A survey was conducted by Innovation Leader on more than 25 innovation, R&D, corporate development, and strategy executives from $1+ billion companies. The report, Best Practices: Scouting Trends and Emerging Technology, reflected three major, below mentioned, challenges faced by tech-scouters today:

1. Building strong relationships with the business units so they can take advantage of the output of the scouting work.
2. Devoting sufficient time to scouting.
3. Identifying the right areas to scout.

The first among the three bullet points is an area where an organization has to create a strategy on its own. We, however, can be of help in dealing with the second and third bullet point. Here is how:

Devoting Sufficient Time to Scouting:

Technology scouting can become a time drain as most professional of the field follow “the more the better” approach. Research that conducted in a month will be more solution yielding than the one conducted in a week, which certainly is preferable over a one day research.

Does that mean you should never stop scouting? And if yes, can you reduce that whole load of time needed to achieve this? With Northstar, you can. If you are curious, how NorthStar saves your time, we have covered that here:

1. How To Boost Research Activity?
2. How To Improve Research Focus And Get Better Return From Your Research Activity?
3. How to saves your R&D budget?

Simply put, North Star provides curated relevant technical information which can be easily understood and evaluated by a researcher. This keeps the approach streamlined and delivers a smooth peek into solutions discussed. As a result, the research time and effort invested while scouting gets immensely reduced.

After aiding this wound, we marched towards the third bug. A bug that targets the most painful nerves of a scouter.

Identifying the right areas to scout:

The same report reveals that only 15% of the 140 innovation executives at $1+ billion companies considered lack of skill or expertise a hurdle to run a successful tech scouting exercise. On the other hand, 51.8% referred not knowing where to look for finding the right technology is a hurdle.

 

We provide you with curated information after considering multiple factors, some of which are mentioned below, that help us guide the research in the right direction.

• Problems on which the majority of the players are working
• The research focus of the top companies and universities
• Areas of continuous research and less favorable solutions
• Areas where research has gained momentum in the recent time
• Areas of high investment/funding

Further, at NorthStar, we follow a Kernal Tech Scouting approach which is best of both the world – in the house and outsourced tech scouting. It let you mingle your knowledge of your domain with our expertise to scout the best technology.

That is to say, you will be performing the entire operation on your own. This keeps the confidentiality issues that sometimes emerge in the outsourced tech scouting processes at bay.

The downside of this, however, is that you get stuck at any point; we won’t be able to help unless you let us. Your team has chances to get stuck because a group where people with similar expertise exist suffer from a tunnel vision of their own. This makes an apparent solution invisible to them.

NorthStar has a team of researchers which consists of engineers from various tech backgrounds with relevant industry experience. Our team consists of members with a decade old experience consulting Fortune 500 companies in ideation of plans to solve intricate technology-centric business issues.

Thus, if you find yourself stuck, look no further, call us. We can help your team see solutions where they see none. That is to say, our work doesn’t end when we deliver you the tool using which you can run a scouting exercise. Our work ends when you find exactly what you were looking for.

Northstar is knocking your door, less than an hour is what it’ll take. Lend us your ear, request a demo here.