Solutions / Research & Intelligence / Innovation Intelligence
Innovation Intelligence
The hard part is not spotting emerging technology. It is judging which of the twenty candidates on your radar will reach commercial viability inside your planning horizon.
Separate near from farEach technology placed on a readiness path with the specific conditions to move to the next stage.
Know who owns whatPatent ownership, density and expiry mapped, so freedom to operate is understood before you build.
Follow the real moneyWhere venture, corporate and public funding is actually flowing, rather than where attention is.
In simple terms
You tell us which technologies are on your radar. We work out which are genuinely close to commercial use, which are not, and what has to happen before they are.
What Innovation Intelligence is. Innovation intelligence tracks R&D activity, patent landscapes, funding flows, pilot deployments and standards development to distinguish technologies approaching commercial readiness from those that have been approaching it for a decade.
What makes this different from a market report. A report is a photograph of a market on the day it was written, and it is written for every company in the industry at once. This work starts from your position and keeps running, so you hear about a change while you can still do something about it.
What the service covers
These are the areas we work across, such as the ones below. We combine them in the proportion your question needs, and we tell you which ones your question does not need.
Technology scouting
Structured search across research, patents, startups and pilots against criteria you set, rather than a list of what is fashionable.
Patent landscaping
Ownership, density, expiry and freedom-to-operate exposure mapped across the technology areas you care about.
Readiness assessment
Each technology placed on a maturity path with the specific conditions required to move to the next stage.
Funding and pipeline tracking
Where venture, corporate and public money is flowing, read as a forward indicator of capability arriving.
Questions this answers
If something like this is on your agenda, the engagement is already half scoped.
- Which of these technologies is genuinely within our planning horizon?
- Who owns the patents that would block us, and when do they expire?
- Where is R&D money actually flowing, as opposed to conference attention?
- Is this startup a partner, an acquisition, or a competitor in three years?
- What has to become true for this to reach commercial cost parity?
How you can use this
A few of the situations where this service does real work.
Prioritising a technology watchlist
Twenty technologies are on the radar and you can act on three.
Checking freedom to operate
You are about to invest in an area someone else may already own.
Assessing a startup
You are weighing whether to partner, acquire or compete.
Timing an R&D commitment
You need to know if this becomes viable inside your planning horizon.
What changes for your business
The practical difference between running on this and running on what you have now, such as the following.
You decide earlier
Acting on a shift before competitors see it in published data is usually the difference between setting terms and accepting them.
You spend where the growth is
Capital, headcount and budget go to the segments with real headroom rather than the ones that grew last time.
You reduce the cost of being wrong
Market and product bets get tested against evidence before the money is committed, not after.
Your internal debates get shorter
When everyone works from one sourced set of numbers, meetings move from arguing about the market to deciding what to do.
Your board papers hold up
Independent analysis with traceable sources survives the question internal estimates usually do not: where did this number come from?
Your team stops rebuilding the same analysis
The model and evidence base are yours to reuse, so the next question starts from something rather than nothing.
Who this is for
Roles that commission this work most often include those below. Each asks a different question and gets a different cut of the same evidence.
Strategy and corporate development
Should we commit to this market, and what does being wrong cost?
Sized opportunity by segment, likely competitive response, and the conditions that would make you walk away.
Product and engineering leadership
Will this direction still be right when we launch?
Demand direction by segment, cost and capability trajectory, and the choices that are hard to reverse.
Sales and commercial leadership
Where should my team be spending its time?
Demand by territory and segment, realistic price bands, and where addressable market is growing fastest.
Investors and boards
Does the market evidence support this plan?
Independent validation or challenge of the growth case, plus early warning when a market starts to move.
In-house research and insight teams
We need depth in an area we do not cover.
Specialist capacity that works to your standards and hands over the model and sources, not a closed report.
Typical clients
How we work
The third step is the one that makes the output usable, and it is the one most work of this kind skips.
Understand the decision
We start with the choice you are making, not the topic you named. Sizing a market and approving an investment need different work.
Gather and test the evidence
Industry data, filings, trade flows, regulation and interviews with people who operate in the market. Every figure is checked against a second independent source.
Read it for your position
The same market change can help one part of a value chain and hurt another. We establish where you sit first, then interpret everything through that.
Give you the decision
A recommendation, how confident we are, and what would change our view. Then the full data, so your team can audit or rerun any part of it.
What you receive
Decision memosix to ten pages, written for the executive who signs
Full analytical report with sizingsegmentation and structure
Model workbook in Excelunlocked, assumptions traceable to source
Evidence appendix with source register and interview log
Access to Phi, our AI research platformincluded
Every engagement comes with access to Phi. Ask questions of your own findings in plain language, pull the evidence behind any number, and keep querying long after the work is delivered. Your team gets the working intelligence, not just the document.
Open PhiWays to start
Tell us the decision and the date it has to be made by. We will recommend the smallest engagement that gets you there.
Signal briefing
A focused read on one question, structured to commission without a procurement cycle.
Intelligence study
Full analysis of one market, technology or competitive set.
Intelligence programme
Continuous coverage, quarterly refresh and standing analyst access.
Common questions
How do you avoid hype?
By assessing against cost curves, manufacturing constraints and standards progress rather than announcement volume. Attention and readiness are only loosely correlated.
Do you cover academic research?
Yes, where it is close enough to application to matter. Publication activity is often the earliest usable signal in deep-tech areas.
Who owns the work?
You do. It is exclusive to you, it is not resold, and working files are handed over unlocked.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes, before the first conversation if you prefer.
Tell us the decision you are facing
Send us the question, the context and your timeline. You get back a recommended first step, what evidence it needs, and what it costs. Not a capability deck.