New Scout Analytics Suite Helps Companies Drive Strategic Innovation

Wellspring, a provider of innovation software for corporations, universities, and government agencies, today announced an extensive refresh of its popular Scout software for open innovation and technology scouting. The new software features a redesigned visual user experience, enabling a purpose-built analytics suite that helps identify and assess early-stage technology spaces for innovation investment.

Until now, most organizations have defined their future-leaning innovation priorities based on Technology Readiness Levels, an approach first developed by NASA in the 1970s and widely adopted by R&D departments worldwide. But such methods require a pre-existing sense of where to look – which, for early-stage technologies, is notoriously difficult to discern.

The new analytics tools in Wellspring Scout fill this gap by helping companies discover strategic innovation opportunities proactively. Leveraging Wellspring Scout’s industry-leading database of 400M+ innovation records, the new analytics suite is an integrated toolkit that leverages the latest in Machine Learning technology, along with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop visual interface. At a glance, it allows clients to:

Identify next-gen technologies poised for disruptive growth
Analyze where top competitors are placing their innovation bets
Assess research programs primed for breakthrough results
Find emerging organizations at the vanguard of innovation

“To win the innovation game, it’s no longer sufficient to partner with the same companies and institutions as before,” commented Robert Lowe, Wellspring’s CEO. “The new Scout analytics suite enables our clients to dig deeper, systematically scanning the environment for promising areas of investment well beyond just the usual suspects.”

According to Wellspring’s 2021 R&D and Innovation Agenda research study, the highest-performing companies devote 75% of their innovation efforts to non-incremental bets, markedly higher than the status quo. The highest-performing companies are also significantly more likely to have full-time teams devoted to Tech Scouting (62%) and Corporate Ventures (41%) – whose core missions are to conceive and incubate strategic innovations.

To support this work, Wellspring Scout offers the world’s most comprehensive database of emerging technologies and innovators. And thanks to substantial investments in Machine Learning and Big Data, Scout also now provides in-depth analytics tools to help innovation teams assess and prepare for key technology trends looming on the horizon.

“We’ve heard from an increasing number of clients that they need help seeing around the corner,” noted Vinny Kaimal, Wellspring’s VP of Customer Success. “We designed an integrated suite to provide that capability, the first of its kind. Now, you can anticipate what innovations are coming next, and build your pipeline accordingly.”