Technology Listening Posts

Knowledge brokerage, from external sources to internal users, has always been a core activity of R&D organizations. However, as technologies become increasingly complex, and new technologies combine to form new markets, individual companies are restructuring R&D to improve their knowledge and technology transfer capability (see Table II.2.1 for a list of recent industry-transforming phenomena). In part, this is done through focusing on certain stages of the R&D process. Thus, knowledge creation and basic research is being partially re-legated to academic institutions and to highly specialized agents (e.g. university science parks and incubators). External knowledge sourcing and the attraction of bringing in outside-in innovations instead of reinventing the wheel are becoming the guiding principles. In part, this is done by assigning technology gathering and listening roles to designated research units, the so-called technology listening posts.