Systematisk organisering av teknisk Business Intelligence i ett litet teknologi företag

Gathering technical intelligence helps a company to stay up-to date with the status in both technology and the industry in general. It is especially important in fields where technological development is rapid, and where changes are likely to occur more rapidly. The purpose of technical intelligence is to gain technology based competitive advantages. The purpose of this thesis is to create guidelines for managing technical intelligence within the case company and start a pilot intelligence process. This thesis also seeks to analyse possible tools for supporting the intelligence process and to examine the use of patent analysis as a source of technical intelligence. In order to achieve these objectives a literature study is first presented, where the concepts of technical and competitive intelligence are studied. Then the principles of an intelligence system are applied in the case company. First, the decision-makers of the company are interviewed and surveyed so that their needs are clarified. With these needs in mind, an information forum for sharing information is created and seven intelligence cases are defined. These cases form the basis of the intelligence tasks in the company. The thesis shows that although intelligence principles can be applied to all kinds of companies it is not trivial in small high-tech companies that differ substantially from the companies usually mentioned in the intelligence literature. The literature focuses on larger organisations with formal structures in more traditional industries. Applying the principles of intelligence to smaller companies in industries with rapid cycle-times cannot be done without modifying the principles. It is however, possible, and the thesis shows that at least in the studied case, the objectives were reached