Business Purpose:
The level of development to which a particular area of technical subject matter has advanced at a given date, to help guide research. It consists of everything disclosed to the public i.e.
Patents (Global Coverage) & Non-Patent Literature (Industry journals, articles, websites for products, tradeshows, printed catalogs, books etc.)
Deliverables:
Subject matter experts establish the state of the art for a particular technology area, to find out about solutions to a technical problem, or to find patents comparable to the claimed invention. It can also be used as a knowledge base for technology based problem & solution identification, competitive intelligence, technology evolution, white space analysis etc..