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2010
August
- Sell the problem — August 25, 2010
No business buys a solution for a problem they don't have.
- How to tell when your boss is lying — August 19, 2010
Researchers have combed through transcripts of 30,000 executive-level conference calls, and they've figured out the signs that betray CEOs who tell fibs about their companies' finances.
- Why be afraid of competitive intelligence — August 16, 2010
A lack of support within the organization sometimes stymies even motivated people. They feel that they do not have the latitude to begin competitive intelligence.
- Competitive intelligence to start — August 9, 2010
So exactly what should a startup or small business look for in the way of market research or competitive intelligence?
- The life's work of a thought leader — August 9, 2010
In interviews conducted before his untimely death, C.K. Prahalad looked back on his career and talked about the way ideas evolve.
- Assessing your competitive edge — August 3, 2010
Keeping a close eye on your competition should not only be part of your business and marketing plans, but also part of an ongoing process for continuous improvement.
- Arik Johnson of Aurora WDC — August 1, 2010
This interview touches on a number of big topics in business, strategy and competitive intelligence.
July
- How to avoid prying eyes — July 30, 2010
The Internet is rife with surveillance technology, but you can cover some of your tracks.
- Social media for CI? — July 30, 2010
Online communications could contribute greatly towards meeting the myriad strategic objectives of collecting competitive intelligence.
- CI review: Yippy (formerly Clusty) — July 29, 2010
Yippy gives users multiple ways of ranking search results that it obtains from multiple search engines all over the Web.
- Know your enemy — July 29, 2010
But intelligence gathering is actually an important part of running a business if you want to stay competitive.
- Putting Europe back on track — July 26, 2010
The eighth European Business Summit and a research report conducted by INSEAD, Accenture and the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium, with funding from Sun and Microsoft.
- Lost in translation — July 24, 2010
Differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events.
- Business model innovation and competitive imitation — July 22, 2010
Issues of competing through new business model design become more important given the increasing number of opportunities for business model configurations enabled by technological progress, new customer preferences, and deregulation.
- The future you want is not the future you'll get — July 21, 2010
Scenario planning is an excellent tool to help companies hedge their bets against an unknowable future. Scenario planning starts with the premise that the future is unpredictable.
- Where social media meets strategy — July 20, 2010
Social media has the potential to resolve issues other than collaboration or communication. It has helped many solve what has plagued boardrooms for decades: strategy execution.
- A framework for competitive intelligence — July 19, 2010
To remain viable in a highly competitive market, hospitals will need to create strategies that stand up to the continued financial pressures of the industry. Competitive intelligence must be part of those strategies.
- Best competitive research blog tips — July 19, 2010
You can find out so much about your industry, your niche, your market, your product, and your potential customers, just by reading a few blogs that relate to whatever it is you're selling.
- Investors back new China business news — July 19, 2010
Cai Business Indepth, known as CBID, is aiming to become a major provider of reliable financial news and analysis, in English, about one of the world's largest and most complex economies: China.
- The paradox of competitive research — July 19, 2010
The growth in the amount of competitive intelligence is actually creating paralysis, and in many cases, results in nothing being done with the collected intelligence.
- The problem with competitive intelligence — July 15, 2010
If you don't maintain a close relationship with your CI customers, especially executives, how do you know you are giving them what they need, and why should they trust you?
- Media monitoring: what it is, how it evolved, how it's done now — July 14, 2010
Some organizations deploy media monitoring tools to find information about competitors and specific issues relevant to the organization, to benchmark performance against competitors, to gather industry intelligence, and to identify new business opportunities.
- Capturing the world's emerging middle class — July 8, 2010
Multinational companies face challenging competition in emerging markets, as these economies already boast aggressive local players that have captured a significant portion of spending.
- Giving shape to collaboration tech — July 7, 2010
StreamWork proposes a model for making a decision, tracking the arguments for and against, capturing the supporting evidence and the key objections.
- US takes hard look at China's secrets — July 7, 2010
It remains to be seen whether these amendments will simply provide much-needed clarification on the boundaries of what China considers "state secrets", thereby simplifying how individuals and corporations navigate the murky waters of China's many state-owned enterprises (SOE).
- How to work outside your comfort zone — July 6, 2010
Major differences of opinion may arise about a situation since large organizations tend to rely on networks of people not just within their own organizations, but also outside of them.
June
- Deep cover spies had day jobs — June 29, 2010
Three of the accused “deep-cover” Russian spies arrested yesterday had day jobs that may have put them in contact with opinion makers, corporate executives, or aspiring technology industry workers.
- The Chinese online ‘water army — June 25, 2010
Posting negative comments on the Web about products and services is fast becoming the most popular channel for Chinese consumers to vent their spleen. Yet, cyber bullies and unscrupulous webmasters are manipulating the media to either promote or smear a company's image for profit.
- Think and act like your customers — June 21, 2010
Some companies have people who focus solely on competitive intelligence, but the simplest form of competitive intelligence is to encourage employees to act like "regular" customers.
- What can you use competitive intelligence for? — June 21, 2010
CI is a vital tool when dealing with Business Development, Scenario Planning, Mergers and Acquisitions, Intellectual Property, Corporate Governance, recruitment and strategic business wide long term decisions.
- Rising to meet category and market intelligence needs — June 17, 2010
Procurement and supply chain organizations need better access to category and supply market intelligence to make better savings and cost avoidance decisions, reduce supply risk and deliver greater overall value to the business.
- How to grade sources — June 3, 2010
Dax Norman at the National Cryptologic School has done the most authoritative work on general reliability of online sources with intel specifically in mind.
- Master of Strategic Intelligence — June 2, 2010
The core curriculum of the master of strategic intelligence is designed to have students develop global awareness, and understand how historical, economic, cultural, political and social contexts affect intelligence
- Global forces: an introduction — June 1, 2010
Systematically spotting and acting on emerging ones helps companies to capture market opportunities, test risks, and spur innovation.
May
- Five forces reshaping the global economy: McKinsey global survey results — May 30, 2010
An ongoing shift in global economic activity from developed to developing economies, accompanied by growth in the number of consumers in emerging markets, are the global developments that executives around the world view as the most important for business and the most positive for their own companies' profits over the next five years. Executives also identify two other critical positive aspects of globalization: technologies that
- It makes sense to adjust — May 25, 2010
Business transformation is now a continuous process that most companies haven't mastered. Here's a formula for managing ongoing change.
- Revisiting key intelligence topics — May 24, 2010
Whether or not a company's KITs remains constant or fluid, there are five reasons why managers should review them on a regular basis.
- Beating the competition: step 1 — May 20, 2010
Take advantage of all the sacrifices you have made over the past two years to make a move to beat your competitors because they are either not yet capable of responding or are too distracted to react.
- Learn practical patent analysis: a case study pt4 — May 18, 2010
Patent assignee data is a goldmine for conducting competitive intelligence. We'll show you how to use different analyzation methods to find relevant companies in our chosen technology area.
- The Blue Ocean and business models — May 18, 2010
Blue Ocean thinking is knowing the market factors you're playing against, deciding what to change to add customer and company value, and focusing business activities toward differentiation.
- A brilliant Failure — May 10, 2010
Convergent thinking is as important as divergent thinking in intelligence analysis. The generation of a multitude of ideas seemed to do little more than confuse and overwhelm experimental group participants.
- LinkedIn follow function and competitive intelligence — May 10, 2010
Linkedin launched its new "Follow" function similar to Twitter. Upon reflecting on the advantages of using the tool, one has to take a step back and consider the defensive competitive intelligence ramifications of Linkedin's new toy.
- Midwest competitor staff identification — May 10, 2010
One of our most successful large projects was with a global public accounting firm that asked us to construct a database of their competitors' talent in the Midwest.
- Competitive intelligence backbone — May 5, 2010
Competitive Intelligence and analysis is one of the most important components of a marketing strategy, regardless of the size of the business or project.
- Johnson & Johnson successful competitive intelligence campaign — May 4, 2010
Johnson & Johnson's well-executed competitive intelligence (CI) strategy and following marketing defensive block against Bristol-Myers during Tylenol - Datril confrontation on the market is considered as a classic example of the CI effective use.
- The key to spotting disruption before it happens — May 4, 2010
It's important to look beyond revenue or basic market share data to determine whether or not a would-be disruption is a legitimate threat. Spotting transformation requires looking beyond the traditional boundaries of your business.
- Latin America: Breaking the barriers — May 2, 2010
Conducting market intelligence in the region can be like driving in foreign territory without a detailed map. It requires keen understanding of the local landscape of cultures and potential pitfalls.
April
- Competitive intelligence in the news: Apple — April 30, 2010
To someone trained in competitive intelligence, there are stories behind the public moves. From those stories, emerge motivations, strategies and opportunities.
- Intelligent intelligence career planning survey — April 30, 2010
The UK Competitive Intelligence Forum is undertaking some classic market research to obtain a foundation of understanding with respect to how practitioners entered the discipline, with this 10 minute survey.
- Competitive intelligence for growth — April 28, 2010
Although competitive intelligence might help with cost saving decisions, its better use is to support strategic growth decisions.
- Competitive intelligence: purpose and process — April 28, 2010
A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at PubCon South on "Competitive Intelligence on the Social Web," and I wanted to extract a few of my key arguments and offer them up the SEOmoz audience both as thought provokers and for feedback.
- Growing economic gardens — April 28, 2010
Economic gardeners practice a multipronged approach to consultations, including geographic information system (GIS), market and complexity science analysis, as well as evaluations of CEO personality types. In general, economic gardening teams consist of at least one business analyst and one GIS analyst.
- War-gaming the evolution of China's smart grid — April 27, 2010
Leonard Fuld brought together business school students for a war game exercise: which American companies will benefit most as China spends an estimated $100 billion creating a smart electrical grid over the next decade? Teams of MBA students from schools like Northwestern, MIT, Wharton, and Yale will role-play the leaders of four companies: Cisco, GE, IBM, and Siemens.
- Competitive intelligence = patent analysis + patent mapping — April 26, 2010
The use of patent information has expanded to many different tactical and strategic business, research, and policy making activities. Patent analysis can have significant value for a company in understanding and predicting the development of the competitive technology landscape in its industry. (blog)
- Is competitive intelligence worth the effort? — April 26, 2010
Although it's probably okay to have a basic idea of what competitors are doing, it can easily get out of hand and interfere with innovation and customer-focus. (blog) Gregg Stocker
- New LinkedIn feature allows you to follow company profile — April 26, 2010
The "Follow company" capability allows you to follow all of the updates to a company profile. For example, if I was trying to find who was hired as the new Head of Marketing for a company, this feature would automatically update me once that employee updated their LinkedIn profile. (blog) Mike Merrill
- Tips for private company research — April 26, 2010
One of the most challenging tasks for a competitive intelligence professional is tackling a private company research mandate. Below are a few practical tips. (blog)
- Sales intelligence is more than smart selling — April 25, 2010
This Aberdeen report finds that the best-performing companies outclass their competition in determining what content about prospects and customers to put in front of their sales forces.
- Gizmodo's iPhone scoop is legit, but competitors may know more — April 21, 2010
Apple's rivals probably still know more about Apple's next product than Gizmodo does, and they would have gathered that intelligence through completely legitimate means. Just knowing a supplier's capacity and pricing can tip a company off to what a competitor is doing without any confidential information changing hands. (blog) Brian Caulfield
- Competitive intelligence customers survey results — April 20, 2010
In April I conducted a survey of competitive intelligence professionals from 35organizations about competitive intelligence. The goal of the survey was to understand how competitive intelligence practitioners view their customers (and vice versa).
