BT's global innovation scouts have taken Lord Baden-Powell's famous motto to new levels as they search the globe to find new technologies for BT to invest in.
From bases in California, China, India, Korea, Japan and Israel, the hand-picked members have helped BT not only to "be prepared" for the rapidly changing world of communications, but to actively embrace it.
Since it was set up in 2000, the team of experts has introduced a range of leading-edge technologies to the company, and has contributed £500 million to the business plan generated by innovative products and services since 2002.
The scouting team members are chosen because of their "double competencies", explained Silicon Valley-based BT Group technology and innovation vice-president Jean-Marc Frangos.
"Each scout has to be able to not only understand the technology - but they must also be experts in the innovation priorities of BT's lines of business so that they can select the right technologies for the strategies," he said.
"The way we work is to maintain permanently open lines of communication with BT’s lines of business so that we can create a map of their interests," Jean-Marc continued. "We then work with venture capitalists who point us in the direction of technology start-ups with the specific potential to help us meet business needs.
"Each year we will have around a thousand 'touch-points' with smaller technology companies or start-ups. This initial list will reduce down to about 50 organisations where we can identify the potential benefits of their business’s technological assets to BT.
"And from these, there will usually be five companies who we ultimately have a formal arrangement with by the end of the year. This could manifest itself as a partnership or maybe a procurement arrangement or a co-marketing agreement."
In addition, the scouting team is involved in an ongoing liaison programme with BT's major corporate partners - for example, Cisco, Intel, or Apple. It is vital that the team keeps abreast of developments in its partners' product roadmaps, all of which are likely to impact BT in the future.
Interestingly, the third group that the team interacts with is BT's peer organisations - which sometimes even include the company's competitors.
"The reality is that innovation can be quite fragile," explained team-leader Jean-Marc. "By this I mean it can be challenging to introduce certain innovations through large companies such as BT. But if there are one or two major service providers also interested in say, a specific technology, then it can help that technology to have a greater chance of wide adoption and success."
Ensuring that the potential of each new technology is properly evaluated by BT's lines of business remains the scouting team's biggest ongoing challenge.
To help meet this challenge, the team works very closely with another unit in BT led by Jean-Marc called Innovation Central.
Innovation Central comprises a team of consultants working on behalf of BT's lines of business. It helps to carry through innovation cases by highlighting the opportunities using market data and other forms of analysis.
Meanwhile, BT's Applied Technology Centre is another scouting team ally responsible for building rapid prototypes - often at the drop of a hat - to help demonstrate technological concepts.
Over the years, the scouting team has successfully introduced a range of new technologies to BT's innovation-led product portfolio. One shining example is from San Jose-based company 2wire which had a high-quality home gateway technology in the US at a time when ADSL broadband was relatively new in the UK.
"We recognised the enormous potential of 2wire's product a long time before home networking had become established and acquired the technology for BT," said Jean-Marc. "Even five years on, BT's ground-breaking Home Hub product is heavily inspired by the innovative attributes of the 2wire technology."
Similarly, the scouting team can take credit for recognising the potential impact of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) on consumer telephony and broadband services.
Jean-Marc said: "Back in 2002, while BT was still deliberating on its broadband voice strategy, we introduced Vonage to the BT Retail leadership team and, almost straight away, the company went ahead and embraced consumer VoIP."
Today, BT's innovation scouting team has a global reputation. It has relationships with academia in Europe and the United States, is constantly name-checked by industry analysts and is recognised by the international venturing community for the valuable advice it gives them.
But its biggest benefactor is BT. Jean-Marc said: "Of course, as a team, we measure our effectiveness and we do this by calculating what we call an 'innovation dividend' which is the result of a three-year effect of the innovations we provide for BT's lines of business. So yes, we are a relatively small team, but I am proud to have been able to hand over a dividend worth more than £500 million for BT last year on behalf of this team.