Scientific and Technical Intelligence

Only available as an in-house course

Scientific and Technical Intelligence (STI) is the discipline by which organisations gather and analyse information on the scientific, technical and engineering capabilities of other actors. This one-week course will introduce the skills and disciplines needed to identify, monitor and respond to a rapidly changing technical landscape. Guidance will be given on a broad range of research and analytic skills needed to support this end.

Request in-house course

Course Outline

Introduction and Requirements Planning

Introduction to STI

  • Introduction to STI
  • STI in history
  • Legal and ethical constraints

Requirements Planning

  • Working with intelligence customers
  • Requirements planning
  • The Key Intelligence Topics (KIT) process
  • Collection planning and collection management

Problem Analysis

  • Assumption surfacing
  • What If / Pre-Mortem analysis
  • Risk / threat / opportunity assessments
  • Problem analysis and evaluation

Effective Data Collection (I)

Effective Internet Exploitation

  • Working with keywords
  • Search strategies
  • Search engines and operators
  • Automating data collection
  • Alert services
  • Mining the Deep Web
  • Leveraging social media
  • Working with foreign language sources
  • Building a customized search engine
  • Essential browser tools and extensions
  • Ensuring online privacy and security

Effective Data Collection (II)

Working with STI Sources

  • Scientific, academic and industry sources
  • Grey literature
  • Mining patent sources and databases
  • Tracking scientific and technical innovations

Working with Human Sources

  • Identifying experts online
  • Leveraging social networks
  • Essential interview and elicitation skills
  • Developing and maintaining a HUMINT network

Managing Data for Analysis

  • The primacy of information architecture
  • Data collation: frameworks and approaches
  • Managing data for effective reuse
  • The pre-analysis checklist

Technology Forecasting

  • Technology prospecting / scouting
  • Technology life cycle analysis
  • Technology roadmaps
  • Technology and patent portfolio analysis
  • Technology impact analysis
  • Supply chain analysis

Scientific and Technical Analysis

STI Analysis

  • S-Curve analysis
  • Benchmarking
  • Technological SWOT analysis
  • Capability / intent analysis

STI in the Organisation

  • Establishing an STI capability
  • Operationalising your STI capability
  • Managing the STI project
  • STI and strategy development
Request in-house course

Course Benefits

On completion of this course, participants will have acquired the ability to:

  • Identify and manage their research / intelligence needs
  • Automate the collection of data from web and social media sources using open source tools, technologies and web standards
  • Improve the quality and accuracy of their search results
  • Identify and monitor technological innovations on the web and through print sources
  • Work effectively with human sources of information / intelligence
  • Apply a range of structured analytic techniques to improve strategy, decision making and scientific foresight in the organisation
  • Operationalise intelligence best practices to improve situational awareness and decision making in the organisation

Course Requirements

Participants are required to bring a laptop with them and to set up a Gmail and Twitter account if they do not already have one.