The purpose of this paper is to examine how patent analysis can provide useful information in support of commercialization strategies to firms operating in emerging fields, such as carbon nanotubes, which represents the most promising sub-field of nanotechnologies. Specifically, the study focuses on the technology exploitation, when firms decide to transfer the outcomes of their innovative processes to third parties. Under these circumstances, firms need to assess actual commercialization opportunities, which ultimately depend on the relative technological strength of the actors operating in that market (Arora, Fosfuri and Gambardella 2001). In order to unveil the characteristics of the market for technologies and to as-sess the competitive conditions thereof, firms may make use of methodologies of patent analysis (Bonino, Ciaramella and Corno 2010; Daim et al. 2006; Lee, Yoon and Park 2009). By and large, the main purpose of patent analysis is to enable firms to monitor and assess technological developments and other areas of concern. As there are no comprehensive reviews on this emerging sector, this paper provides a descriptive overview, identifying what types of firms are entering, from what knowledge base, where they are located, and their strategic choices in terms of technological diversity, and R&D strategy. These findings only represent the starting point of deeper examinations of the technological landscape aimed at assessing the real intention of existing players in the field. Nevertheless, they offer to the management of potential technology providers a first suggestion of which directions to deploy and which others to exclude, thus saving time and effort in trial and error attempts. In turn, managerial implications are then drawn from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]