Community Forum – Do you have a tech scouting service that you recommend?

A: Do you have a tech scouting service that you recommend?

An IRI member company is searching for a reliable technology scouting service and would like to understand the services that other organizations recommend, the reasons for their recommendations, and their effectiveness. IRI members shared their preferred tech scouting services and provided feedback in a short survey.

Their responses are below.

Community Responses

Do you have a technology scouting/landscaping service provider that you recommend?

• Ezassi
• If you happen to be in the energy business, Darcy Partners is strong.  We also use partnerships with venture capital firms that invest in start-ups. 
• Orbit/Intellexir
• RTI Innovation Advisors
• We have used NineSigma.  However, we don’t routinely engage with these services

Other:

• Connections to others, including competitors as well as sharing experiences, etc.
• Foresighting, Front End Opportunity Finding

What has worked well in your relationship with this service provider?

• Direct contact
• Accelerated finding solutions to problems
• Deep technical expertise, easy to work with and responsive, solid processes and ways of working with our teams.
• We identified potential partners to evaluate.
• Great education resources

What hasn’t worked well?

• We discontinued the interaction due to the lack of interest of the other colleagues.
• Not the cheapest but good value.
• Internal adoption and budget for these services.  The biggest challenge has been framing the need to target valuable output.

Can you share any successes that you’ve had as a result of this partnership?

• IP landscaping
• Many projects. We have used them for years.
• Hundreds of technologies identified and piloted; dozens scaled.