Model to design technology scanning architectures for reaction to disruptive technologies: Conceptual research design

Technology scanning is the activity of technology intelligence responsible for finding and evaluating (potentially disruptive) technologies and relevant technological trends from outside a company´s core technological competences. In the technology age, disruptive changes happen more often, and affect more industry sectors than before. Companies struggle to allocate and organize their resources for technology scanning according to their specific goals of scanning activities. In this paper, we present a research program on deriving a technology scanning architecture for specific companies which takes their individual goals into account and focuses on enabling the company to react to disruptive changes. The research program presented uses a systemic approach with individual model components derived using a deductive approach and verified using case studies. To drive towards deriving such an architecture for a specific company, we also present a literature review on currently existing research in technology scanning. This review will be focused on building a framework of methods, organizational aspects, cultural aspects, and interfaces between technology scanning and other management functions which have been proposed as building blocks of a reaction to disruptive changes.