- Connect cooperatively to internal and external experts — April 20, 2010
Sales is one of the best places to start since this is part of their job, to win business over the competition. A good way to think about who to connect with internally is: who is dealing with my competitors, customers, the investor community, suppliers, distributors, regulators or attends trade shows? (blog) Ellen Naylor
- Forget your elevator pitch - what's your dumbwaiter pitch? — April 20, 2010
Today, elevator pitches are the economic equivalent of speeches at a beauty pageant: predictable, often vapid, always bland. Try a Dumbwaiter Pitch instead. Its goal? To strip an organization right down to its bones, and see how compelling it really is. (blog) Umair Haque
- How to: keep tabs on the competition — April 20, 2010
As a small business owner, you probably have been put off by what these major corporations are doing and feel it might not be within your reach.The thing about competitive intelligence is that it may in fact be more important to smaller companies than it is to larger companies. Chris Hughes,
- Danger zone: Rio tightens definitions of corporate intelligence and state secrets — April 19, 2010
One of the most troubling aspects of the Hu affair for all companies dealing with China is that the corporate espionage charges against Hu and his three colleagues and the way they were heard leaves the boundary between legal intelligence-gathering in China and illegal procurement of secrets unexplained. (article) Malcolm Maiden
- The tales of two top secret stolen Smartphone prototypes — April 19, 2010
The web is atwitter with reports of a top secret stolen smartphone prototype. But nearly the same thing happened last year to Microsoft. Things just didn't go as well that time. What Gizmodo got was largely brain dead; it had been securely wiped remotely. (article) Daniel Dilger
- Using trademarks for competitive intelligence — April 19, 2010
Quite a bit of information about possibly forthcoming brands, products, and services can be unearthed searching uspto.gov trademark records. The trademark record is a snapshot of the economy. (blog) Erik Pelton
- Why corporations hire private military contractors — April 19, 2010
Intelligence is information that has been analyzed by a human brain. Irrelevant facts are thrown out. Significant tidbits are emphasized. Then patterns, intersections, coincidences, and inferences are mixed with human judgment and intuition to bring out a report about the subject at hand. This report will include a recommendation for action. (blog/article) Simon Barrett
- Capture win loss analysis cooperatively — April 15, 2010
Win loss interviews and the ensuing analysis are win/win. Your company receives valuable information from your customers and prospects, and you make them feel important since you care enough to query them and give them an opportunity to provide honest, candid feedback. (blog) Ellen Naylor,
- Competitive intelligence on a shoestring — April 15, 2010
Competitive Intelligence minimizes uncertainty and companies who use CI can often accurately predict their competitors' actions and plan accordingly. Here are some guidelines that may assist you introducing yourself to CI without spending a lot of cash. (blog/article) Graeme Dixon
- National Intelligence: Art or Science? — April 15, 2010
On April 15, 2010, the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies, the Croft Institute for International Studies, and the Department of Political Science at the University of Mississippi sponsored a lecture by national security and intelligence experts Gregory F. Treverton, Ph.D., and Wilhelm Agrell, Ph.D.
- Kaggle, competitions and competitive Intelligence — April 14, 2010
Kaggle and Innocentive are tools that may be used to help meet an organisations intelligence needs. Especially where access to outside expertise is beneficial, an Innocentive challenge or Kaggle prediction could prove valuable. (blog)
- Replay it: Google search across the Twitter archive — April 14, 2010
Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what's happened and how people have reacted. You can zoom to any point in time and "replay" what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter.
- The weather forecast: Market intelligence best practices — April 14, 2010
The goal is to create a clear view of all the aspects of market by thorough research and analysis. The analyzed data will lead to a new understanding of the current and future situation. The more an intelligence team is seen as trusted advisors (internal consultants) the better they can play this role. (blog) Joost Drieman
- Gathering strategic intelligence using indeed.com — April 12, 2010
Indeed Salary Search permits users to find salary information for posted jobs on the web. This search feature will allow users to gather information on what competitors are offering for opening positions within a city or region.
- How to stay safe on a public Wi-Fi — April 12, 2010
Armed with nothing more than wireless packet analyzer software, a fellow conference attendee in the same seating area may be able to glean CI based solely on the websites you visit and your (probably unencrypted) instant messages--not to mention the personal e-mail from the recruiter indicating you're ready to jump ship.
- Intelligence: the responsibility of clinical marketing — April 8, 2010
So whose responsibility is it to track clinical competitive intelligence to make strategic business decisions? Let's propose a hybrid between clinical research and marketing to create "Clinical Marketing." (blog) Victoria Sanko
- Children's book version of the Peer Monitor Economic Index — April 6, 2010
My good friend, Mark Gediman told me many times that he designs his competitive intelligence (CI) reports like a children's book. A big picture... and a little bit of text. So, when I saw a review of "How to Publish a Children's Book with StoryJumper," I immediately had to test it out.
- Competitive intelligence without predictions is dead — April 6, 2010
No competitive intelligence professional is worth their salt (in the long term) if they take timid stances about what might happen or are unwilling to share this directly with their customer or client.
- Appropriate threat definition — April 5, 2010
Every country has unique laws that govern competitive intelligence collection. The business needs to have training in cultural awareness and local customs and laws prior to travel as well as establishing and providing points of contacts within the foreign nation for the representative to contact in an emergency.
- Tech company explores entrails of Apple's iPad — April 5, 2010
Teardown firms are hired by an array of clients, their data used for competitive intelligence, in patent disputes, or to keep current on industry benchmarks. Analysis, using sophisticated equipment that can cut into components, can determine how they were made, and who made them.
- Don't trust CI predictions — April 2, 2010
Two prominent economists talked about global competitiveness issues last week. Hearing them state their predictive limitations made me think about the success of competitive intelligence predictions. Do we in CI consistently and successfully predict significant future competitive events?
- All important CI is customized — April 1, 2010
Beware of consultants that tell you they know what to deliver and how to deliver it to your organization. Maybeyou can accept the opinions of an outsider, but only after they have demonstrated knowledge about your competitive challenges.
- Competitive Intelligence — April 1, 2010
How can a company gain competitive advantage? The only thing that can make a difference is not the quality of the product but the quality of the information they posses about the market, the client, the product, the technological process, management etc. It's about the information management.
- Don't snack on search junk — April 1, 2010
To get the freshest, most relevant real-time search results, I rely on specialised search systems. But like other types of content, the casual approach of free search services delivers a partial solution. Industrial-strength processing of real-time content requires a more rigorous approach.
- Getting CI out of your sales team — April 1, 2010
Any good salesperson knows a lot about the competition, so it only makes sense to tap into this group as a CI resource. If you have a competitive intelligence function at your company and you don't involve your sales team, then you really are missing out on some pretty low hanging fruit.
- Growing need of competitive technological intelligence — April 1, 2010
Competitive Technological Intelligence specializes in scientific and technological tasks and it includes various operations which enable informational mapping to generate information intelligence reports. These technical and CI reports drive innovation and technical decisions to gain competitive supremacy.
- How to keep tabs on the competition — April 1, 2010
Competitive intelligence may be more important to small companies because they feel the impact of competition more immediately and more deeply. Here's an introduction to keeping track of your rivals. It will require some dedication, but it need not cost a lot of money or take too much time.
- In CI, better answers start with better questions — April 1, 2010
In CI, one of the key inputs is the questions that it is expected to answer. Having put some thought in to what you really want to know will help improve the insights that are delivered. So how do you get your CI engagement off to a better start? Here's three simple suggestions to get you started.
- Xerox Global Services' Competipedia: Using social media to enable the sales force — April 1, 2010
There needs to be a place, whether real or virtual, where salespeople can share information with each other and where marketing can feed them research and other contextual information to help shape their messages. XGS's Competipedia is a wiki-based tool where salespeople can go to find and share competitive intelligence.
March
- Keep it simple...intelligence for all — March 31, 2010
Share your company's competitive intelligence across your organization. Do not restrict it to a few senior management team members or within a specific department.
- How to use social media for competitive intelligence — March 30, 2010
CI is first and foremost about understanding your competitor's strategy, gaining insight into their products, services, finances, partners, and customers. There are few better places to gather all of this important data than from social media.
- Can you understand me now? — March 28, 2010
While English is the lingua franca of communication today, the information that's available in English in a foreign country typically is superficial, unless you're in an English-speaking country. There is also a certain level of cultural understanding and linguistic proficiency required to work in a different country.
- Competitive intelligence = patent analysis + patent mapping — March 26, 2010
Patents are now being considered as one of the major source of technological and competitive information. In our highly competitive business environment patent awareness is a critical skill. Patents are an important source of technological intelligence that companies can use to gain strategic advantage.
- How many data points do you really need? — March 26, 2010
A common question asked when discussing win loss analysis is, "How many deals do I need to analyze before I can start using the data?" The most successful win loss analysis programs act more like a laser pointer that illuminates very specific information about very specific issues and questions.
- Hyperformance: an excellent new book" — March 26, 2010
If you are looking for a book that explains the value of intelligence to your C-level, or if you want to convince your clients or partners that intelligence can help them make better decisions, then this is the book.
- The missing qualitative ROI for competitive intelligence — March 24, 2010
After all, competitive intelligence is a support function for decision-makers. Their decision-making process can be quite complicated and involve many factors beyond the direct CI input. In the end, did CI tip the scales one way or the other? Was the CI input valuable or not? How valuable? Who would know the answer to these questions?
- Gather competitive intelligence: five tactics to research your marketplace — March 23, 2010
Check out these five tactics we gleaned from a competitive intelligence expert with more than 15 years of experience. We include tactics for interviewing customers, listening at industry conferences, and monitoring public information. We also explain why you should keep your strategy honest.
- The first, best competitive intelligence project — March 22, 2010
One issue is that many competitive intelligence customers do not understand the value of CI. Another common topic is how to ensure that CI people are properly involved in decision-making. These and others are all good issues but the most impactful problem is something else.
- When should you conduct competitive intelligence — March 19, 2010
Competitive intelligence is a necessary part of conducting business, both online and off line. But when should you do it? Throughout the business cycle. The technical answer is, you should never stop competitive intelligence research.
- Email marketing statistics: where to find them — March 18, 2010
I've pulled together around 30 top sources of published email marketing data and listed them. You'll find free and for-fee sources for statistics on campaign results and other performance indicators, deliverability stats, consumer email attitudes and habits, email client market share, and competitive intelligence.
- Competitive intelligence analysis tools — March 15, 2010
Joe Whyte of hybridsem.com talks about competitive intelligence analysis tools and reviews a few of the ones hybridsem uses on a daily basis in the 4th installment of internet marketing 101. (YouTube) 10 minutes
- CI elicitation tactics — March 11, 2010
The purpose of this presentation is to objectively analyze these competitive business practices. I'm going to teach you how CI professionals target your employees and elicit sensitive information that they then provide to or sell to your competitors.
- IC reverse engineering - a design team perspective — March 11, 2010
Oon a product level, the engineering teams often need more detail to help make design and manufacturing decisions that can reduce engineering effort and deliver market-winning specifications. This analysis inevitably starts with a basic teardown of electronics devices.
- Another workshop, another top 10 search tips — March 10, 2010
The participants at the latest advanced search workshop all had very strong views on some of the new developments in search. There were several sites and search features, though, that did impress them. This is their list of Top 10 Search Tips.
- Death by competitive analysis — March 1, 2010
Most competitive analyses are sales documents for investors and/or an attempt to rationalize the founders’ assumptions. At its best a competitive analysis assumes that you know why customers are going to buy your product. At its worst it exists to rationalize the founder’s assumptions about what they are building.
February
- The art of systematic surveillance — February 28, 2010
Intelligence Management is a systematic approach that leverages both internal and external knowledge in new ways. It streamlines decision making, enhances competitive positioning and creates an environment that aggressively responds to competitive threats and market challenges.
