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A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9 1 7 analyzed in the context of organizational needs (i.e., business drivers) to be truly meaningful and actionable. The first step in the patent intelligence pro- cess is to understand these business drivers, which represent the underly- ing needs of the organization to make a more informed decision or develop an action plan. While many analyses can be developed for any patent data- set, only certain analytical frameworks can address the key driver at hand. An important skill of any patent analyst, therefore, is to identify or design ana- lytics based on what is driving the anal- ysis in the first place. Business drivers might be related to issues of technology (e.g., new tech- nology areas in which to invest the R&D budget or acquire externally), business development and strategy (e.g., expand a company’s geographic scope for tech- nology commercialization), or legal (e.g., optimize or monetize an organiza- tion’s patent portfolio through pruning and/or licensing). These drivers might also vary depending on where an orga- nization is with respect to the innova- tion lifecycle; burning issues are likely to be different if the organization is do- ing front-end exploratory research vs. leveraging a mature technology. Final- ly, business drivers may be dependent F or most materials professionals— whether working in a commercial business, university, or govern- ment research environment—exposure to patents is typically at the level of individual patent documents. This in- terest may be driven by a desire to un- derstand the scope of in-force patents, as well as those that could limit an enti- ty’s ability to protect a specific invention or practice a certain technology. Many organizations also have formal or infor- mal patent review processes that sup- port technology scouting activities or help organizations generate new ideas for commercializable technologies. Anyone who has done this type of work will note that patents are not easy reading; they are often complex documents that require time and focus in order to understand what is being “taught” by the patent, as well as the many elements of the invention that are described or claimed. For that rea- son, there are practical time and cost limits to the number of patents that can be read completely to support any of these objectives. Less familiar to most materials professionals are the opportunities to analyze largenumbers of patents—with- out thoroughly reading each one—to help inform a multitude of technical, business, or legal decisions. The core of this analysis is patent analytics, com- prising lists, tables, charts, or other vi- sualizations that summarize rankings, trends, and relationships in the patent data. While patent analytics may sac- rifice a detailed understanding of any individual patent or invention, they en- able the analysis of hundreds or even thousands of patents, as well as the development of insightful conclusions related to technologies and markets that can lead to faster and smarter de- cisions — the ultimate focus of patent intelligence. FROM BUSINESS DRIVERS TO PATENT INTELLIGENCE As with the analysis of any type of data, patent analytics by themselves are simply information that may be inter- esting, but not necessarily useful. While many patent studies make the mistake of starting and ending with patent an- alytics, what organizations actually need is patent intelligence developed in the context of specific organization- al requirements and the environment around them. This intelligence provides insight and guidance that enable an or- ganization to act. As illustrated in Fig. 1, patent in- telligence must be developed and Fig. 1 — The patent intelligence process.