Are you doing all you can to ensure that your competitive intelligence discoveries lead to growth, profitability, and a maintained advantage for your company? If you haven’t added artificial intelligence to your competitive intelligence tool kit, then the answer is, No.
As a competitive intelligence expert, you understand your business intelligence goals. But you are likely challenged to constantly provide new, actionable information to update and support corporate strategy. To be actionable, the data that traditional search and reporting methods return must have relevant meaning. You, or your team, can spend a lot of time milling and manipulating the data to extract substance. Or, you can begin your work with artificial intelligence at your fingertips and derive meaning a lot faster.
Artificial intelligence accelerates the process of gathering data and putting it to work. More specifically, machine learning, as an application of artificial intelligence, uses algorithms to recognize patterns and trends to learn on its own. The machine has no explicit programming (i.e., expectations, preconceived ideas…) for what to find.
So, in addition to faster processing, the output of an AI-based system does some of the interpretive work for you. It is not just a quantitative report of, say, a competitor’s profits and losses or a list of patents. Artificial intelligence unlocks insight into the movement of markets and players in those markets. It quickly goes from information gathering to automated analysis. When you can see its significance, the data has more value.
What are your competitors doing, or not doing?
Being first-to-market with a development is critical in any fast-paced industry. Competitive intelligence is important for planning go-to-market strategies and timing product releases. You need to know what everyone has going on and where you stand.
Here, Natural Language Processing (NLP), a component of AI, can surface relevant documentation to show you what competitors have in the works. Keyword and Boolean searches on broad-based search engines or patent databases are limited to return exactly (you hope) what you ask for. NLP facilitates semantic searching: AI kicks in to “read” a description you enter, identify key concepts, and then match documents that are most relevant to what you mean to ask for.
Using NLP to search patents, patent applications, and technical literature produces an amalgamation of information about developments in your industry that gives you a whole new perspective. For example, IP.com’s Semantic Map in InnovationQ Plus® literally draws a picture of the competitive landscape in response to your natural language query. You can visualize your intellectual property space and current patents in your industry.
The information-gathering and analysis process can also help you identify competitive gaps, or white space. These might be open opportunities. Remember, InnovationQ Plus bases your search results on concepts. NLP gives you a truer representation of the innovation space than keyword-based search results give. The Semantic Map visualization can show you what is missing as easily as it shows you what technologies are present in your area.
Interpreting the result set and visual representations generates entirely new insights about technology and investment trends. Artificial intelligence can influence your company’s decisions about where to allocate development funds or when to release a new product. When the tool you use starts a search with an understanding of what you need, it is bound to bring you results you can use.
Do you have a competitive advantage?
Market positioning is key to determining whether to pursue development, production, or patenting. A thorough evaluation of the market potential of an innovative idea, as well as overall portfolio management, requires AI. Machine learning working with statistical analysis is the best way to know the strength of your intellectual property in direct comparison to what is already public knowledge. In short, is your idea novel enough to give you a competitive advantage?
Artificial intelligence facilitates a semantic analysis of comparable patents to your submitted query, or description of your idea. The Technology Vitality Report provides a score, on a scale of 0-1000, for each technology, which correlates to a low or high value. The higher the score, the greater the novelty value. This report even shows a trend line of competitive technologies and important dates. So, you not only know whether the idea is novel, but whether the product is marketable.
To help you gain solid information for competitive leverage, use the Patent Vitality Report to qualitatively analyze a competitor’s patent. Advanced linguistics, a semantic search engine, and a statistical process effectively identify the quality of intellectual assets. The generated scores indicate value in terms of patenting, licensing, and competitive values.
These reports provide intelligence that supplements your expertise by offering new, actionable perspectives about intellectual property, patent competition, the marketplace, and more.
What are you waiting for?
A comprehensive competitive intelligence tool must both mine and analyze information. Data only has value when meaning is applied. IP.com’s tools begin and end your searches with meaning. This gives you a head start in understanding the competitive landscape, predicting your rivals’ movements, and revealing market opportunities. Some of your rivals are already working with it. Don’t let them get too far ahead. Learn more now.