- The definitive guide to 7 CI data sources — February 22, 2010
You must ensure you understand how the data you are analyzing is collected. Not all sources of CI data are created equal. Once you understand that you choose the best source possible, that is, the right answer for the question you are asking. Here are the sources of competitive intelligence data.
- Analysis and sharing of competitive intelligence — February 19, 2010
To understand the potential actions and strategies of competitors, the environment, market and industry, start by putting aside preconceived notions. You will need to piece together the real picture, whatever that may be.
- Competitive intelligence - data acquisition and analysis — February 19, 2010
An in-depth knowledge of the entire business ecosystem is indispensable. However, businesses take different approaches to analyze competitors. All of these approaches involve data collection, interpretation of data to derive information and analysis of the information to deduce intelligence.
- Competitive intelligence case study initiative — February 18, 2010
Tom Hawes saw a need for more sharing in the field of competitive intelligence. In many cases people don't share since well it's the competition after all, who might be reading or listening to what I share. So he decided to create case studies for people to comment on.
- Basics of competitive intelligence — February 17, 2010
Competitive intelligence impacts your business bottom line by giving you the right insight into your industry, market and competitors. CI provides valuable information, so it's critical to ensure CI collection is legal and ethical to maintain your professional integrity and to protect critical information against leakage.
- Final marketing lessons from the collapse of Lehman Brothers — February 17, 2010
Deep competitive intelligence is coming to solid and verifiable conclusions about your where your competition is strong and where/if they have a weak underbelly. It is also about using the assembled information to get such a compelling picture of the competition that one can predict competitive intent with a high degree of confidence.
- Most competitive intelligence is above average — February 16, 2010
The survey is not scientific and the sample size is small. Caveats aside, the interesting result to me is that the self-rating (all companies combined) of CI effectiveness is above average in every category.
- Bit.ly education part 2 — February 12, 2010
You have a competitor that you keep tabs on, right? Now you can track how effective they are at leveraging social media and see if specific campaigns they are running are having success. Or you can compare your own campaigns to theirs to see how you stack up. (blog/article)
- Competitor profiles are not deliverables — February 12, 2010
We believe competitor profiles can play an important role in a company's CI activities, especially for new departments or functions. But, beware of the many pitfalls associated with them. (blog) Ken Sawka
- Predicting competitors: or they did what? — February 11, 2010
Here we'll talk less about illusions of predictability and more about delusions of predicting. The pricing tournament was a kind of massive business war game using humans' strategies and a computer's calculations. (blog/article) Mark Chussil
- The strategic value of corporate intelligence — February 11, 2010
Nearly every company, to one extent or another, conducts research and analysis on competitors and markets affecting their service or product lines. There are some common skill-sets that are a must-have for corporate intelligence professionals. (blog) Jeremy Tamsett
- Top 11 reasons I'm looking forward to SCIP 2010 — February 11, 2010
The Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals 2010 International Annual Conference & Exhibition will be held March 9 - 12 in Washington, DC. Here are my top 11 reasons I'm looking forward to the conference... (blog) August Jackson
- Anheuser-Busch InBev brings clarity to innovation — February 10, 2010
Suggestions for companies seeking to promote innovation. Among them: provide simple explanations for a business' strategic objectives and look beyond obvious sources for insight into innovation processes. (blog) Scott Anthony
- Bit.ly education part 1 — February 10, 2010
In addition to providing a short URL for your page, Bit.ly also gives some great information on traffic to that short URL (hence, your page). Here's the rundown of what you can see. (blog)
- How BP improved collaboration while cutting costs with a ProtoSphere virtual world — February 9, 2010
BP created an immersive learning and collaboration environment for its future leadership. Bots from oil and other national companies presented their exploration strategy. That was driven by actual competitive intelligence data, and gave the graduates a realistic view of how competitors might play off of anything BP does. (blog) Ron Burns
- Drexel Post-Master Specialist Program — February 8, 2010
Post-master's Specializations are available in competitive intelligence and knowledge management. This concentration focuses on information needs and knowledge management in special libraries, corporations and other organizational settings.
- Google News timeline helping to connect the dots — February 8, 2010
Here is a nifty tool that may interest competitive intelligence researchers and analysts. Google News Timeline is an application that plots search results of news on a dateline. News content may come in the form of articles and video clips. (blog) Ian Smith
- Competitive intelligence: think big, start small (3) — February 5, 2010
Take your time to build your system since it takes a lot of effort to rebuild once it is live. Think about what you want now, and in the future, put it down in writing, and then start considering tools. (blog) Jeroen Van Luik
- Ten management practices to axe — February 5, 2010
Every few years, a management book or philosophy emerges to change our thinking about the best ways to lead employees. With so many competing management theories in the mix, some ill-conceived practices were bound to take hold-and indeed, many have. Here's our list of the 10 most brainless and injurious. (blog) Liz Ryan
http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content
- Twenty ways to research your small business competition — February 5, 2010
One of the most important steps you can take to position your small business for success is researching your competition and knowing them as well or better than you know yourself and your own business. To help you get started, following is a list of 20 ways you can research your small business competition. (blog) Susan Gunelius
- The legal minefield of social networks — February 4, 2010
In many cases mining such information is completely legally. For example, one can examine public statements by company staffers - especially if they are inconsistent - that can point to new initiatives under way. (blog)
- Competitive Intelligence — February 1, 2010
The art and science of competitive intelligence serves as a platform for development of execution profiling. (powerpoint)
- Dare to compare — February 1, 2010
All organizations, particularly small and medium sized organizations, should use their trade show program to develop a simple, consistent Competitive Intelligence (CI) program to continuously gather primary intelligence on key competitors. (blog) Anne Baron
- Framing your social media efforts — February 1, 2010
There are three main areas of practice for social media that your company (or you) should be thinking about: listening, connecting, publishing. There are many varied strategies you can execute using these toolsets and many different tools you can consider employing for your efforts. (blog) Chris Brogan
January
- Get the most from that conference — January 29, 2010
It's important to maximize experiences at these conferences and apply what you bring back. Given tight budgets in the new year, here are ways for getting the return on investment from conferences.
- How well do you emotionally connect? — January 29, 2010
Most of the time your customers will connect if you put together a crisp set of information and persuasively articulate your findings, and include some analysis, if it adds clarity and persuasiveness to your recommendations. (blog) Ellen Naylor
- How to connect-the-dots in your business — January 26, 2010
What needs to happen if you want to connect disparate pieces of information about the same person, organization, or entity? Here's what you need to pull off to make this happen. (blog) Tom Davenport
- Competitive intelligence research with Thoora — January 25, 2010
News search tools are rapidly changing. A tool such as Thoora aggregates popular news content and provides a couple of other value added features. The results from Thoora are broken down into three distinct sections. (blog) Ian Smith
- Follow changes to any website — January 25, 2010
Today we're rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don't have their own feed. (blog) Brian Shih
- Competitive intelligence with a virtual assistant — January 24, 2010
What a company can do to easily filter information online and find only the kinds of information it needs is to hire a virtual assistant. The virtual assistant can collate all the information you need regarding your competitors, the industry or even specific products. (blog) Lawrence Perry
- How to develop a World-class market intelligence function — January 24, 2010
The white paper outlines some key success factors for and advice on top-notch Market Intelligence functions that will have valuable impact on Strategic Planning, Marketing and Sales, Product and Innovation Management, Mergers and Acquisitions, Partnering as well as Supply Chain Management. (press release)
- Evolution in source evaluation: using social media data — January 21, 2010
A framework for evaluating the influence of social media tools such as Technorati, Digg, Blogpulse, and applying that framework to assessing mentions of a product. They began by identifing metrics that could be indicators of the influence of various information sources. They ultimately identified five Influence Attributes: Reach, Buzz, Engagement, Content and Audience. (article) Emily Wheeler
- Pharmaceutical industry: a discovery led approach to social media — January 21, 2010
Pharmaceutical companies monitor the conversations on the Web about health for market research and product development with two approaches: "'external discovery', where information about conversations taking place is measured and analysed remotely; and 'internal discovery', where an environment owned or managed by the pharmaceutical company hosts social media activity. (article) Daniel Ghinn
- Pitfalls of competitor profiles — January 20, 2010
Competitor profiles can have a role in CI especially for new departments. But beware of the many pitfalls associated with them. In my experience, the biggest pitfall is not understanding how to use them effectively. (blog) Karen Rothwell
- Enterprise 2.0: the right way to do it — January 18, 2010
We were a small team, spread throughout the world, and it was extremely challenging for us to gather information from the field, and even more so to share it amongst us let alone with the people who needed it most: the sales people. The answer, however, came in the form of Wikis. (blog) Khaled AlSaleh
- How to use Twitter for competitive intelligence — January 15, 2010
When you set up your Twitter account, be sure to follow your competitors so you can keep track of what they are saying. Use a desktop application like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop. (blog)
- Purposeful cooperative leadership in competitive intelligence — January 15, 2010
Cooperative and purposeful leadership skills are all the more essential when you rely on other people to give you great information or intelligence who don't report to you, and your boss perhaps views you as an outlier since competitive intelligence doesn't quite fit into anyone's area. (blog) Ellen Naylor
- Building a competitive intelligence tool using RSS and Wordpress — January 14, 2010
More than one year ago, French blogger Fred Cavazza published an inspiring article explaining how RSS technology (using Google Reader and RSSBang tools) could be leveraged to build such a tool. Here is a guide to build your own solution. (blog) Nicolas Leroy
- Musing on conducting competitive intelligence ethically — January 14, 2010
In my experience with the business world, I've seen the topic of ethics (in the context of CI) discussed much less frequently than I would have expected, and that should change. Here I'll provide some examples of bread and butter methods and more infrequently used methods for conducting CI. (blog) Steve Shu
- The concept of business intelligence for 2010 — January 14, 2010
Competitive intelligence is about more than just analyzing competitors, it's about channeling data-gathering efforts toward the end goal of making the organization more competitive relative to its environment. (blog) Jenny Heart
- Eighty Ways to use Twitter as a SMB owner — January 12, 2010
A small business owner looks for help promoting their business. We suggest Twitter to find new leads, build relationships and as an overall way to cost effectively market their business. "Twitter? What can Twitter do for me?" Below are 80 ways a small business owner can use Twitter to build and market their business. (article) Lisa Barone, January 12, 2010
- What's wrong with IP today? — January 12, 2010
Do IP Landscaping people think business people are interested in completely abstract numbers, and ‘competitive intelligence' that's obvious, old and nothing more than you could get from press releases? And the landscape reports themselves are mumbo-jumbo, impossible to read much less action. (blog) January 12, 2010
- Monitoring social networks for economic development — January 11, 2010
"economic development" pages on Facebook are not only built for promotional purposes but to share information with the city's or region's stakeholders. They become a public source of information in which competitive intelligence data can be gathered for economic development purposes. (blog) Ian Smith, January 11, 2009
- Monitoring in all its shapes and forms — January 10, 2010
With so many social networking platforms, there are search engines to match. New tools and sites will help find, sort and learn from what people are saying every day. Here are some, but in no way is this list complete. (web page) Social media monitoring, no date
- Copyright challenges in competitive intelligence — January 8, 2010
Copyright issues arise from gathering information for Competitive Intelligence purposes. I will focus on the textual copyright only and my post is based upon the Dutch Copyright legislation (Auteursrecht). (blog) Anne Van Den Brink, January 8, 2010
- Finding your competitive edge — January 8, 2010
Every member of your organization should be speaking regularly with their counterparts for innovation at every level. The brainstorming at these meetings provide fresh innovative perspectives to take home and to continue to discuss in the mastermind peer groups throughout your organization. (blog) Amanda Hudson, January 8, 2010
- Northern Light search tool — January 8, 2010
Here is an internet research tool that is very valuable. Northern Light Search portal is a handy tool to find information efficiently. (blog) Ian Smith, January 8, 2010
- Competitive intelligence performance review — January 7, 2010
What would a good review for a competitive intelligence person look like? It contains a difficult set of questions that focus on value and impact versus activities and tools. There are 10 fundamental performance areas and 50 questions to discuss. (blog) Tom Hawes, January 7, 2010
- Know thy neighbor — January 7, 2010
Listening to the marketplace has always been an important component of corporate success. A systematic Competitive Marketing Intelligence System can greatly facilitate the process of gathering, organizing, analyzing and using competitive intelligence. (blog) January 7, 2010
- Patent technology landscapes — January 7, 2010
A patent technology landscape is a type of Technology Competitive Intelligence (TCI) reports, which consists of visual representation of the analytic analysis of large patent dataset information in a particular technology domain. These reports help in identification of technology gaps and white spaces. (blog) Deepak Shrivastava, January 7, 2010
- Simple competitive intelligence using RSS feeds — January 7, 2010
One of my favorite ways to efficiently collect competitive intelligence is with RSS feeds. This is one of the most powerful tools a sales person or dedicated competitive intelligence analyst can learn. (blog) Bill Rice, January 7, 2010
- Strategies for preparing for a patent interference — January 7, 2010
Your client will never know a patent problem exists unless it is obtaining competitive intelligence. I list procedures to employ for limiting or delaying access to your client's patent or confidential information and obtaining access to information about patent applications of others. (blog) Mike Adkins, January 7, 2010
- Listen to competitors - not customers — January 6, 2010
A grave risk lies in listening to customers--especially in listening to them about innovation and market shifts. Instead, pay attention to competitors. Especially those on the fringe. If you want to remain viable, your competition will give you more insight than all the strategic customer councils in the world. (article) Adam Hartung, Forbes January 6, 2010
- Who is competitive intelligence really for? — January 6, 2010
Competitive intelligence should be seen as an asset. Whether you are a corporation or a small business, you have competition and if you expect to remain competitive within your niche then you need to stay on top of what your competition is doing. (blog) January 6, 2010
- Social media monitoring — January 5, 2010
Business intelligence, competitive intelligence and social media monitoring software directory. Large list of programs, mainly fee. Entries submitted by software companies. (website) no date.
