or competitor websites). You can then refine your search by adding keywords (and negative keywords) that resources must contain to appear on the InnovationCast activity feed. This keeps scouting focused on the company's areas of interest.
We set up everything during onboarding, but our intuitive dashboard lets you easily add or remove websites and keywords.
Workflows That Guide What Must Happen After Technologies Have Been Scouted
Most companies have systems in place to identify new technologies and possibly differentiate high-quality innovations from the noise.
However, we’ve seen that most companies lack systems to prioritize which technologies to pursue first or to validate early-stage, unproven technologies and determine if they align with company goals. As a result, they end up with a shortlist of promising technologies but no clear path forward.
To address this, we built InnovationCast with configurable workflows that guide the steps after tech scouting:
Evaluation and prioritization: Companies can use our evaluation models and scoring systems to decide which technologies to pursue and the order in which to do so.
Validation: We show companies how to validate untested, early-stage technologies with as few resources as possible. This encompasses experiments to conduct, experts to involve, KPIs to track, and more. Validation reduces risk and uncertainty before companies spend resources on full-scale implementation.
Innovation leaders can assign each task within the workflow to a specific individual or team. As technologies move through the workflow, InnovationCast automatically notifies the next person when input is needed.
Our workflows are backed by over a decade of experience as innovation managers in large organizations, refining the best ways to validate various types of ideas — whether a new product, business model, continuous improvement, or cutting-edge concept. We also draw from proven innovation methodologies like Lean Startup, Discovery-driven Planning, and Customer Development.
Furthermore, our workflows aren’t rigid. You can tailor them to your organization's technology scouting processes and use cases with our no-code interface to drag, drop, add, or remove workflow stages. For example, if a technology is high-risk but the company wants to accelerate implementation for a competitive advantage, it can bypass the validation stage.
Read more: Idea Validation: A Guide to Affordably Testing Ideas
What InnovationCast Clients Say
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InnovationCast has helped organizations such as Visa, DHL, ING, Novo Nordisk scout technologies and realize value from them.
Schedule a 25-minute demo with our customer success team to explore how InnovationCast can implement a technology scouting system within your company.
2. HYPE Innovation
HYPE Innovation is an enterprise innovation management platform with technology scouting features designed to help organizations identify, evaluate, and integrate emerging technologies that align with their strategic goals.
Key Features
Centralized scouting platform: A workspace to track, manage, and evaluate technology opportunities.
AI-powered insights: Artificial intelligence (AI) helps identify new innovations based on market trends.
Collaborative evaluation: Internal and external experts can assess technologies, provide feedback, and collaborate on decision-making.
Integration with innovation ecosystems: Seamless connection with startups, universities, and R&D networks to accelerate scouting efforts.
Customizable workflows: Configurable processes allow organizations to adapt scouting strategies to their specific requirements.
Portfolio and project management: Track and monitor technology opportunities across different stages of evaluation and implementation.
Reporting dashboards: Real-time visualizations and data-driven insights help management understand which innovations are driving value for the company.
3. Traction Technology
Traction Technology is an end-to-end innovation management software powered by AI, featuring a database of over 50,000 technologies. It helps businesses stay ahead of industry trends, identify emerging startups, and build strategic partnerships.
Key Features
AI-driven scouting: Machine learning algorithms analyze market trends to identify relevant technologies and startups.
Comprehensive technology database: Access a vast repository of emerging solutions, research insights, and competitive intelligence.
Collaborative decision-making: Innovation teams can review, comment, and score technologies to facilitate consensus-driven evaluations.
Portfolio management: Track the lifecycle of scouted technologies from discovery to implementation.
Seamless integration: Connect with internal innovation programs, corporate strategy teams, and external ecosystems.
Reporting & analytics: Generate insights on market opportunities and scouting performance through dynamic dashboards.
4. ITONICS
ITONICS is an all-in-one innovation management platform that offers a centralized ecosystem for structured technology scouting. Like HYPE and Traction Technology, it provides access to a database of emerging technologies, allowing companies to harness this information for business growth.
Key Features
AI-enhanced discovery: Leverages AI to detect emerging technologies, startups, and trends.
Customizable radar and trend mapping: Visualize and track relevant technologies across industries with interactive radars.
Collaborative evaluation: Engage internal and external stakeholders in assessing and prioritizing technology opportunities.
End-to-end innovation pipeline: Seamlessly integrate scouting insights into innovation roadmaps and project portfolios.
Data-driven decision support: Real-time analytics and customizable dashboards provide actionable insights.
Intelligent search and filtering: Advanced search functionalities help refine scouting efforts based on strategic focus areas.
Third-party integrations: Connect with external databases, research institutions, and startup ecosystems for a comprehensive scouting approach.
5. Wellspring Worldwide
Wellspring Worldwide offers a comprehensive technology scouting platform designed to help enterprises, startups, and universities improve their scouting processes. Companies can filter through a database of technologies to learn about industry trends, new competitors, and potential opportunities.
Key Features
Global innovation network: Access a vast ecosystem of startups, universities, and research institutions for technology discovery.
AI-powered search & insights: Leverage AI to identify relevant technologies and emerging trends.
Customizable scouting workflows: Tailor processes to match organizational needs and innovation priorities.
Collaboration and knowledge sharing: Facilitate internal and external collaboration for technology adoption.
Technology portfolio management: Track, organize, and manage scouted technologies from discovery to implementation.
Integration with R&D and innovation systems: Connect scouting efforts with internal research, new product development, and corporate strategy teams.
Crowdsource High-Quality Technologies Relevant to Your Priorities with InnovationCast
Learn more about InnovationCast’s features and differentiators by booking a quick demo here.
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