We are in the midst of the biggest wave of urbanism in human history. Today, more than 4.3 billion people or 55% of the world’s population live in urban settings. By 2050, the share of the world’s population living in cities is expected to rise to 80% (World Economic Forum).

With more people concentrated in urban areas, cities must adapt to new challenges when it comes to infrastructure, housing, material consumption, accessibility, sustainability, and much more. In this blog, we’ll look at new innovations that have emerged to combat new challenges cities are facing.

Market Overview

Using the Cypris innovation dashboard, we identified innovation activity in the urban development market has grown over the past 5 years, with a 62.5% average growth rate. Within the vertical, there are 392 technologies being applied within 38 different categories. The fastest growing category is Signaling with an 125.0% increase in new patents filed over the last 5 years.

The most active top players in Urban Development by patent number include UNIV SHENYANG JIANZHU (16), HUAGAO DIGITAL TECH CO LTD (8), and COLOPL INC (6).

Market news in the space is dominated primarily by lawsuits (45%), followed by new products (12%) and new partnerships (12%).

Notably, while diving into urban development market news, we discovered that Google released a new tool that provides real-time land cover data called Dynamic World, created in partnership with global nonprofit organization World Resources Institute (WRI). Prior to its creation, it was difficult to access detailed and up-to-date land cover, across land and water types. Dynamic World reveals how the earth’s surface is changing from various activities, and allows viewers to track land cover changes from environmental factors, like floods and snowstorms, and changes induced by human activity like urban development and deforestation. The tool will help generate awareness around issues facing the planet, and equip scientists, environmental researchers, policymakers, and the general public with the information to better understand environmental disturbances and plan for future disasters.

Innovative Patents in Urban Development

Here are 5 of the most fascinating patents within the urban development space:

Method for constructing artificial islands with reefs from urban construction waste: This invention provides a 5-step method for constructing artificial islands with reefs from urban construction waste. The method includes 1) recycling the urban construction waste; 2) bonding and pouring the urban construction waste by the aid of cement to obtain large cement brick specimens; 3) transporting the cement specimens to coastal regions by the aid of unidirectional logistics empty materials; 4) transporting the cement specimens to the reefs; and 5) constructing the islands by the aid of cement bricks in falling tide periods.

Inventors: WANG XIAOJIN, & LAI BINGHONG; Patent #: CN103882831A

Roadside dedicated to people with reduced mobility: This invention is a curb specially designed to facilitate movement on the sidewalk for people using wheelchairs and the blind or visually impaired. The invention makes it possible to guide the wheels of a wheelchair, and protect pedestrians from cars. The regularly spaced outfalls in the invention contain a slight slope in order to evacuate rainwater as well. This invention can be precast in concrete and is particularly intended for road and urban development projects in the building and public works industry.

Inventor: GILLET ENGUERRAN; Patent #: FR3115300A1

Underwater Two-Level Tunnel in the Zone of Dense Urban Development: This patent is an underwater two-level tunnel designed for a dense urban area. The tunnel consists of a main two-tier tunnel with separate traffic lanes located inside and additional branches connecting the main tunnel with its terminals located on road sections of the road network adjacent to the tunnel. A second level in the main tunnel and the presence of at least one lane of free movement helps to eliminates the intersection of additional branches and the need to build traffic interchanges.

Inventor: Unlisted; Patent #: RU196900U1

Container House: This invention is a prefabricated transportable container house with a foundation of stainless steel pipe bodies that helps with earthquake and hurricane resistance. Mega structures with numerous container homes can be used when stacking of two or more container homes is insufficient and large-scale urban development is required, and they'll be able to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes due to a net-cladding system of wire.

Inventor: KANGNA NELSON SHEN; Patent #: BR112012010096A2

Solar pedestrian overpass: This patent is a solar pedestrian overpass which comprises a connecting column, a sliding groove formed in the outer wall of the connecting column, four solar panels arranged in the sliding groove, and an output port formed in the end face of the upper end of the connecting column. The bottom surface of the connecting column and the solar panel at the lowermost layer are positioned on the same horizontal plane.

Inventor: LING JIEYONG; Patent #: CN211815496U

Whether through sustainability initiatives, mobility and accessibility efforts, or structures made more resistant to natural disasters, new innovations are changing how we plan and create cities. To learn more about patents and new innovations in the urban development space, visit cypris.ai and get started with access to the innovation dashboard.