- Emergent competitive intelligence — January 4, 2010
When strategies are well known, competitors are confidently identified and threats are well characterized, the competitive intelligence function is organized to reflect those realities. Its role is to reliably produce accurate information to help answer the fundamental question, "How do we continue to execute our successful strategy to maximize our results?" (blog) Tom Hawes, January 4, 2010
- How to fix intelligence analysis with structured methods — January 4, 2010
Richards Heuer (of Psychology Of Intelligence Analysis fame...) spoke last month at the National Academy of Sciences regarding his thoughts on how to improve intelligence analysis through the increased use of structured methods.(blog) Kristan Wheaton
- Search Google Groups for strategic intelligence — January 4, 2010
Google Groups is a platform that allows individuals to post messages and receive replies from others. From a competitive intelligence point of view, it's valuable due its ability to provide access to the archive of Usenet newsgroup postings dating back to 1981. (blog) Ian Smith, January 4, 2009
- Using Twitter and TweetDeck for effective CI — January 4, 2010
Twitter is becoming a more relevant source for competitive intelligence. Not necessarily as a standalone source, but a nice complement to traditional sources. Here are some thoughts on how I use TweetDeck for CI. (blog) Ken Sickles, January 4, 2010
- The synergy between competitive intelligence and social media — January 2, 2010
Social media can be used to gather information. So yes, you can use social media to gather information regarding your competitive environment, much like you can with Google. But they are NOT competitive intelligence tools! At most they are information gathering tools. (blog) Jeroen Van Luik, January 4, 2010
2009
December
- Competitive intelligence basics — December 31, 2009
There are many Competitor Intelligence Methods we use when attempting to decide which vertical or markets to compete in. Before we enter any vertical, we need to take a view at 2-3 successful Websites in that market and drill down and evaluate anything we can find on them. (blog) Brian Bear, December 31, 2009
- The value of exit interviews — December 30, 2009
It's important to listen carefully during an exit interview; but more important is to act on the information you receive. (blog) December 30, 2009
- A positive note: increased spending on MR in 2010 — December 29, 2009
The American Marketing Association and Duke University surveys Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) every year on planned spending. CMOs reported that they will spend more on market research and intelligence. (blog) Parmelee Eastman, December 29, 2009
- Newsflash! RSS still not dead — December 29, 2009
So many information publishers now produce RSS feeds of one stripe or another that it has become possible to draw together huge numbers of sources in one place very easily indeed. (blog) Suw Charman-Anderson, December 29, 2009
- The present of presence and listening — December 29, 2009
In research and competitive intelligence, knowing when to be silent is a great gift. When I call people, even cold calls, I will initiate the conversation, but then I will be silent and give the other person a chance to share what they know. (blog) Ellen Naylor, December 29, 2009
- Eight social media basics for 2010 — December 28, 2009
Here are my eight social media basics for building a web presence 2010: 1. Core Marketing and PR Competencies - Analytics, branding, communication, competitive intelligence, design, list building, market segmentation, marketing research, targeting, etc. (blog) Larry Brauner, December 28, 2009
- Morphological prospection: profiling the shapes of things to come — December 25, 2009
This paper describes how to go about designing a foresighting capacity based on a systematic evaluation of future systemic contexts, and discussing what aspects of the external environment to include in robust competitive intelligence, strategic monitoring, environmental scanning, and horizon scanning activities.(article) Joseph Voros, Foresight v11n6 2009 p4-20
- New year's resolutions — December 24, 2009
How should strategy and competitive intelligence practitioners prepare to contribute to their company's growth and performance in the new year? Here are five ways to improve CI and competitive strategy in 2010. (article) Ken Sawka, December 2009
- Why business/competitive intelligence helps organizations — December 22, 2009
Knowing what your competitors are doing and the changes taking place in your industry are important for assessing your weaknesses and strengths and keeping a competitive edge over your rivals. (blog) Nagesh Desaraju, December 22, 2009
- Beware the arrogance of dismissing competition — December 21, 2009
Don't underestimate your competition and don't ignore your weaknesses. At the same time, don't allow perceived competitor strengths to cause paralysis of action either. Move forward if you need to, but address and fix any issues along the way that might prevent success. (blog) Harvey Chimoff, December 21, 2009
- China, healthcare, and ethics: next year's intelligence issues — December 21, 2009
2010 will bring with it a number of specific short-term and long-term competitive warning flags. China, healthcare, and ethics, are all competitive issues that will remain with us for a very long time. (blog) Leonard Fuld, December 21, 2009
- Notes and take-away quotes — December 21, 2009
I did manage to see one outstanding session in the free seminar programme - "Social media for competitive intelligence" by Marydee Ojala. Here are my notes. (blog) Martin Belam, December 21, 2009
- Other people's data — December 20, 2009
Competitive intelligence data (legally) scraped off of publicly available sites must not only contend with cleanliness issues, but the schema can also change at any time and the publisher has no obligation to notify consumers of that change. (article) Stephan Petschulat, Communications of the ACM, 2010
- Scouting for innovation — December 20, 2009
Many companies that are aggressively looking outside their walls for new technology are using Innovation Scouts, specialists tasked to identify new opportunities for partnership, co-development, licensing or acquisition. Nerac's Global Benchmark Survey was designed to benchmark current practices of innovation (or technology) scouts. (report) Margaret Fiore, 2009
- What is environmental scanning? — December 19, 2009
One of the fastest growing areas of environmental scanning is competitive intelligence. As managers worldwide are realizing accurate information about the competition allows them to anticipate competitors' actions rather than merely react to them. (blog) December 19, 2009
- Competitive intelligence advantage — December 18, 2009
At the website for the new CI book, Competitive Intelligence Advantage, you can download the sample chapter as a PDF. December 2009
- Myths and realities of strategic planning for cos' sustained growth — December 18, 2009
Here's the problem: analysis is not strategy. If you don't have a solid grounding of business acumen in the areas of general and broad business knowledge, competitive intelligence, industry expertise, product expertise, customer expertise, knowledge of emerging trends, best practices and a wide array of best-in-class benchmarks, then all the flip charts, flow charts and sticky notes in the world won't help you to create a truly effective business strategy. (article) John Spence, December 18, 2009
- SNOWINT — December 18, 2009
Want to know the odds that your location will have a white Christmas? (blog) Kristan Wheaton, December 18, 2009
- Resurrecting cold calling for research — December 17, 2009
Although this wasn't a competitive intelligence project, it reminded me that the same technique often works when you cold call regardless of the reason why. You organize why someone would want to talk with you by putting yourself in their shoes. (blog) Ellen Naylor, December 17, 2009
- Building niche brands lessons learned from the international technology super-brands — December 16, 2009
Together with competitive intelligence gleaned from internal and external public sources, these resources all provide insights as to what customer-oriented benefits as well as product features/functions are of importance to the market niche, and where the vendor's strengths currently lie. (article) December 16, 2009
- How Farmers fast tracks innovation — December 16, 2009
Farmers saw a structured framework as the best way to launch new products and re-energize existing products and services. Over the next 4-6 weeks, the team puts together "fact packs," which include market research, focus group results and competitive intelligence, among other information. (article) John McCormick, December 16, 2009
- How a 40K employee company trains its employees on social media — December 16, 2009
Telstra, the Australian telecom giant, makes social media training mandatory for its employees and formalized a policy of "3Rs" - responsibility, respect and representation. The company published their entire social media training guide online, so that anyone can check it out, learn and critique. (blog) Adam Ostrow, December 16, 2009
- Law firm libraries and marketing - working together — December 16, 2009
Shannon Kay Sankstone and her co-worker Charlotte Graesser Henderson from Quarles & Brady explained the need for the Library/Research staff within a law firm to work in tandem with the Marketing department. (blog) Greg Lambert, December 16, 2009
- Irregular competition: the newest threat — December 15, 2009
The classes of direct and indirect competition are not new. But what perhaps isn't as well-known to you is the class of competition which I have named "irregular competition." (blog) Richard Telofski, December 15, 2009
- Being seen instead of sight — December 14, 2009
It is important to see what your competitors do, and what else is happening in your environment. Here I discuss what visibility means for an organization. Are you aware about the information your competitors can see? (blog) Anne Van Den Brink, December 14, 2009
- Is competitive intelligence a necessary tool for defense and aerospace companies? — December 14, 2009
To succeed in this industry CI is needed more than ever before. Having a sense of how your competitor may respond to a request for proposal, who they partner with, and the overall health of the company become invaluable pieces of information in going about the research necessary to win a contract award. (blog) Josh Cohen, December 14, 2009
- Marketing and the library: best practices for working in tandem — December 14, 2009
Trends have fueled opportunities for collaboration between the Marketing and Library Departments. Having best practices in place to understand the critical differences will facilitate a smooth workflow and a successful partnership. (article) Shannon Sankstone, Winter 2009
- Researching technology companies with Crunchbase — December 14, 2009
Here is a company information source in a form of a wiki and it deserves a closer look from a CI research point of view. Crunchbase provides access to information on internet and tech companies, people who manage them and financial organizations that provide funding. (blog) Ian Smith, December 14, 2009
- Sneakiness in social media — December 14, 2009
Social media may be synonymous with openness, sharing and collaboration but it is also prone to its fair share of dirty tricks. The story took on a life of its own when Twitter users began to discuss the ethics of the incident. (blog) December 14, 2009
- My top 10 competitive intelligence mistakes — December 10, 2009
I finally have accepted that mistakes are the inevitable but needed fuel for improvement. In that spirit, here are my top 10 competitive intelligence mistakes. (blog) Tom Hawes, December 10, 2009
- Internet detective 105 - paid monitoring services — December 9, 2009
To be effective, one must also understand the tools available to conduct thorough research of the social media content. One particular strength of these services is that they search Blog comments, and can track comments and posts of individual contributors. (blog) Richard McEachin, December 9, 2009
- Keeping an eye on the competition through the social web — December 9, 2009
We have access to a wealth of empirical data about how many people saw, linked to, tweeted about, commented on, voted for or bookmarked not just what we had to say, but what our competitors said too. (blog) Jay Krall, December 9, 2009
- Supporting Strategy: three ways to prepare CI — December 9, 2009
Since competitive intelligence is only one of the voices in the mix, how can it be effective (and not be unwisely drowned out)? Here are three ideas to consider. (blog) Tom Hawes, December 9, 2009
- Top 15 pharma business blogs — December 9, 2009
On Slideshare an infographic representing the top 15 pharma business blogs: it is a selection of blogs focusing on the pharma industry business (M&A, strategy, innovation).(blog) Aldrich Hall, December 9, 2009
- Google launches real time search — December 7, 2009
I'm doing a quick hit on what Google Real Time search is, how to use it and how it compares to that last Google real time search thing you may recall hearing about. (blog) Danny Sullivan, December 7, 2009
- Competitive intelligence — December 6, 2009
Following the example of North America and other Western economies, large and medium-sized firms in Italy are starting to establish offices of Competitive Intelligence (CI). (blog) Antonello Garzoni, December 6, 2009
- Web 2.0 tools to manage the info froth — December 6, 2009
Web 2.0 tools that have the potential to help me more quickly and efficiently digest, organize and share this ongoing flow of information. Here are four relatively new services with potential. (blog) Marc Hausman, December 6, 2009
- Practical tips: presentation techniques — December 4, 2009
At some point, every CI (and BI) practitioner has to present something. In this blogpost, I discuss some methods for using a slideshow-presentation. (blog) Anne Van Den Brink, December 4, 2009
- Competitive intelligence 2.0 — December 1, 2009
Whether you are in corporate strategy, marketing, sales, or public relations competitive intelligence is critical to your objectives. Significance is simply quantity and velocity. In social media I translate that into these simple metrics. (blog) Bill Rice, December 1, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: key to success — December 1, 2009
When developing a product or service it's key that you are building two things - Points of Parity and Points of Differentiation. (blog) Steve Schultz, December 1, 2009
- Morphological prospection: profiling the shapes of things to come — December 1, 2009
Recent research in cognitive psychology suggests that requiring a detailed and systematic examination of future possibilities before a decision is made leads to more effective assessments of futures. Morphological methods, by design and construction, are perfectly suited to this, and so can form an exceptionally strong basis for thinking systematically about the future.
