Frequently asked questions
What sources can Innguma monitor?
Innguma continuously monitors six types of source within a single watch: news and websites, patents, regulation and the BOE, tenders, competitors' websites and specialist sources. Your team decides which sources go into each watch, depending on what it needs to follow (competitors, technologies, markets or regulation), and each signal always links to the publication it comes from.
What does each type of source contribute?
Each type of source answers a different question, and none gives the full picture on its own. The table gives, for each one, examples of reference public databases worth knowing, whether or not they are used with a platform:
| Source type | What it answers | Reference public examples |
|---|---|---|
| News and websites | What is announced: alliances, investments, launches, appointments | General, business and sector media; press releases |
| Patents | In which technology each player invests, years before it reaches the market | Espacenet, from the European Patent Office, with information on inventions since 1782[1]; PATENTSCOPE, from WIPO, with 116.4 million patent documents, of which about 4.9 million are international PCT applications, at the date of consultation[2] |
| Regulation and the BOE | Which rules, aid and obligations change, and from when | The BOE open-data API, with the daily BOE and BORME summaries and consolidated legislation[3]; EUR-Lex, for EU law in its 24 languages[4] |
| Tenders | What the public sector buys, and who wins the contracts | TED, the online version of the Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU dedicated to public procurement[5]; open data from the Plataforma de Contratación del Sector Público, with tenders since 1 January 2012[6] |
| Competitors’ websites | What changes in catalogue, messages, team or international presence without being announced in the press | Corporate websites, product sections, news and careers pages |
| Specialist sources | What the sector says, with technical depth | Technical journals, associations, technology platforms, technology centres |
How are sources chosen for a watch?
The starting point is not a list of sources, but the questions the watch must answer. UNE 166006:2018 treats control of sources as an activity that the organisation defines and documents for each watch product[7]. The professional criteria for choosing and reviewing each source are:
- Authority: who publishes it, and what responsibility it has for what it publishes.
- Coverage: which part of the topic it covers and what it leaves out, in terms of topics, countries and period.
- Updating: how often it publishes, and whether it keeps that rhythm.
- Primary or secondary character: the official gazette or the patent office confirm what the press anticipates, so it is worth combining both.
- Performance: how many of its signals end up validated. A source that never contributes anything publishable is noise.
How are source types combined, depending on what you follow?
- A technology: patents to see who is investing, specialist sources for the state of the art, and news for the first commercial uses.
- A competitor: its website for the changes it does not announce, news for those it does, patents for its technology direction, and tenders for its public contracts.
- A rule: the BOE or EUR-Lex for the text and its dates, and sector sources for its interpretation and its effect on the market.
- A market or country: tenders for public demand, news for the moves of players, and regulation for the conditions of entry.
As an illustrative example, a competitor’s patent application, a job advert on its website for that technology, and a public contract requiring it are three different sources. Only together, and kept in the same history, do they tell what none of them says on its own.
Does watching more sources mean knowing more?
No. The more sources, the more duplicates and the more noise. Innguma’s AI filters, groups duplicates and classifies each signal by category, technology, entity, type of event, place and tone. People then decide what is published and who receives it, and what has been validated is kept in the Library as a searchable history.
Who manages the sources in Innguma?
The sources of each watch are defined with the organisation during set-up, and reviewed in use. You can manage them with your team or with ours. If your organisation enables it, sources can also be organised and added, either from Innguma’s source library or as new ones, from ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or Gemini through MCP, and their performance can be audited to obtain suggestions for improvement.
Sources and references
- [1] European Patent Office. Espacenet: free patent search
- [2] WIPO. PATENTSCOPE, search across national and international patent collections (accessed October 2026)
- [3] Spain's Official State Gazette (BOE). Open data API: consolidated legislation and summaries of the BOE and of the BORME (Official Gazette of the Mercantile Registry)
- [4] EUR-Lex. Access to European Union law
- [5] EU Publications Office. About TED, Tenders Electronic Daily
- [6] Ministry of Finance. Open data: tenders published on the Plataforma de Contratación del Sector Público
- [7] Utrilla, F. Watch and intelligence systems in R&D+i management. UNE Standardisation Review (La Revista de la Normalización Española), No. 3, 2018