The modern stage of economic development is intricately linked with accelerated pace of advancement in technology and hence introduces into basic corporate agenda the need to regularly benchmark best competitive practices. Considering highly competitive environment usual tools and metrics do not allow to reveal promising directions of innovative development, whose implementation will help in building new competitive advantages with similar companies. To reveal early signs, revealing emerging directions of innovative development, promising technology and decisions, global practices implement tools and instruments of patent and bibliometric search, allowing to assess current corporate practices in the field of both fundamental and applied research. The article presents the results of a research on activity of leading world railway companies in the field of technological and scientific research, and of priority directions of innovative development, obtained using tools of patent and bibliometric analysis. The research also described the dynamics and the structure of publications and patent applications in the railway sector, the differences in the structure of cooperative links of leading railway companies regarding publication and research activity. The article also studied structuring of patent and publication activity of some companies, showing priority directions of technological and scientific efforts.