Technology Scouting Model: A Process & Structure for Monitoring Technological Changes

Nowadays, technological world is changing so fast that one of various organizations challenge is about getting informed and responding appropriately to them. In order to manage this challenge, organizations need to scout technological changes. As a result, this paper tries to introduce a generic model including the process (steps) and structure (components and their relations). In this regard, by studying and synthesizing the existing models about technology scanning, intelligence, scouting and monitoring, we try to develop a generic model. For this purpose, meta-synthesis methodology adopted. In order to measure our model reliability, we use the triangulation technique, which its tree angles are: literature review, case study and questionnaires. In fact, as existing models are not comprehensive and discuss just about one or some aspects of the technology scouting, the main value added of this paper is about leveraging positive aspects and strength points of each model in order to introducing a relatively comprehensive framework which includes all the components, relations and steps to do a perfect technology scouting. According to our finding three main variables in technology scouting model are: environmental specifications, organizational characteristics and technology dimensions. In addition, we found that in structural model, there are two main types of technology scouting: scanning and targeting. Deciding about appropriate structure depends to the above-mentioned variables. Finally inspired by technology foresight, we divided technology scouting into three main part: pre scouting, main scouting and post scouting. Each part has its own characteristics and steps.