Translation of Methodology of Technology Surveillance in the Universities and Research Centers

The Methodology of Technology Surveillance in Universities and Research Centers 

Abstract 

The technological surveillance is very important at the present time in the development and success of the processes of R&D. It is an organized, selective and permanent process, of capturing information of the exterior and of the own organization it has more than enough science and technology, to select it, to analyze it, to diffuse it and to communicate it, to transform it into knowledge for a better one taking of decisions. The existent methodologies of technological surveillance are characterized, intending a methodology for their application in one university of technical sciences, supported in a technological observatory. It is supplemented with the application of tools of discovery of knowledge based on patents for a research center. The technological surveillance in the Polytechnic Superior Institute of the Havana (CUJAE) with their technological observatory it has allowed to identify strategic programs of investigation, tendencies in the teachings of engineering and architecture, lead in technical and thematic sciences of investigation published in the Web of Science. Additionally maps of knowledge are obtained based on patents applied in the National Center for Scientific Research (CNIC). The implementation of the technological surveillance, their continuous improvement with new tools and their use for the own investigators, favorable the development and increment of programs and strategic lines of investigation (R&D) guided to a pertinent innovation in the engineering and architecture, allowing to identify the evolution in the technological development, what prepares to the university and the investigation centers for the changes in the environment with a strategic focus. 

Keywords: technological surveillance; technological observatory; programs strategic of R&D; map of knowledge of patents. 

INTRODUCTION

Technological surveillance is very important for the success of the R + D + i1 processes. It is defined as “the organized, selective and permanent process of capturing information from outside and of the organization about science and technology, selecting it, analyzing it, disseminating it and communicating it, in order to convert it into knowledge to make decisions with less risk and be able to anticipate changes “2.

The observation and analysis of the scientific and technological environment and of the present and future economic impacts for strategic decision making are part of the technological surveillance3. In the management of technological innovation4, surveillance is part of its processes, together with human resources, collaboration, project management, quality and its indicators. In the literature, different terms have also been adopted that are closely related, such as technological surveillance5,6, technological intelligence7,8,9,10, technological forecasting11,12,13 and technological evaluation11,14. In this article reference will be made to technological surveillance although other meanings are present.

The adequate identification of the source of information is vital for technological surveillance15,16, with web pages increasingly being used, which include patent databases, scientific journals and university portals. The analysis of this information allows to make better decisions and anticipate the systematic changes of the environment17. As a trend, tools appear on the basis of Information Technology and Communications Technologies (ICTs), which is why we talk more about technological intelligence. Several systems are referred to for technological surveillance with the support of ICT, such as those based on methods such as TRIZ, an acronym in Russian for the theory of solving inventive problems, such as CAI (Computer Aided Innovation), for the generation of new concepts , based on scientific and technical knowledge (patent databases, scientific and technical encyclopedias) that analyze emerging technologies for technological forecasting and others are those that are parameterized, according to areas of interest on web pages, generating automatic alerts when detecting a change in one of the indicated web pages, which include Internet search bots, crawlers, spiders or spiders18.

The objective of the article is to characterize some methodologies of technological surveillance with their processes that allow to identify and apply a methodological proposal of technological surveillance in a university of technical sciences, supported by a technological observatory. It shows the use of technological mining to detect technological opportunities in publications and the use of knowledge maps based on patents for a research center.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

As part of the materials and methods, a set of steps is shown to approach the methodological proposal for university and research centers with the identification of the processes and the application of technological surveillance tools (VT).

1. Characterization of existing technological monitoring methodologies in terms of processes and authors that use and disseminate it.

2. Creation of the technological observatory for the university environment.

3. Design, application and analysis of results of guides for technological surveillance according to the source of information and the objective of the university center or

investigation.

Several VT methodologies reported in the literature were analyzed in terms of processes used, shown in Table 1, where FCV means critical surveillance factors.

