Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Support Technology Surveillance in a University Context

Technology surveillance (TS) can be seen as a particular branch of knowledge management (KM) primarily focusing on technology related information. It constitutes a systematic process including the activities of gathering, organizing, analyzing, and disseminating information from internal and external sources to assist organizations in managing risks in their operational and strategic environment. In this paper we focus on TS in a university environment where different departments, research groups and individual researchers critically depend on up-to-date technology-related information in their field. Today, the actors in the TS process are challenged with an exponential growth of scientific knowledge and technology related information. However, the fact that all of this information is available in digital formats and the trend that it is increasingly available free of charge or at low prices offers many new opportunities. We suggest an approach for TS that helps universities to seize these opportunities and to master the challenges using proven Web 2.0 technologies. We first describe the goals, activities and roles of traditional TS approaches together with typical problems that are encountered when the activities are performed in practice, particularly in a research context. Then, after shortly introducing the most important Web 2.0 technologies and their application in enterprises and organizations, a theoretical model of a Web 2.0 supported TS process is developed. Subsequently, we demonstrate how this approach can be applied in practice using an existing commercial web based collaboration platform. We show by an example scenario how the offered integrated structuring capabilities, access rights management, linking and tagging functionality can support the activities of the proposed model.