- Roundup: the best sources of international industry statistics — December 1, 2009
If you're doing research on industries in other countries, what are the best sources to turn to? Here are the most fruitful, substantive, and accessible sites, sources, resources, and strategies for locating global statistical industry data today. (article)December 2009
November
- Act smart on competitive intelligence - perspectives on CI — November 30, 2009
Recently, CI Division Chair Victor Camlek was interviewed by Information World Review in an article that traces the development of the CI role and shares insights into the future of the field. (blog) November 30, 3009
- Getting started: competitive intelligence in law firms — November 30, 2009
A growing number of legal professionals, particularly law librarians and those focused on marketing and business development for their firms, are adding competitive intelligence to the business development mix. (article) Christopher Whitmore, November 30, 3009
- Judge might not see value in files taken by former employee — November 30, 2009
The case shows how hard it could be for you to persuade a judge to order a former employee and his new employer not to use what you consider confidential, competitive information (article) Mark Pestronk, November 30, 2009
- Laws of Power 12: perfect elicitation strategies — November 30, 2009
These approaches engage basic human instincts and increase the quality of understanding about a counterpart through conversation. Here are a couple basic classic interview techniques. (article and video) Karen Walch, November 30, 2009
- Tom Hawes: aligning CI with business value — November 29, 2009
This is my interview Tom Hawes of JT Hawes consulting. We discuss aligning CI with business leaders' needs and blogging for CI. (podcast) August Jackson, November 29, 2009
- Using public documents for competitive intelligence — November 27, 2009
If you have government oversight agencies for your industry or regulation agencies in any country in which you do business then information from the meetings of these agencies could be public depending on the country. (blog) November 27, 2009
- Build your business by promoting competitors — November 26, 2009
Thanks to social media, you can't really ignore your competitors. You embrace them and build your business by promoting your competitors, opening the doors to new alliances, potential partnerships and the knowledge that you make one another stronger. (article) Liza Barone,
November 26, 2009
- Competitive intelligence research with LinkedIn - who's hiring? — November 23, 2009
LinkedIn, the Facebook for business people, offers two outlets of information that are worth keeping in mind when analysing competitors: Jobs and Companies. This post will focus on the Jobs section of the web 2.0 resource. (blog) Ian Smith, November 23, 2009
- Global recession and its effect on work ethics — November 23, 2009
Stealing employer data has become endemic in our culture. According to a survey, 85% admitted to knowing that downloading corporate information from their employer was illegal, yet a quarter would take the data regardless of the penalties. In fact, 41% have already taken sensitive data with them to a new position. (press release) November 23, 2009
- How search engines, aggregators and blogs use news content — November 23, 2009
I gave an informal briefing to several people from the FTC about the differences between how search engines, aggregators and news blogs all gather content automatically and through human editing. (article) Danny Sullivan, November 23 2009
- Scenario analysis of the telecommunications industry — November 22, 2009
The true benefit of scenario analysis is that it helps decision-makers create strategies with a view of the multiple ways the future may unfold. Here are the slides from a series of presentations on scenario analysis. (article/powerpoint) August Jackson, November 22, 2009
- Law firms - learning and the adoption of corporate practices — November 21, 2009
Competitive intelligence has already started out to make the rounds of offices throughout the country as a business strategy. You are already competing for the job. Competitive Intelligence analysis for lawyers may be the following. (blog) November 21, 2009
- Competitive intelligence on a shoestring budget — November 20, 2009
It's just as vital today for small companies to keep tabs on what the competition is doing, particularly in products and services. Here are some steps you can take to get an intelligence program off the ground. (article) Mike Collins, November 20, 2009
- Q&A with Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Evangelist — November 20, 2009
The world has changed in two years, especially in three areas: user centric design, competitive intelligence and social media. The second half of the book covers analytical techniques, social media analysis, competitive intelligence. (article) Daniel Waisberg, November 20, 2009
- SCIP Summit Europe — November 20, 2009
There was a strong sense of camaraderie which made for some strong interactive sessions, and gave the conference a constructive spirit - something which has been lacking in years where the numbers of attendees have been higher but the climate inside the conference colder. In a nutshell - worth battling for budget for, for 2010. (blog) Julia Hordle, November 20, 2009
- The use and abuse of scenarios — November 20, 2009
When well executed, scenarios boast a range of advantages-but they can also set traps for the unwary. (article) Charles Roxburgh, McKinsey Quarterly, November 2009
- What makes a good competitive intelligence department? — November 20, 2009
An interesting session held at Orange HQ and led by Safi Ghauri who talked through his experiences and the building blocks to constructing a CI team within a global organisation, highlighting 4 key lessons. (blog) Ivan Radulovic, November 20, 2009
- Twitter and e-mail as a media channel — November 19, 2009
Channels like Twitter, e-mail, and mobile share common ground and require overlapping skill sets for proficiency. They are all push media. There is immediacy -- a "here today, gone tomorrow" aspect that makes it difficult to monitor and report on competitive intelligence. (article) Bill McCloskey, November 19, 2009
- Twitter as a tool to track competitive intelligence — November 19, 2009
The very act of socialising an organisation means individuals share their motivations and information that can be tracked and used by third parties to competitive advantage. (blog) Stephen Waddington, November 19, 2009
- Avoiding 5 competitive intelligence pitfalls — November 18, 2009
In competitive intelligence we have pitfalls that inhibit us from reaching the desired goal. That goal is to help strategy leaders make better decisions.Here are my five (least) favorite pitfalls that should be avoided. (blog) Tom Hawes, November 18, 2009
- Competitive Intelligence: great talks from SCIP Amsterdam — November 18, 2009
At SCIP Amsterdam last week, the SCIP team and Joseph Rodenberg did a fantastic job, inviting some of the most impressive speakers in the field of CI and providing all practitioners a unique chance to network and know each other. (blog) Patrice Francois, November 18, 2009
- Eleven competitive intelligence tools for SMBs — November 18, 2009
Here’s a list of 11 tools that can help you track your competitors movements on the Web and give you actionable information that you can use. (blog) Lisa Barone, November 18, 2009
- Technology watch and competitive intelligence for startups — November 17, 2009
Currently, technology has increased its development speed and complexity, affecting the markets in several ways. Companies of any size must improve their knowledge of the present and future of their market -- they should move from the traditional watch to a modern watch. (blog) November 17, 2009
- Twitter and CI — November 17, 2009
Using Twitter as a research tool for competitive intelligence has already become credible, and it is rapidly becoming crucial. In this post I focus on using the twitter.com interface. (blog) Ken Sickles, November 17, 2009
- Twitter and CI — November 17, 2009
Using Twitter as a research tool for competitive intelligence has already become credible, and it is rapidly becoming crucial.(blog) Ken Sickles, November 17, 2009
- Ethical elicitation techniques that gather actionable intelligence — November 16, 2009
Covering tools that we use to help accelerate our Competitive Intelligence and Market Research projects. Ethics questions to ask. Elicitation research, build shared understanding, conversation, shared expertise and rapport. A few elicitation modalities. (PowerPoint) Sean Campbell, November 16, 2009
- SCIP organizational update — November 16, 2009
I am continuing my updates to you on the evolution of SCIP. All involved are dedicated to making carefully considered decisions which will improve the trajectory of the association and the services it provides you, the membership. (blog) Ken Garrison, November 16, 2009
- Use iGoogle for competitive intelligence — November 16, 2009
One of the things I use iGoogle for is to quickly monitor news about competitors and clients. And because this is Google, it's all free. Here's the basic how-to. (blog) Randy Wilson, November 16, 2009
- Social media holds promise, peril for companies — November 15, 2009
Blogging, posting Tweets, downloading applications on Facebook or other online activities can open a company up to lawsuits, the unintentional sharing of confidential information, impersonation, hacking, spyware, viruses and other problems. (article) Emily Dooley, November 15, 2009
- Competitive monitoring at Pubcon 2009 — November 13, 2009
The best session I attended this week at Pubcon was Competitive Intelligence: Know Thy Competitor Well. I've got a recap handy for your reading (and monitoring) pleasure. (blog) Rebecca Kelley, November 13, 2009
- How entrepreneurs identify new opportunities — November 11, 2009
A key question that all would-be entrepreneurs face is finding the business opportunity that is right for them. In the first of a series of podcasts for the Wharton-CERT Business Plan Competition, Raffi Amit offers insights into how entrepreneurs can identify new business opportunities and evaluate their potential and their risks. (article) November 11, 2009
- Intelligence gathering on winning an account — November 11, 2009
Sometimes winning projects can make one forget to gather competitive intelligence. Here is a list of questions one should ask the clients during a de-briefing. (blog) November 11, 2009
- World Bank public data, now in Google search — November 11, 2009
The World Bank produces an amazing treasure trove of statistics for most economies in the world. Seventeen World Development Indicators are now conveniently available to you in Google search. Chung Wu, November 11, 2009
- Compete intelligently with competitive intelligence — November 10, 2009
In this issue we will discuss the importance of Competitive Intelligence, the best practices to gather such information and the interpretation of such information, thereof. newsletter) November 2009
- Creating in innovation-intelligence business system — November 6, 2009
Precise intelligence is the heart of innovation. Precise innovation intelligence can validate concepts upfront and help innovators deliver the right products the first time, as well as solve everyday problems faster. (blog) Mark Atkins November 6, 2009
- Can technology do competitive intelligence for you? — November 5, 2009
Technology has become so integral to business that the first question companies ask when starting or growing a competitive intelligence (CI) function is which software should we purchase? (blog) Karen Rothwell, November 5, 2009
- Competitive intelligence and the balanced scorecard methodology — November 4, 2009
If one of the goals of a company's competitive intelligence function is to inject intelligence into the strategic plans of the organization, it is important to position competitive intelligence as a critical component of the company's balanced scorecard initiative.(blog) Will Dragon, November 4, 2009
- Enterprise open source intelligence gathering — November 3, 2009
This presentation speaks to brand and IP monitoring, but you can use the concepts and monitoring ideas for competitive intelligence.(powerpoint) Tom Eston, November 3, 2009
- Analytics as a source of competitive advantage and the medium — November 2, 2009
What should the outputs of an analytics program be? I'll argue the outputs should include: profit, evidence (historical), clarified-concrete-measurable goals, decision support (scenario analysis), forecasts, customer intelligence, and competitive intelligence. (blog) Christopher Berry, November 2, 2009
- AttaainCI wins AIIP's 10th annual technology award — November 2, 2009
The annual AIIP Technology Award is presented to a company whose product, in the panel's opinion, best assists independent information professionals in locating, analyzing, organizing and delivering information. (blog) Ellen Naylor, November 2, 2009
- Generating insights with Twitter lists — November 2, 2009
The concept of Twitter Lists is straightforward yet powerful. Twitter lists are just beginning to give early insights as to how people think about things. (blog) Mike Proulx, November 2, 2009
- Text analytics gains a broader audience in the enterprise — November 2, 2009
For the last several years, text analytics technologies have been continually improving and are increasingly being incorporated into new information filtering solutions. (article) Paula Hane, November 2, 2009
- Trade shows and congresses: a 20-to-1 return on your CI time — November 2, 2009
As we approach the holidays and trade show season winds down, I thought it a good time to reflect on the immense value of attending a scientific congress or trade show for vital intelligence. (blog) Leonard Fuld, November 2, 2009
- Competitive Intelligence Programmes at French Chambers of Commerce and Industry — November 1, 2009
Over the last ten years France has implemented regional programmes to increase the awareness of, and change attitudes towards, the Competitive Intelligence (CI) practices of enterprises. The emphasis has been on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI) playing a central role. (PDF)
- Keeping an eye on the competition: Go beyond Google — November 1, 2009
Techniques: employee movement, salaries, etc; Get a sense for the morale and culture at a competitor; Company/topic tracking; Tracking and analyzing their web site(s). People searching. (PowerPoint) Sean Campbell, November 1, 2009
- Misrepresentation in CI: an ethical analysis — November 1, 2009
This paper explores one of the most common concerns of CI practitioners: misrepresentation. Misrepresentation occurs whenever a CI practitioner lies or misleads a competitor about their identity in order to gain access to information. (article) Julia Evans, no date.
