Usage of Unconventional Data Sources for Market Intelligence (MI) in the Field of Additive Manufacturing (AM) - Expert Networks, Technology Territories and Trends

The geographic expansion of the markets for AM increasingly confronts companies with greater competitiveness due to the globalization. In addition, market participants are facing rapid changes in the business environment - due to new information and communication technologies. Companies only have a chance to hold their market position if they quickly adopt market changes. Therefore, the decision-making process needs to be accelerated by on-demand information provision. MI offers one possibility to meet these requirements, but typically based on external unstructured data for market and competitive evaluation, which makes it cost and time consuming. A specific investigation of such data sources related to MI for systematic use within the AM markets is being carried out. For this purpose, different data sources (e.g. LinkedIn) will be identified, analysed with focus on information synthesis using text mining and their suitability for the evaluation of expert networks, technology territories and trends be presented.