Research and development progress assessment through technological and scientific intelligence

Abstract

It is critical for Research and Development (R&D)-driven organisations to have access to intelligence on the progress of the research in universities and public or private laboratories as well as on the status of their competitors. This paper introduces three concepts: time lag between different scientific indicators, visual correlation between scientific indicators and actual technology performance and finally an activity metric for assessment of competition between an existing and an emerging technology. The results indicate that the introduced concepts, which are based on the bibliometric and patent analysis approaches, allow researchers to generate intelligence on emerging technologies and innovations supported by the wealth of today's public electronic information database. Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.