October
- Competitive intelligence gathering for international markets — October 30, 2009
Competitive analysis: an introductory view. Marketing planning is a crucial tool for any company, irrespective of size. Competitive analysis or competitive intelligence is one strand of this planning process. (blog) Una Coleman, October 30, 2009
- Competitive intelligence in law firms: how can you begin? — October 30, 2009
Law firms large and small need to investigate the business landscape to improve market intelligence. Regardless of your role within the firm, adopting CI skills can make you an indispensable member of the client development team. (article) Christopher Whitmore, November 2009
- Five signs of strategy and competitive intelligence distress — October 30, 2009
Within companies today, the current priority for many is simple survival. It does force hard decisions. For example, many curtail or deemphasize strategy and competitive intelligence. Here are five signs of business strategy or competitive intelligence distress. (blog) Tom Hawes, October 30, 2009
- Find your competition's weak spots — October 29, 2009
CI allows businesses to make strategic decisions, gaining an advantage over their competitors and helps businesses know what the competition is doing, either to counter the threat of their promotional activities or to copy best practices. (blog) Jason Dodd, October 29, 2009
- Site selection intelligence with Bing Maps — October 29, 2009
Mapping tools provide a means to collect information for site selectors in terms of location details of possible sites. Here is a look at Bing Maps. (blog) Ian Smith, October 29, 2009
- Digimind visualizes competitive intelligence — October 27, 2009
More challenging is understanding the competitive environment, what future competitors are doing, what products or innovations could be market leaders or laggards next season, how the regulatory regime could influence strategic decisions in the future. (blog/report) Jonathan Gordon-Till, October 27, 2009
- Who knows what? — October 26, 2009
In-house experts, with their specialized knowledge and skills, could be invaluable to both colleagues and managers. Activities and interactions that occur in blogs, wikis and social networks naturally provide the cues that are missing from current expertise-search systems.(article) Dorit Nevo, WSJ October 26, 2009
- Information and dissemination OUM Master of CI — October 25, 2009
One of the Master of CI courses at the Open University of Malaysia isinformation analysis and dissemination. This presentation is part of the work developed by the students during the course. (blog) A. Juillet, October 25, 2009
- Third European Symposium of CI June 2009 — October 24, 2009
One important question related to the global perception of CI by the decisions makers and political persons was debated. This issue is important for further developments of CI not only in Companies but also for the territory development. (blog) A Juillet, October 24, 2009
- Competitive intelligence for every library — October 23, 2009
CI people rate information on confidence levels ranging from solid to credible but not corroborated to fragmented, low support. CI also draws on work from economists, futurists, MBAs and accountants in the full spectrum of analysis. (blog) October 25, 2009
- Website competitive intelligence: don’t manage to bogus data — October 23, 2009
Finding reliable website CI benchmarks is hugely important, and a real challenge on the web. Some objective research suggests that free metrics are not strong predictors of traffic levels. (blog) Dave Wieneke, October 23, 2009
- Global market intelligence survey — October 22, 2009
A global webinar on October 29, 2009 at 9:00 AM GMT,will present key findings from the GIA 2009 Global Market Intelligence Survey. October 22, 2009
- Tweets and updates and search, oh my! — October 21, 2009
Given this new type of information and its value to search, Google has reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. (Google blog) Marissa Mayer, October 21, 2009
- Introduction to competitive intelligence — October 19, 2009
Very little has changed in the competitive intelligence (CI) process, while the execution of the collection phase of competitive intelligence has changed remarkably over the last twenty years. (blog) Ellen Naylor, October 19, 2009
- Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009 report — October 19, 2009
This year's topics include: professional blogging activities, brands in the blogosphere, monetization, twitter & micro-blogging and bloggers' impact on US and World events. October 19, 2009
- Quick tips for CI gathering — October 18, 2009
Here's our picks for the best Competitive Intelligence gathering features of two toolbars: the SEO Toolbar and the Alexa toolbar. (blog) Larry Chase, October 2009
- Misrepresentation in CI: an ethical analysis — October 16, 2009
When practitioning Competitive Intelligence, you always balance on the line between what information is available, and what information isn't, but can be made available. The most common ethical questions in CI concern misrepresentation. (blog) Anne Van Den Brink, October 16, 2009
- Wanted: Intelligent M&A — October 16, 2009
In this book, the authors seek to add a new perspective by focusing on the role of corporate intelligence in the M&A process. Their premise is that by employing first-rate intelligence throughout the M&A process companies will achieve a higher degree of success. (book review) Micheal Kelly, October 16, 2009
- Enterprise social media ... what is it? — October 15, 2009
What happens when you want to connect within your organization? How do you share your tribal knowledge (your success stories, competitive intelligence and customer sound bites) within your enterprise? (blog) Phil Corbett, October 15, 2009
- Puzzle, July/September issue — October 15, 2009
A free copy of the July-September 2009 issue Spanish-language magazine "Puzzle, Revista de Inteligencia Competitiva" is available. The editors are Alessandro Comai and Joaquin Tena Millan. October 15, 2009
- Social media for competitive intelligence — October 15, 2009
With so many companies jumping on the Social Media bandwagon, this is the best possible time to know your competitors like you know yourself. There's a load of information out there waiting for you to discover it. (blog) Erica Friedman, October 15, 2009
- LinkedIn: 50 million professionals worldwide — October 14, 2009
LinkedIn has 50 million users worldwide and we're growing that figure at roughly one new member per second. About half of our total membership is international. (linkedin blog) Jeff Weiner, October 14, 2009
- Why do startups and small companies need to attend trade shows? — October 14, 2009
Here are some of the reasons why it is important to attend and exhibit at trade shows, even if you are just starting your business or running a small company. The easiest possible thing you can do is gather hands-on CI. (article) Andrei Smith, October 14, 2009
- A competitive intelligence note to a skeptic — October 13, 2009
There are many sources of good information - everyone has access to such things. However, you will not find what you need to complete your strategic analysis, clarify the new vision or inspire and align your team there. Those things come from a competitive view customized for your concerns and culture. (blog) Tom Hawes, October 13, 2009
- Act smart on competitive intelligence — October 13, 2009
In the digital age, two components - the product (the content) and the process (the technological method of converting that content into intelligence) - combine to create effective and systematic competitive intelligence (CI). (article) Archana Venkatraman, October 13, 2009
- Act smart on competitive intelligence — October 13, 2009
Professionals are now expected to know a great deal more because even though the definition of competitive intelligence has not changed it requires a multifaceted approach. (article) Archana Venkatraman, Information World Review, October 13, 2009
- Social media tools for law firm CI — October 13, 2009
Presentation of Texas State Bar Journal article on social media tools for law firm competitive intelligence. (PowerPoint) Available in PDF and Word. Emily Rushing, LTA Conference, October 14, 2009
- A competitive intelligence note to engineering — October 12, 2009
Among your competitors, their engineering organizations are trying to beat yours. You wonder if you doing everything that needs to be done to win. Perhaps Competitive Intelligence could help. Here are some possibilities. (blog) Tom Hawes, October 12, 2009
- Improving your competitive intelligence — October 12, 2009
Learning what your competitors are doing right and wrong will help your own business grow and succeed. To get the full perspective of the market, businesses need to be informed on their competition and how they drive and engage with traffic. (video/interview) October 12, 2009
- So you think you know sourcing? — October 12, 2009
Sourcers need to be experts in building communities, leveraging technology and tools beyond email, the phone and databases. We need to understand the role of Competitive Intelligence as a discipline and how it relates to staffing. (blog) Kristen Fife, October 12, 2009
- You can learn a lot about your client & competition through soft intelligence — October 12, 2009
When it comes to positioning yourself in the legal market you must understand the competitive environment you are working in to position yourself properly. Social media in all its incarnations (blogs, podcasts, wikis, communities, etc.) is a 'soft intelligence' gathering vehicle. (blog) Susan Liebel, October 12, 2009
- The 4 RARE steps to competitive intelligence — October 9, 2009
Competitive intelligence is just that - competitive (meaning you against them) and intelligent (what do you know?). There are 4 steps to good CI: Research Analysis Rallying Employment. (blog) October 9, 2009
- Cross-cultural negotiations: avoiding the pitfalls — October 8, 2009
People tend to only look at national culture when they go into international negotiations ... but there is also educational culture, race culture, gender culture, a religious culture. (article) Horacio Falcao, October 2009
- Gathering international competitive intelligence on the web — October 8, 2009
Having or not having adequate CI could mean the difference between success and failure, especially in international markets. Information on the Web is available from many different sources ranging from personal home pages to corporate Web sites and professional statistical and information services. (blog/article) David Gikandi, October 8, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: develop a plan for your business — October 7, 2009
In today's business and economic environment it will be even more crucial for business professionals to practice competing and marketing intelligently-and that requires developing an ongoing Competitive Intelligence (CI) gathering function for your company. (blog/article) Susan Brod, October 7, 2009
- NYT small business summit — October 7, 2009
Excepts from Seena Sharp (of Sharp Market Intelligence and author of Competitive Intelligence Advantage) speaking at the New York Times Small Business Summit. (video) October 7, 2009
- Texas Workforce Commission's take on social networking — October 7, 2009
Another area of concern is what your employees may post or blog about the company, your trade secrets, their co-workers or your customers online after hours. In many ways, these social networks are competitive-intelligence dream tools. (blog) Maria Elena Duron, October 7, 2009
- A competitive intelligence note to a CEO — October 6, 2009
Competitive Intelligence can help you to organize your external perspectives and align your team to compete better. Here are five ways. (blog) Tom Hawes, October 6, 2009
- Profiting from the public sector — October 6, 2009
When you want to win government contracts, you have to research and focus tightly to win.Free Web sites offer extraordinary amounts of federal contract market intelligence. (article) Judy Bradt, Business Week, October 6, 2009
- IP strategy document — October 5, 2009
Any company that wants to build a patent portfolio that dominates their marketplace needs to first undertake a competitive patent analysis. (blog) DB Halling, October 5, 2009
- Why projects fail and what you can do about it — October 5, 2009
Why sales numbers are not achieved is usually a combination of sales execution, product and/or company issues and lack of competitive intelligence. blog) Blair Koch, October 5, 2009
- Ethical surprises: gaming the different ethical realities — October 2, 2009
