Excerpt from Innovation Benchmarking in the Telecom IndustryFigure 2 shows a multidimensional scaling map of companies, where distances in the diagram represent similarity Euclidean proximity. To understand the mds map fully, as with any map we need a convention or wind rose, a north and south in it. An artificial North and South is created as follows. We invent an artificial company, one that doesn't exist and that is active in one subfield say, multimedia or consumer electronics. For this field, we assign all this imaginary company's patenting activity, 100 Then this company becomes a pole one can compare all other companies to this virtual company that is the strongest possible in this field. We thus create fictitious companies to represent the pole in optics, in electronics components, and so on. This map of technological profiles, in terms of several poles, represents real findings and not artificial ones. Looking at single companies validates this method and we have. This is the simplest way to benchmark individual companies relative to other firms each company can recognize their closest competitors as those that have the most similar profiles.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.