“Buzzword” is defined as a word or phrase that becomes fashionable for a particular period of time or in a particular context. The internet is awash with buzzwords, especially as they relate to technology trends. Big data, GenAI, blockchain, gamification, Internet of Things, Web3, digital transformation … the list goes on. People (and, increasingly, robots) are constantly expounding on the virtues of these things, providing updates on their applications and implications, summing up theoretical and real-world applications, filling up our news feeds and search engines with oceans of speculation. And that’s fine, it’s understandable. However, if you’re responsible for driving company strategy and staying ahead of disruptive trends, speculation isn’t enough. To navigate and understand a landscape of ever-proliferating new technologies, you need accessible insights about relevant trends that go beyond mere hype, underpinned by thorough, reliable, accurate data. This is the only way to recognize which will impact your industry and your business, along with which are appropriate for investment. For those seeking such insights and data, market intelligence may have the answer. 

What is market intelligence?

Market intelligence involves accessing, gathering, analyzing, and managing broad market data to gain the insights needed for informed, strategic decision-making. In contrast to other business intelligence types, market intelligence centers on understanding the external business landscape, such as competitive dynamics, market trends, and product life cycles. Market intelligence tools speed up decision-making, alleviate research fatigue, and enhance the significance of corporate research. This makes them increasingly indispensable in today’s competitive environment for multiple teams across an organization that need to make data-driven decisions, including corporate innovation teams, corporate strategy teams, consulting teams, corporate venture capital teams, and scouting teams. These tools can help teams unpack and understand technological innovations in a number of ways.

Watch the startup signs

Startups appear and vanish with a seemingly ever-growing frequency, but the most impactful of them disrupt – or even reshape – the industries in which they participate, often by deploying new technologies or leveraging emergent ones in novel ways. Following the activity of disruptive startups is thus a great way to stay on top of tech trends, along with the prospects of the industries they intend to disrupt. Comprehensive market intelligence solutions accrue enormous databases of company information that can help companies find startups, monitor them, and identify which are innovating in which industries, be it quantum computing or GenAI. Observing how these innovations are applied in their respective contexts is especially useful, as use cases can transform technology from a buzzword to something comprehensible and tangible. Funding is a great proxy for technology growth and adoption, as money will usually flow towards startups and industries with the greatest potential to earn money or disrupt the status quo. Market intelligence tools make it easy to track startup funding, providing an at-a-glance overview of where investment is being channeled, with the opportunity to dig deeper into each startup, benchmark it against its peers across key metrics, and understand its place within the broader industry. 

Read between the lines

It goes without saying that if you want to understand the developments in an industry, you need to follow relevant sources of industry information. Trusted news sources are a goldmine of information, if you know where and how to look. The “how” is as important as the “where” here, as staying properly abreast of tech trends requires reading broadly, and between the lines.Regulatory changes are a good example. Innovation has historically outpaced regulation, but evidence suggests that regulators are taking a more fluid and dynamic approach to policy development in an attempt to balance the need for innovation and prosperity with consumer protection and market transparency. This may create greater uncertainty for organizations, slowing the adoption of emerging technologies, increasing competition from new entrants not yet party to regulation, and driving up the cost of compliance. Staying up to date with new regulations and amendments to existing ones is thus extremely important for any company that wants to make informed decisions, rather than ones based around hype. Product updates are also a good indicator of which technologies are gaining traction, but again, some reading between the lines is required. Frequent product updates could perhaps be seen as an indication of problems implementing a particular kind of tech, for example, so it pays to follow closely and carefully. Similarly, company updates, biased though they may sometimes be, can help gauge the popularity of emerging tech. It’s a lot to keep track of while running a business, which is why market intelligence can be so helpful. These tools offer custom and quarterly reports that summarize and systematically analyze key events, helping you unpack their implications for the industry and your organization. Good market intelligence solutions will segment the news for you, allowing you to track specific topics at various levels. 

Keep an eye on the competition

Of course, not all tech trends are relevant to your business. However, if something matters to your competitors, it may well matter to you. Understanding what they’re doing can help you differentiate the important trends from the noise. What technologies are your competitors adopting, and how are they putting them to use? Are these attempts meeting with success or failure? Are they similar to those of others in this space, or are they truly innovative? Are competitors expanding into new products, services, or markets, and if so how is emerging technology facilitating this? Are tech trends driving them to consolidate business units or companies, and what does this say about how the industry at large will be affected? The answers to these questions are crucial in guiding corporate innovation strategy and adopting a proactive business stance. Competitive intelligence is one of the key strengths of market intelligence. A strong solution should enable you to monitor competitors’ activities in a number of ways, including tracking strategies, following their news updates, and comparing them across key business metrics. Market intelligence focuses on monitoring emerging industry data across different markets, giving essential insights into competitors' investment areas, partnership patterns, and acquisitions, which in turn can support your hypotheses and strategic direction.

Conclusion

It’s a great big technological jungle out there. With an ever-proliferating range of emerging technologies to choose from, organizations need to cut through the noise in order to identify and track those that are relevant to their industry, strategic vision, and competitive landscape. Those tasked with developing corporate innovation programs should be constantly scanning the startup landscape for signals of interest and funding in nascent technologies, staying abreast of regulatory changes and product updates, and observing competitors’ innovation portfolios. It’s a lot to keep track of, which is what makes market intelligence so useful. Used correctly, market intelligence tools offer a broad-based to granular view of relevant news, startup developments, competitor activity, regulatory changes, and a wealth of other information that helps demystify tech trends. 

How can SPEEDA Edge help?

SPEEDA Edge offers a wealth of market intelligence solutions underpinned by reliable, verified information across 200 emerging sectors, with a team of experienced analysts available to assist with deep data dives. To see how teams like yours can use market intelligence tools to make better, quicker, more informed decisions, check out the solutions at Speeda Edge.