Rather than just speak for the keynote address, I challenged my audience with a series of information-gathering situations and asked them if they thought the behavior in each case was "normal," "aggressive," "unethical," or "illegal." (blog) Leonard Fuld October 2, 2009
- Samepoint - a powerful social media search tool — October 2, 2009
SamePoint is a search tool that digs for information amongst the "social conversations" that are taking place on blogs and social networks. (blog) Ian Smith, October 2, 2009
- A competitive intelligence note to strategic marketing — October 1, 2009
Your job is to convince busy people to change because of what is coming. Few have the right combination of skill, motivation and shear persistence to do this job well. Here's how CI helps with those challenges. (blog) Tom Hawes, October 1, 2009
- Increasing sales with buyer personas — October 1, 2009
There is atremendous need for accurate buyer personas based on real-world win loss data. Here are twelve key buyer persona elements. (blog) Ken Allred, October 1, 2009
September
- Core competencies: 5 case scenarios — September 29, 2009
The single indispensable element to CI is the human factor: the smarts, experience, and instinct that can turn huge collections of dead facts into live intelligence that plays a central part in making business decisions. (blog/article) no author. September 29, 2009
- Presenting intelligence findings — September 29, 2009
The hallmark of an effective corporate competitive intelligence function is how it communicates important CI findings to company decision-makers. (blog) Ken Sawka, September 29, 2009
- Why won? Why lost? Why missed? — September 29, 2009
These customer insight surveys give you the information and insights that any business requires to retain existing customers, win back old customers and win new business. They also provide a goldmine of competitive intelligence. (blog) Jared Bothwell, September 29, 2009
- A start-up's tale, tweet by tweet — September 28, 2009
Wise use of social media could help speed the birth of many new ventures. Twitter can be useful for spotting and exploiting weakness in the competition. (article) WSJ, Riva Richmond, September 28, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: be ahead of the competition — September 28, 2009
Companies that want to be ahead of the competition must have a well-performing radar system. The following pages will give you an overview of CI. Johannes Deltl, (PowerPoint) 18 slides. No date.
- Cooperative intelligence with Ellen Naylor — September 27, 2009
Interview Ellen Naylor who outlines the concept of Cooperative Intelligence and shares examples from her career as a practitioner and CI consultant. (blog/podcast) August Jackson,September 27, 2009
- Being a good (blank) is not enough — September 25, 2009
For those of you who are looking to expand beyond the basic definition of what makes a good law librarian, Competitive Intelligence research may be an opportunity for you. (blog) Greg Lambert, September 25, 2009
- In the mind of your competitor — September 25, 2009
The best strategic tools and models are pretty useless if you don't have a good understanding of your competitors and it can be very dangerous if your assumptions are incorrectly based on industry rumour and gossip. (blog) Adrian, September 25, 2009
- When does web 2.0 work? — September 24, 2009
McKinsey recently published 'How Companies Are Benefiting From Web 2.0.' It holds implications for the intelligence community and its attempt to bring Web 2.0 technologies into the workplace. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, September 24, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: Saloon lessons — September 23, 2009
Our jobs in competitive intelligence are to orchestrate many things to proactively equip senior management with what they need to know about the environment, specific competitors and possible strategic options. (blog) Stefano DeRossi, September 23, 2009
- Double response rates for your win loss analysis program — September 23, 2009
One of the most important practices to increase participation rates is to create and utilize introduction notes. There are thre options on who will send the introduction note. (blog) Ken Allred, September 23, 2009
- Social media: the pathway toward gaining competitive intelligence — September 23, 2009
Those just venturing into the social media sphere can build parallel processes for gathering competitive intelligence right from the start. The first thing a company should do with social media is to listen. (blog) Stefano DeRossi, September 23, 2009
- Five essential tips for manufacturers considering social media — September 22, 2009
It is no longer a question of whether or not to join the social media movement. It’s about choosing the best strategy. There are different communities for different goals; three keys to a targeted approach. (blog) Toby Brown, Sept 22
- A competitive intelligence note to a general manager — September 21, 2009
Competitive intelligence can help you navigate through the complexities of the competitive environment better. There are five common imperatives that you have and several ways that CI can help you. (blog) Tom Hawes, September 21, 2009
- Are you gathering competitive intelligence ethically? — September 21, 2009
What's the line between gathering competitive intelligence and industrial espionage? How can you keep tabs on your competitors in a responsible manner? (blog) Devin Liddell, September 21, 2009
- France creates office for Economic intel — September 21, 2009
France is re-engineering its economic intelligence system to improve the collection of commercial data by some 2 million French companies to boost their competitiveness. (article) Pierre Tran,September 21, 2009
- Leaping over the intelligence-decision gap — September 21, 2009
Frequently, even companies that possess world-class CI functions struggle with turning credible, insightful, actionable intelligence into a clear strategy, decision, or course of action. (blog) Ken Sawka, September 21, 2009
- Understanding your competitive landscape — September 21, 2009
Successful companies conduct ongoing competitive research that shows them the big picture. A competitive landscape (also known as "competitive intelligence") provides cohesive, detailed information on what your competitors are doing. (blog) Blair Koch, September 21, 2009
- Strategies for preparing for a patent interference — September 20, 2009
Your client will never know a patent problem exists (until it is too late) unless it is obtaining competitive intelligence. Here's practices you can employ to explain what you can or should do when you identify a potential interference. (blog/article) Richard Neifeld, September 20, 2009
- Warning: economic recovery ahead — September 20, 2009
Strategic flexibility comes not only from the development of nimble strategies and contingency plans. It also requires a sound business early warning system. (article) Ken Sawka, September 2009
- Safeguarding company secrets: the people perspective — September 19, 2009
The basic rule is that if information leakage may result in significant loss of time or money, you need to consider some sophisticated protection measures. (article/ podcast) Vernon Prior, September 2009 Asia Management System
- Johns Hopkins Competitive analysis slides — September 17, 2009
My slides for a guest lecture to the CI class at Johns Hopkins University on my favorite competitive analysis framework. (blog/ppt) August Jackson, September 17, 2009
- Website traffic - are CI tools accurate? — September 16, 2009
Conducting research on how accurately online competitive intelligence tools can predict website traffic. (blog) Sean Ferguson, September 16, 2009
- Lessons from the Double Deuce — September 15, 2009
How does your competition develop new business? How can you ensure that you're getting the competitive intelligence you need to outsell your rivals? So what are you doing to get a competitive edge? (blog) September 15, 2009
- Oldie but goodie — September 15, 2009
The way to do Intelligence has its styles depending on cultural backgrounds, local geographic patterns and a country's history. Jose Gasparin, September 15, 2009
- Predictable competitors — September 15, 2009
I presume you would like to predict your competitors' moves better than you do now. Say, for instance, their prices. Let's work on that. (blog) Mark Chussil, September 15, 2009
- Why CEO's are blind to trouble — September 15, 2009
It's a well documented fact that way too many highly regarded CEOs (and senior execs and entrepreneurs too) are blind to trouble.(blog/article) Tony Johnson, September 15, 2009
- Window of foresight — September 15, 2009
Getting insiders to look outside is sometimes not as easy as it might seem, even when they are considered forward-looking thinkers. Internal mindsets can bias perception and outlook.(blog/article) Lanny Vincent, September 15, 2009
- A competitive intelligence note to a product manager — September 14, 2009
Your job is to champion one or more products for your company. All along the way, you have to understand the environment, explain your recommendations and justify the company's investments for your product. (blog) Tom Hawes, September 14, 2009
- Competitive intelligence tools and services — September 14, 2009
AdGooRoo CEO Richard Stokes discusses Competitive Intelligence Tools and Services, which ones work best, and which ones you want to look out for. (podcast) September 14, 2009
- The human side of competitive intelligence — September 14, 2009
It is a difficult task to create a CI function. Navigating the internal issues, especially those related to the people, is often as critical as any external analysis. This paper describes fifteen steps along the way. (article, 38 pages) Tom Hawes 2009
- An evaluation of the effectiveness of CI as a management tool — September 12, 2009
This research activity is geared towards the investigation of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited's migration from business intelligence to competitor intelligence as part of its management tool. (article/research) September 12, 2009?)
- Choosing a study area — September 12, 2009
Choosing an area to study is often one of the easiest parts of a competitive technical intelligence (CTI) problem. (blog) Gary Oosta, September 12, 2009
- How to get a job in intelligence part 11: advice from veterans — September 11, 2009
As I was doing research for this series, I reached out to a number of my colleagues for advice. There was a surprising amount of agreement among these public and private sector veterans of intelligence work. (blog) Kristin Wheaton, September 11, 2009
- Be a networking maven — September 10, 2009
Fellow competitors can be a wealth of information and competitive intelligence. blog) Robert Johnston, September 10, 2009
- Developing tactical forecasts — September 9, 2009
By building integrated decision resource centers and by centralizing departments, companies increase efficiency and develop consolidated and robust intelligence. (blog) Yanis Saradjian, September 9, 2009
- Is your business paddling or floating? — September 8, 2009
. For the successful collecting of information from the sales force, you must prove to them and their sales managers that the process is of value to them. (blog) Steve Hurst, September 8, 2009
- More on the dangers of freemail — September 8, 2009
As reported in the Washington Post and published by the Houston Chronicle, for only $100 you can buy the password to any freemail account. in addition to email being inherently insecure. (blog) Toby Brown, September 8, 2009
- Fighting the trade war — September 7, 2009
In order to improve the competitiveness of French businesses and to protect them from disloyal methods of competitors, the French government has mandated special experts. Stephanie Paviet, September 7, 2009
- Introducing technology mapping and CTI — September 7, 2009
Technology mapping and business analytics are implicit in the CTI process. Technology mapping is a form of business analytics. (blog) Gary Oosta, September 7, 2009
- Compete intelligently with competitive intelligence — September 4, 2009
Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your website through analytics monitoring and customer tracking may help to develop a sound Online Marketing strategy, but not knowing your competitors strategy would limit your growth. (article) Saurav Verma, September 4, 2009
- How team of geeks cracked spy trade — September 4, 2009
Some analysts say Palantir's software strength is helping analysts draw inferences when confronted with an enormous amount of disparate data.
