3. Using professional and scientific social networks

Professional social networks like LinkedIn, or sharing platforms like YouTube or Slideshare, are overflowing with presentations, how-to videos and opinions. You may find experts or opinion leaders from the professional sphere rather than the academic world. Knowing their name and relationship (geographical location) can enable you to make indirect contact with a department or team. In the context of competitive intelligence in the pharmaceutical or industrial sectors, it is also possible to find on these informal sites presentations commissioned by a manufacturer from an expert, and to establish relations between them.

The similarity search offered by LinkedIn can be particularly interesting in this context: based on a given profile, specific algorithms can be used to identify profiles that are "similar" in terms of skills, professional experience, training and...