Consumer-Oriented Tech Mining: Integrating the Consumer Perspective into Organizational Technology Intelligence - The Case of Autonomous Driving

To avoid missing technological opportunities and to counteract risks, organizations have to scan and monitor developments in the external environment through a structured process of technology intelligence. Previous approaches in tech mining—the application of text mining for technology intelligence —have primarily focused on the elicitation of technical or legal information from web, patent, or research databases. However, knowledge of consumers’ needs, fears, and hopes is a prerequisite for the success of an emerging technology in the marketplace. Thus, we claim that technology intelligence needs to also consider consumers’ technology perceptions. Hence, we propose a novel and comprehensive approach to collect user-generated content from the web and apply text mining to derive consumer perceptions. In doing so, we align with an established tech-mining process. This paper illustrates our approach on the emerging technology of autonomous driving and provides an initial indication of concurrent validity.