Morcillo, 200315 Mignogna, 199719 Sánchez et al, 200220 León et al, 200621 Savioz, 20048
Problem and objectives Planning and hypothesis Planning / Identification of needs, FCV Situation or problem, broken down pastedGraphic.png
Sources of Information Internal-external compilation Search and Catch / observe, discover, search, detect, collect, capture Type and source of Information Formulation of information needs
Search for information Search / Information gathering Collection of Information
Analysis of Information Evaluación – Validación 

pastedGraphic_1.png

 Analysis and organization / Analyze, Treat and Store Analysis of the information Analysis of the information
Validation of Information Validation and adjustments
Intelligence report Intelligence / added value, influence strategy
Organizational  flows of  internal information, Diffusion Dissemination Communication: to managers, disseminate information, transfer knowledge Diffusion of the Information Dissemination of the Information
Decision making Decision making Decision making/ Strategies Application of the Information
(Porter, et al; 20055; 20079; 20096) Nossella A-, et al, 200822 Vázquez, L. 200923 Norma Francesa de Vigilancia, AFNOR,199824 Norma Española AENOR2
Definition of FCV Identification of resource information Definition of VT plan Identification of critical competitive and technological factors and problems Understanding of request and context. Definition / redefinition of surveillance and purpose axes Identification areas / objectives VT system, availability resources / information, Problem definition
Search and Capture Collection of Data Identification and selection of sources of relevant information. Looking for information Determination of types of information, identification / selection of information sources Identification of Sources 
Collection and selection of information Search
Treatment and Analysis Analysis of data Analysis of Information. Analysis of Results Analysis and Organization Analysis and Organization
Validation and Exploitation Organization / Purpose / implementation Competitive Intelligence Validation and adjustment / Synthesis and perspective Validation of the Information
Diffusion of information Distribution of the Results  Communication of the Results Preparation of a report

Tabla 1. Processes described in technological surveillance methodologies

The methodologies present as the most common processes the search and analysis of information. The other processes vary depending on the scope and purpose of the surveillance and the dissemination that is carried out on the results of the same, including the users, as well as the decision-making process. It is appreciated that the technological surveillance “can be understood as a process, providing information about the technology (intelligence), the prediction of the directions that technological change will take (forecast) or the evaluation and exploration potential of the technologies that an entity must adopt (evaluation) The implementation of an organized system of technological surveillance requires multidisciplinary and horizontal approaches and requires its adaptation to the company’s environment and culture, and must be integrated into its usual procedures25.

TECHNOLOGICAL OBSERVATORY OF THE UNIVERSITY CENTER OF TECHNICAL SCIENCES

The Web can be seen as a wide and searchable virtual library26,21, which is no longer an object of study, only of librarianship or documentation professionals, to become an essential component for research27,28,29,30, even with the application of methods such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for the evaluation of the efficiency of research groups based on information from the Andalusian Scientific Information System (SICA) 31 or in support of Science and Technology Systems from the use of studies on the information of publications and patents32. All this information on the web has led to the creation of technological observatories.

A Technological Observatory (OT) allows to manage the knowledge of organizations through the monitoring of the scientific and technological environment, to generate new knowledge. It allows to establish links with other organizations to share and receive information. It must be supported on a virtual platform that allows quick access to it and is aimed at the delivery of products or services resulting from the Technological Surveillance process. OT is known as a way to enhance the ability to detect changes and technological advances, with its degree of maturity and market opportunities. It employs techniques of technological surveillance33.

At the “José Antonio Echeverría” Higher Polytechnic Institute (CUJAE), the creation of the Technological Observatory in December 2006 was promoted in support of strategic planning. The OT portal of the CUJAE was designed using free software, with PHP programming language, with MySQL database manager, based on Joomla content management system (CMS) as Web applications to create and administer sites. contents quickly and easily. Among the most important objectives of the OT of the

CUJAE meet: search, analysis and dissemination about teaching, publications and research in technical universities, the monitoring and publication of bulletins related to strategic research lines, the dissemination of personalized databases and the support of strategic decision making in these areas.

EXPERIMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE IN THE CUJAE

The experimentation on technological surveillance in the CUJAE has been carried out since 2007 to the present. Some of the surveillance studies refer to:

• Analysis of international engineering and architecture trends in the top 200 universities in the ranking34.

• The identification of pure and integrated research topics in engineering and architecture.

• The identification of trends in curricula and models of educational management in the world, in particular for engineering and architecture.

