Competitive Technical Intelligence(CTI) is more than looking at technical information such as patents and scientific literature. CTI covers all intelligence used to support technical decisions, from strategic choices concerning new product and market developments to day-to-day project management decisions about product features, technology choice, and project timing.  CTI also plays a major role in driving innovation. It provides inputs into the creative efforts focused on anticipating and meeting emerging customer needs with current and emerging technologies.
 
CTI deals both with intelligence on competitors and on competing technologies. It helps those responsible for investing in technologies understand what others are doing and how it might affect them:
 
     •   What advances are being made in our core technologies?
     •   What capabilities do our opponents 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?
     •   Who is working on technologies that could benefit us, and how might we access them?
     •   Where do we need to focus our technology investments?
 
Finding accurate and timely answers to these questions is critical. If a firm misses a technical advance it may forever miss the opportunity to exploit it or forfeit by default its position in the marketplace. If a company invests in the wrong technologies or at the wrong time, the investment is unlikely to be recovered.  CTI can help minimize these inherent risks. 
 
CTI is not just for high tech firms or for those working in specialized CTI functions.  Most companies do CTI.  Some firms have sufficient R&D and Engineering functions to justify specialized CTI groups.  Others conduct CTI in their general CI groups or in strategic business and technology planning staffs.  This workshop helps individuals involved in collecting and analyzing CTI, regardless of where they are located. It includes case studies and examples from both low and high tech industries. 
 
Using a model of technological change and innovation, I introduce the frameworks, tools, and techniques for focusing the search, collecting and analyzing information, and creating effective CTI programs.  This provides a structured framework for pursuing CTI from the perspective of someone who has used the results in technology strategy, strategic alliances, and product planning with major global companies for over 25 years.  Among the major topics covered are:
 
    •    Focusing the CTI effort on key assumptions and unknowns behind technical decisions.
    •    Developing collection strategies that draw on both human and printed intelligence sources.
    •    Using analytical techniques to develop implications.
    •    Understanding how to institutionalize the CTI process to ensure that the output is action – not just a report.
 
While the concepts covered in the workshop are applicable to any CI effort, some of the special sources and analytical techniques have the greatest use for technical decision making:
 
     •   Using technical and marketing staff to collect intelligence at professional meetings.
     •   Applying technology forecasting and substitution analysis (including a critical look at ‘disruptive technologies’).
     •   Using patent and scientific literature to uncover activity patterns that reveal technical capabilities and help forecast intentions.
 
This workshop has been one of the more popular sessions on the program over the last eight years.  It provides practical guidance for both technical and non-technical CI staff. Key to its success is providing examples drawn from thirty years of consulting experience to show how CTI can work in the real world.
 

Background:
 
Jay Paap is President of Paap Associates, a management consulting firm assisting major corporations in a broad range of business and technology development efforts.  For over 25 years he has managed projects world-wide dealing with competitive intelligence, technology management, business and product development, and strategic alliances.   Jay received his Ph.D. from MIT’s Sloan School, serves on the faculty of the Industrial Relations Center at Cal Tech, and the editorial advisory board of the Competitive Intelligence Review, where he was guest editor for the 1994 edition on Competitive Technical Intelligence, working with the profound and provocative former editor in chief, Bonnie Hohhof.

Jay’s interests include genealogy, good food (cooking and dining out), weight-lifting, travel, and his new grandson.  He is also active with Community Consulting Teams, a group of MBA volunteers providing pro bono consulting services to socially conscious non-profit organizations, where he recently led a project working with Boston Healthcare for the Homeless.