2. Situating scientific intelligence within the overall intelligence process

By detecting new trends in science and technology, scientific intelligence pursues a number of crucial objectives:

• anticipate future changes and new fields of research;

• identify potential risks (competing research projects), measure delays and encourage progress;

• identify opportunities for innovation ;

• support or reassess the organization's orientations and decisions.

Scientific intelligence is an integral part of the company's overall intelligence process, which aims to monitor, analyze and interpret the organization's general environment in order to take action (cf. Afnor standard XP X50-053 April 1998: Intelligence services - Intelligence services and services for setting up an intelligence system)....