• The identification of the strategic research programs of the CUJAE, among which are Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Environment, Life Sciences and Nanotechnologies.

• The evaluation of innovation indicators of Ibero-American and European countries35. An OT analysis in 2008 with 117 universities from the world’s top 50036 regarding alignment to strategic research programs yields interesting data such as those shown in Figure 1.

Figure 2 shows another analysis performed on the presence of research in Computer Engineering with 71.4% and Chemistry with 37.1% in the first 63 universities in the world ranking, according to the country of the university of origin.

Figure 2. Representation of research in computer engineering and chemistry in the 63 first universities in the world

As an example, table 2 shows some of the research topics found in the first 63 universities in Computer Engineering.

Career Pure Theme Temática integrada
Informatic Engineering Science, engineering, computer design and strategy, software engineering, algorithms, programming languages, database management, data mining, machine learning, systems and computational architecture, information web systems, computer security, cryptography, parallel processing , distributed laboratory for digital libraries, interface analysis, integrated and operational systems, optimization systems, multimedia learning, high performance computing Computational biology, biocybernetics, bioinformatics, genome and computational neuroscience, learning systems, computational mathematics, robotics, control systems, compilers, advanced digital applications, analog-digital integrated circuits, computational dynamics of fluids, wireless systems, communications and networks wireless, computer networks, mobile computing and distributed systems, computational geology, computational dynamics, network control, digital signal processing and conduction, digital art, computer man interaction

Table 2. Some topics of pure and integrated research in Computer Engineering in the first 63 universities

ANALYSIS OF OPPORTUNITIES OF PUBLICATION AND PATENTS IN UNIVERSITY AND RESEARCH CENTERS

The extraction of publication opportunities for mainstream journals, which make available abstracts, authors, years of publication, name of the journal, using techniques of mining technology5 is an application that has begun to be carried out in the CUJAE in 2010. If a concept has decreased over time, it could suggest that it has reached its limit of development and vice versa, which would generate an opportunity for publication. In turn, we can obtain the concept in which we are working with the authors that publish the most, establish contacts with them, know the impact of the citations in the research37 or even define the R & D lines for which we have good own resources38.

The sources of external information that the observatory currently has are the publications and patent databases fundamentally. Many of these databases provide RSS content syndication channels (“Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”) through which you can obtain the information contained in them. They are files in XML format that contain the last elements published by a Web site in a certain subject. Publications are obtained through the ScienceDirect RSS feeds that give free access to the title, the abstract, the authors, the year of publication, the journal, the volume and the number of articles it contains. The patent channels provide metadata such as the title of the patent, the inventor, the year of publication, a summary or description of the invention and the entity where the invention is applied and the scientific news channels allow obtaining the title of the news, the author, the date and a summary. The information provided by these RSS channels are retrieved in a MySQL repository in tables to store the different types of information sources.

A first experimental approach was obtained with all the articles of the Information Systems magazine from 2005 to date, recovering a total of 220 records. Thus, the keywords are obtained from the summary of the article, to which technological mining techniques will be applied. The next minable view that has the fields of title, first author, second author, year and five words is shown in table 3.

Through this information of the minable view, it can be obtained in an initial analysis with visualization techniques: What are the most approached topics ?, What are the leading researchers in a research area ?, What are the trends in the investigation?. In this way, research opportunities are obtained for the university environment. The implementation of this guide for the identification of technological opportunities will be generalized to other impact journals and other sources of information. It is also planned to establish a database with the internal information of the researches carried out, which allows to characterize the internal strengths in terms of scientific research and to be able to focus on journals where the strengths are directly taxed. YALE RapidMiner software will be used, being one of the most used worldwide in techmining, with a very friendly graphic interface.

Other applications of knowledge discovery have been carried out with the use of the Automated System for Patent Surveillance (SiVigPat) 39, such as the study of the development of international patents (United States, Canada and Japan) related to corrosion and the protection40. Thus it was known that the largest number of patent applications are related to chemical additives with a tendency to increase the number of patents in electrochemical protection methods and monitoring from the year 1984. Figure 2 shows the result of the analysis in the fields of selected applications.

