Technological Observatory

Imagen miniatura: 

The aim of the Technological Observatory is to predict future risks and business opportunities, to provide advice during strategic decision-making and to create competitive technology-based advantages. It was established with the primary objective of carrying out a continuous systematic analysis of the emerging technologies in the industry (competitors, start-ups, providers, etc.) and in the academic world (universities, technological centers, etc.). The objective of the Observatory is to provide Telefónica with the support it needs to define its strategic plan for technological innovation.

Telefónica I+D's Technological Observatory is conceptually defined following the concept of open innovation as described by Chesbrough, who proposes that it is not only possible but imperative for companies to open up their innovation processes to the outside world. He suggests this be done in two ways:

• By letting in a flow of external ideas, from other countries, societies, companies, organizations, and, of course, from clients themselves.
• By releasing those ideas that cannot be exploited by the company in its current form onto new markets where they can be fully developed.

For this reason, the Open Technology Observatory concentrates its main efforts on channeling the largest possible number of relevant sources from both from inside and outside the company towards a final objective, namely to transform ideas into innovative products and services. It is hoped that this will lead to the early identification of technological tendencies, their early evaluation in technological and business terms, and their speedy transformation into the development of new products and services for the company.

How is it organized?

The first requirement of open innovation is a network of external and internal scouts (see Figure 2). In each case, several ways of incentivizing collaboration are proposed. There are both "full-time" and "part-time" scouts. The external scouts can be found in locations that are geographically strategic for the type of activity carried out by the company.

Due to the exceptional technical training the company's staff is given, internal knowledge training is of special relevance and is carried out using a variety of different tools. This can be managed by means of the T3s (TID Think Tanks), forums of discussion that reflect the think tank concept. There is also a network of scouts involved in the line of activity who provide the information from the people carrying out the final developments, which includes what was learnt in the living labs in which the company participated.

The second requirement of open innovation is that the results be primarily used within the company; however, they are also to be disseminated outside this. In our case, the information is first adapted and disseminated to the units in the Telefónica Group. We are using Web 2.0 technologies for this objective. Most of the work carried out each day is blogged and can be accessed through the Corporate intranet, thus promoting inter-employee collaboration. Part of this information is also made public and can be accessed by anybody.