Sources:

Cypris Innovation Dashboard, Query: Urban Development

https://cypris.aipatents/detail/method-for-constructing-artificial-islands-with-reefs-from-urban-construction-waste/CN103882831A

https://cypris.ai/patents/detail/roadside-dedicated-to-people-with-reduced-mobility/FR3115300A1

https://cypris.ai/patents/detail/underwater-two-level-tunnel-in-the-zone-of-dense-urban-development/RU196900U1

https://cypris.ai/patents/detail/container-house,-mega-structure,-sets-of-mega-structures,-arrangement-of-many-sets-of-mega-structures,-methods-for-building-a-house-with-standard-container-frames,-for-transporting-a-container-house-not-yet-assembled,-for-preparing-a-foundation-for-laying-a-container-house,-to-use-container-house-for-urban-development,-to-process-container-house-for-urban-development,-to-protect-mega-structures-from-earthquakes-and-hurricanes,-and,-cylindrical-foundation/BR112012010096A2

https://cypris.ai/patents/detail/solar-pedestrian-overpass/CN211815496U

https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/industry/public-sector/future-of-cities.html

https://www.futuresplatform.com/blog/3-trends-driving-future-cities-and-urban-living

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/global-urbanization-material-consumption/

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is the process of analyzing, gathering, and using information collected on competitors, customers, and other market factors that contribute to your competitive advantage. Companies rely on CI data to develop effective and efficient business practices.

CI consists of two types of intelligence: tactical and strategic. Tactical is shorter-term intelligence, which seeks to provide input into issues like capturing market share or increasing revenues, while strategic focuses on longer-term issues, like key risks and opportunities facing the organization, and emerging trends and patterns.

Why competitive intelligence matters, particularly real-time CI.

Understanding competitor motivations and behaviors is critical to driving innovation, shaping product development, establishing pricing and brand positioning, and so much more. Companies must collect proper CI in order to identify challenges, advantages, and white spaces and build a competitive strategy equipped to compete and thrive.

Technology has transformed the CI industry, making it possible for organizations to compile data from multiple sources in a timely manner to facilitate rapid decision-making. Through actionable insights, companies can respond to changes in their markets quickly to keep up with competition. At the core of actionable insights is real-time CI. With real-time CI, companies deliver timely intelligence to the right people, increasing organizational agility.

When looking to collect CI, it’s important to plan out which insights are of value to you, how to identify your competitors, and which markets to spend time on. Take time to narrow in on your direct competitors, research objectives, and areas of interest.

Are companies focusing on CI? These metrics might surprise you.

90% of Fortune 500 companies practice competitive intelligence. (Source: Emerald Insight)

Over 73% of businesses are investing more than 20% of overall technology budgets on intelligence and data analytics. (Source: Forbes)

61% of executives view rapid decision-making and execution as essential factors for a company’s success, and 34% consider the ability to access the right information at the right time as key factors for a company’s success. (Source: The Economist)

69% of organizations that have used an external partner to gain better data insight report positive results from that decision. (Source: The Economist)

57% of companies state that gaining a competitive advantage is one of the top 3 priorities in their industry. (Source: Forbes)

The 6 ways CI benefits your organization.

CI empowers everyone on teams, from product managers and marketers, to sales and executive teams. With the right CI, you can:

Uncover Key Data Points: Through examining new data points like significant acquisitions, new patent filings, startup investments, technology transfer agreements, research papers, etc., you can uncover pivotal data points that have the potential to influence major decisions.

Plan Strategic Moves: CI facilitates building your long-term business strategy and finding market gaps, allowing you to make the right business decisions for your organization.

Track industry Trends: Live-data CI lets you watch for new technologies, track new movement, stay on top of industry innovation trends, and predict future movement.

Drive Innovation: CI helps you to identify new market opportunities and spaces to innovate, accelerate your new product development, design better products, and improve market positioning.

Outsmart Competition: Think of CI as competitive insurance to ensure you stay on top of competitor strengths and weaknesses, anticipate what they’re planning, and identify competitor position and messaging. With CI you can uncover new product launches and services your competitors are adding, and benchmark your company against others.

Minimize Risk: Making the wrong move is costly. CI helps you prevent unsuccessful projects from taking off, save on costs, and improve decision-making ROI. With CI data, you can identify and prioritize any gaps within your business, and feel comfortable knowing you're making data-backed decisions.

Where to go from here: Actionable intelligence platforms are here to help.

Manually collecting CI takes time, and is costly. Not to mention doing your own research digging on the Internet for low-hanging fruit means you'll likely miss key data points that don't provide you with the whole picture. In the time it takes traditional market intelligence or research analysts to gather data to build into basic and applied research reports, you can receive data automatically through a platform like Cypris.

Designed specifically to deliver actionable innovation intelligence to R&D teams, Cypris improves the efficiency of data collation and interpretation. By aggregating your desired data, Cypris enables users to answer critical questions that influence the brand, margin, and profitability of your organization. Users have identified new entrants, significant IP, groundbreaking research papers, and more that have ultimately swayed the course of major projects.

Ready for real-time data on your competitors? Visit cypris.ai to get started by booking a demo.

Sources:

https://www.jimmynewson.com/10-important-competitive-intelligence-statistics/

https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/ci-competitive-intelligence

https://www.antara.ws/en/blog/competitive-intelligence-benefits-for-the-company

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/01/29/the-importance-of-competitive-intelligence-and-analysis-in-2020/?sh=2674721c30f4

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/competitive-intelligence.asp#:~:text=Competitive intelligence is important because,effective and efficient business practices