CONCLUSIONS

In universities and research centers, it is necessary to implement a technology surveillance methodology that involves as many actors as possible and the use of tools for capturing, analyzing, processing and disseminating information, as well as control indicators for this process and of the strategic research programs themselves.

The Technological Observatory at CUJAE has fostered the development of strategic research programs and lines in the environment of engineering and architecture, allowing the identification of evolution in technological development, which in turn prepares the university for changes in the environment with a strategic focus.

The channels or RSS technology becomes very efficient for obtaining external information (specifically from Science Direct), for technological surveillance in the university environment, together with the technological mining process, favoring clustering, the identification of publishing opportunities and the technological trends.

The use of tools supported in ICT for technological surveillance allows the discovery of useful and relevant knowledge in support of strategies, development and decision making in R + D + i, which was demonstrated with the use of algorithms for the detection of opportunities for publication in the university environment and the use of the SiVigPat by the CNIC for the discovery of patent knowledge, exemplified for patents related to corrosion and protection.

REFERENCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS 

  1. Escorsa, P.; Maspons, R. (2001) De la vigilancia tecnológica a la inteligencia competitiva. Prentice Hall, Madrid. 
  2. UNE 166000 EX (2002). Gestión de la I+D+I: Terminología y definiciones de las actividades de I+D+I. Norma española experimental. AENOR, Madrid, abril. 
  3. Jakobiak, F. (1992). Exemples commentes de veille. Technologique, Les éditions d ́organisation. Paris.
  4. COTEC. (2004) Papel de las administraciones en la gestión empresarial de la innovación. Colección de innovación práctica. Perspectivas de futuro. Fundación COTEC para la Innovación tecnológica, Madrid. julio. 
  5. Porter, A. L. and S. W. Cunningham (2005). Tech mining. Exploiting New Technologies for Competitive Advantage. New Jersey, Wiley-Interscience. 
  6. Porter, A. L. (2009). Tech mining for future oriented technology analysis. Text Mining. A. U. M. Project. 
  7. Lichtenthaler, E. (2003). Third generation management of technology intelligence processes. R and D Management 33(4): 361-375. 
  8. Savioz, P. (2004). Technology Intelligence. Concept Design and Implementation in Technology-based SMEs. Zurich. 
  9. Watts, R. J. and A. L. Porter (2007). Mining Conference Proceedings for Corporate Technology Knowledge Management. International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management 4(2): 103-119. 
  10. Yoon, B. (2008). On the development of a technology intelligence tool for identifying technology opportunity. Expert Systems with Applications 35(2008): 11.

11.Garud, R. and D. Ahlstrom (1997). Technology assessment: a socio-cognitive perspective. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management 14(1997): 23. 

12.Anderson, T. R., T. U. Daim, et al. (2008). Technology forecasting for wireless communication. Technovation 28(9): 602-614. 

13. Zenobia, B., C. Weber, et al. (2009). Artificial markets: A review and assessment of a new venue for innovation research. Technovation 29(5): 338-350. 

14.Jolly, D. R. (2008). Chinese vs. European views regarding technology assessment: Convergent or divergent? Technovation 28(12): 818-830. 

15. Morcillo, P. (2003) Vigilancia e inteligencia competitiva: fundamentos e implicaciones. 

Revista de Investigación en Gestión de la Innovación y Tecnología. VIGILANCIA TECNOLÓGICA. Número 17, junio – julio 2003.

16.Giménez T, E., A Román (2001). Vigilancia tecnológica e inteligencia competitiva: conceptos, profesionales, servicios y fuentes de información. El profesional de la información 10 (5): 10.

17. Medina J y E Ortegón. (2006) Manual de prospectiva y decisión estratégica: bases teóricas e instrumentos para América Latina y el Caribe. Instituto Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Planificación Económica y Social y CEPAL Naciones Unidas. septiembre, Santiago de Chile. 

  1. Mir, M y M. Casadesús (2008). UNE 166002:2006: Estandarizar y sistematizar la I+D+i. La norma y la importancia de las TIC en su implementación. Revista Investigación y Desarrollo. DYNA Septiembre, Vol. 83, no 6: 325-331. 
  2. Mignogna R. P, (1997).Competitive Intelligence. http://www.chewy.gatech.edu/t2s/index/ html.
  3. Sánchez, J. Marcela y Palop, F (2002), Herramientas de Software para la práctica de la Inteligencia Competitiva en la empresa. Ed. Triz XXI. Madrid. 

21. León, A., Castellanos, O. y Vargas, F. (2006). Valoración, selección y pertinencia de herramientas de software utilizadas en vigilancia tecnológica. Revista de Ingeniería e investigación. DYNA 26(1): 92-102. 

22.Nosella Anna, Giorgio Petroni, Rossella Salandra (2008). Technological change and technology monitoring process: Evidence from four Italian case studies, Journal Engineering. Technology Management. 25 (4) 321–337 

23. Vázquez Rey, L. (2009). Informe APEI sobre vigilancia tecnológica. Informe APEI 4. APEI. Gijón, España: 64. 

  1. AFNOR, XPX50-053 (1998). Servicios de Vigilancia y Servicios de establecimiento de un Sistema de Vigilancia. Norma francesa experimental, abril,
  2. Palop, F.; Vicente, J. M. (1999) Vigilancia tecnológica e Inteligencia competitiva. Su potencial para la empresa española. Serie Estudios Cotec. Número 15. Fundación COTEC. Madrid.
  3. Yao, J. T. and Y. Y. Yao (2003). Web-based Information Retrieval Support System: building research tools for scientists in the new information age. Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence. Marzo.
  1. Cook, D. (2000). Collaboration to teach the critical thinking skills needed to become a successful Internet searcher: The planning of a WWW search engine workshop. Research Strategies 17(2-3): 195-199.
  2. O’Hanlon, N. (2002). Net knowledge: Performance of new college students on an Internet skills proficiency test. The Internet and Higher Education 5(1): 55-66. 
  3. Van Deursen, A. J. A. M. and J. A. G. M. van Dijk (2009). Using the Internet: Skill related problems in users’ online behavior. Interacting with Computers. 21(5-6): 393-402.

30.Vasileiadou, E. and R. Vliegenthart (2009). Research productivity in the era of the internet revisited. Research Policy 38(8): 1260-1268. 

31. Pino JL, Francisco C, Mercedes D, Rosario B (2010). Evaluación de la eficiencia de grupos de investigación mediante análisis envolvente de datos (DEA), El profesional de la información, v. 19, N.2, marzo-abril. 

32.Moed H, W Glänzelg, U Schmoch. (2005). Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research. The use of publication and patent statistics studies on S&T Systems. Springer Science Business Media. 

33. Legite (2003). El Observatorio Tecnológico del sector Textil. Seminario, Dinamización. 23 de septiembre de 2003. Disponible en: http://www.itcl.es/ificheros. Fecha de consulta: 8 de enero de 2008. 

34.http://universidades.universia.es (2006). Ranking de universidades del mundo. Consultado el 18/04/06. 

35.Delgado Mercedes, JL Pino, Solís F, Barea R (2008). Evaluación integrada de la innovación, la tecnología y las competencias en la empresa. Revista de I+D+i, mi+d. Número 47, junio, España. 

36.Delgado M, Yoel A, Marta I, Antonio D, Beatriz G, Olga I, (2009). Observatorio tecnológico en el entorno universitario e investigativo. XIII Seminario de Gestión tecnológica de la Asociación Latino Iberomericano de gestión tecnológica. Innovación y creatividad para el desarrollo sostenible. ALTEC 2009. 25-27 Noviembre, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. 

37. Ajiferuke Isola, Dietmar Wolfram (2009). Citer analysis as a measure of research impact: library and information science as a case study. Scientometrics, Springer, DOI 10.1007/s11192-009-0127-6, 

38.Muñoz J, M Martínez, J Vallejo (2006). La vigilancia tecnológica en la gestión de proyectos de I+D+i: recursos y herramientas. El profesional de la información. v. 15, n. 6, noviembre-diciembre. 

39. García B, F. Corvo (2007). Patent information in concrete corrosion research. Revista CENIC Ciencias Químicas, Vol 38, No 3, 410-414. 

40. García, B., Zayas, D. (2002) Manual de Usuarios del Sistema Automatizado de Vigilancia de Patentes, SiVigPat®, v. 3.0. CNIC.