- Law librarians: no more sacred cows — September 2, 2009
The library, in short, has marketing issues of its own. Lack of feedback is a recurring problem. (article) Alan Cohen, September 2, 2009
- Social networking: not just for teens — September 1, 2009
Social networking websites are becoming important tools for lawyers, firms and companies. From keeping track of colleagues, to finding referrals and introduction, to vetting an expert witness, these "profiles on steroids" are now can provide critical competitive intelligence. (podcast) Robert Ambrogi, September 2009
August
- DIY detection: softly,softly, catchee monkee pt 1 — August 31, 2009
The more colourful parts of your intelligence puzzle are typically gleaned from soft information; that is, rumour, suggestion, opinion, gossip, hints, and speculation. (article) Vernon Prior, August 2009
- Five questions for August Jackson — August 31, 2009
Social media is a great tool for CI professionals to conduct primary research. They provide very valuable insights into a company's priorities and the state of affairs. (blog/interview) Aref Jdey, August 31, 2009
- Will associations go the way of print media? — August 31, 2009
It's hard for associations to survive in this tough economic climate. But I think it's more than that: the association model is changing not just due to competition from other associations, but for people's time and easy access to connections formerly made through associations via social media. (blog) Ellen Naylor, August 31, 2009
- Tomorrow's competitors ain't what they used to be — August 30, 2009
Companies need to be examining right now the strategic implications of the possibility that they, or a competitor, could be "creatively destroyed" by one or more substitutes. (article) Ken Sawka, August 2009
- Hottest tactics to beat your competitors — August 28, 2009
Big companies have become astute in social-media strategies and they invest in competitive intelligence. But they do not divulge what they learn. As a result, competitive intelligence is still a relatively unknown best-practice in business, especially for small to medium-size companies. Many small to medium size businesses owners assume competitive intelligence is simply the art of understanding business adversaries. Not true. (blog) Terry Corbell, August 28, 2009
- Sizing up the competition — August 28, 2009
Conceptually, all of marketing is based on the idea that you must thoroughly know the environment in which your business operates in order to successfully promote and sell your product or service. All successful business owners know their markets, competitors, customer wants and needs, and "what it takes to be competitive." To help you become a successful owner, let's look at what you should know in particular about your competitors. (blog) Del Mar College Small Business Development Center, August 28, 2009
- Thinking strategically, acting tactically — August 28, 2009
The world is dominated by tactical thinking and a strategist will always be in the minority. A strategist that only masters strategic thinking without understanding how to act tactically will most likely fail (or at best succeed sporadically). Here are 5 powerful rules that can help guide a strategist's behavior and translate their message. (blog) Tom Hawes, August 28, 2009
- Competitive market research — August 27, 2009
Surveys can be used in many different ways to gather competitive customer satisfaction and loyalty data. Won business surveys help identify the differentiating messages you should be emphasizing in your marketing and provide an ongoing stream of competitive intelligence. (blog) Jeffrey Henning, August 27, 2009
- Discovering competitive technical intelligence — August 27, 2009
Competitive technical intelligence (CTI) is one of the best kept secrets on the planet! I discovered it as a fortuitous career accident in the 1980's. I'd like to hear how you discovered the utility of competitive technical intelligence or business analytics. To learn more about CTI, join us in Minneapolis on September 18th for a half-day workshop that is sponsored by SCIP and LifeScience Alley and is presented by Patent Insights. (blog) Gary Oosta, August 27, 2009
- For intelligence officers, a wiki way to connect dots — August 27, 2009
Intellipedia is a collaborative online intelligence repository, and it runs counter to traditional reluctance in the intelligence community to the sharing of classified information. The site, which is available only to users with proper government clearance, has grown markedly since its formal launch in 2006 and now averages more than 15,000 edits per day. It's home to 900,000 pages and 100,000 user accounts. (article) Stev Vogel, Washington Post August 27, 2009
- How to leverage Twitter for hiring — August 27, 2009
Organizations are using Twitter for just about everything from ecommerce to legislative awareness. Given the variety of messages that Twitter can be used for, why not use it for one of the most critical needs an organization has - finding employees? You can also use services like Google Alerts and Notify Me to see what jobs are being offered. Call it competitive intelligence in the job market, if you will. (blog) Sharlyn Lauby, August 27, 2009
- Managing with the brain in mind — August 27, 2009
The brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. Finally, the SCARF model helps explain why intelligence, in itself, isn't sufficient for a good leader. (article) David Rock, August 27, 2009 Strategy+Businesss issue 56
- SEO competitive intelligence: learn from your SEO rivals — August 27, 2009
Understanding what your competitors are doing online is a must and absolute priority when launching a new website that is entering a competitive space and also when established websites want to keep an eye on their competition. By knowing what your rivals are doing in their SEO and social media space, not only will you have a better knowledge of their online marketing strategy, but you can also emulate what is working for them, and generate internal ideas to stay proactive. (blog) Loren Baker, August 27, 2009
- A useful analogy for competitive intelligence — August 26, 2009
In the never ending quest to define, explain and sell competitive intelligence, we sometimes resort to analogy. When the analogy is a familiar one, maybe our listeners will grasp that key fact that we have thus far struggled to express. There are good and bad lessons to be learned from American professional football. (blog) Tom Hawes, August 26, 2009
- Guide to competitive intelligence — August 26, 2009
Competitive intelligence is a widely misunderstood discipline among small businesses. Collecting competitive intelligence is closer to what a journalist does than a spy, in that there are laws and ethics of conduct. CI for entrepreneurs is fundamentally about effective internal communication. Here are five common questions businesses ask - often too late - and some ideas on how to use CI techniques to ferret out the answers. (article) Joanna Pachner, August 26, 2009 Globe and Mail
- Understanding where win-loss analysis will help — August 26, 2009
Some in-depth reflection on the impact that a win loss analysis program can really have on an organization. Win loss analysis can have a meaningful impact on nearly all of the key strategic and tactical responsibilities that product managers and marketers have. (blog) Ken Allred, August 26, 2009
- CTI, CI, BI, BA: intelligence alphabet soup — August 25, 2009
I've been preparing a review of the similarities and differences among CTI (competitive technical intelligence), CI (competitive intelligence), BI (business intelligence) and BA (business analytics). In the process, I've been looking at websites, presentations, papers and books to find cohesive definitions of each area. Te many definitions of the areas are so broad that the differences among CTI, CI, BI and BA are nearly invisible. (blog) Gary Oosta, August 25, 2009
- Competitive intelligence is optional — August 25, 2009
Wouldn't you and I always want to know everything we could about our competitors? Surprisingly, the answer is "no." Sometimes competitive intelligence is optional. Here are 4 instances when competitive intelligence matters little or not all (maybe). (blog) Tom Hawes, August 25, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: evolution of BI to analytics — August 24, 2009
Evolution of BI into CI: stage 1 Reporting - WHAT happened? Stage 2 Analyzing - WHY did it happen? Stage 3 Predicting - WHAT will happen? Stage 4 Operationalizing - WHAT IS Happening? Stage 5 Active Warehousing - What do we WANT to happen? (blog) ‘Ashubhatia,' August 24, 2009
- How P&G got employees to use social networking at work — August 24, 2009
Procter & Gamble (P&G) is expanding its vision for collaboration, incorporating Web 2.0 tools into a single platform to unlock weak and potential ties-employees with common goals or interests who have little to no contact. Through its Global Business Services group, P&G is deploying an intranet that allows users to create value beyond their usual circles. (article) Rick Swanborg, August 24, 2009
- Is getting access to competitor's presentations claiming to be an indy blogger corp espionage? — August 24, 2009
If you get a "press pass" to an event as a blogger, rather than as an employee of your company, at what point is there an ethical lapse? A spokesperson for Boeing, who also writes for a defense contractor blog, went to an industry event under a press pass for the blog, rather than being listed as a Boeing employee -- and then sat in on various presentations by competitors. The real issue is one of disclosure. (article) Michael Masnick, August 24, 2009
- Mining the web for feelings, not facts — August 23, 2009
The rise of blogs and social networks has fueled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression. An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world's unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data. (article) Alex Wright, August 23, 2009 NYT
- Competitive intelligence in law firms survey results — August 21, 2009
Survey regarding how their law firms were approaching CI. With 77 firms responding, 75.4% are performing some type of competitive intelligence with another 8.8% not doing so yet but are in the planning phase; 12.3% have a formal CI program; 39.3% have management or executive committee endorsement; 61.5% are seeing the CI request increasing with 7.7% decreasing and 28.2% remaining steady; 23.7% are seeing funding for CI increasing with 7.9% decreasing and 55.3% remaining steady. (blog) Nina Platt, August 21, 2009
- Guidelines for ethics in information gathering unclear? — August 21, 2009
The article by Justin Scheck discussed the battle between a small ink-cartridge refiller which buys empty cartridges and refills them and a major printer manufacturer which depends on the aftermarket sales for printer business profitability. For those of us in the CI field, this is not a new story, only new names. But the end of the article contains a surprise: a statement that the legal field was uncertain about the ethics of obtaining information. (blog) Parmalee Eastman, August 21, 2009
- Measuring the forces of long-term change: the 2009 Shift Index — August 21, 2009
The Deloitte Center for the Edge report describes their Shift Index. It consists of three indices: foundation, flow and impact, and 25 metrics that together quantify the stock, pace, and implications of the shift. The index enables analysts to anticipate changes, identify bottlenecks and guide strategy. (pdf) 142 pages.
- Use case: wiki replaces email for sales force enablement — August 21, 2009
One the ironies of working for a large company is that internal education and enablement of our sales and marketing teams is as important and as daunting a task as is educating the market in general and our potential customers. We have thousands of sales and marketing people around the world, and keeping them all aware of the continuous stream of new product announcements, competitive intelligence, and marketing programs that we have is always an important and has been a time-consuming effort. (blog) Stephen Londergan, August 21, 2009
- Contrasting the traits of good product and CI managers — August 20, 2009
Many of the traits that make a good product manager also make a good competitive intelligence manager: good communication, smart, articulate and dogged. Like product managers, CI professionals rely on others in their company for support who do not report to them. Both jobs require that delicate balance of gaining cooperation from others by pushing the organization where it needs to go while being constructive and NOT creating an adversarial role with other people. (blog) Ellen Naylor, August 20, 2009
- Teaching a person to fish in a reactive world — August 20, 2009
There are some specific questions that I handle over and over again, so I created a database with the information. I demonstrated it, passed out the link to the different departments so that they could run these searches themselves. I never really followed up with anyone, or did any additional training on the product after that initial introduction. I just assumed people were still using it and it was such a great product that obviously they would understand how to use it, remember it was there when they needed it. (blog) Greg Lambert, August 20, 2009
- What is a competitive intelligence ‘friend'? — August 20, 2009
One of the things that intrigues me about competitive intelligence is the types of relationships that are required to be successful. Intuitively I think and empirically I know that people matter most. Not understating the need for results and concrete benefits, I think that we sometimes miss the human element of leadership and what it needs most. (blog) Tom Hawes, August 20, 2009
- Analyst skills: timeliness, part 2 — August 19, 2009
One of the biggest obstacles to creating effective competitive intelligence is the timeliness of the data. If intelligence is not available at the moment of need, it does little good. And the value deteriorates quickly after the decision for which it was generated has been made. (blog)n.a. August 19, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: a neutral or an advocate? — August 19, 2009
Sometimes competitive intelligence clients might want "just the facts." That means that the competitive intelligence person is neutral about interpretation and decisions. The clients reserve for themselves the right and responsibility to make sense of the facts for their situation. when you encounter such a client, it is critical to know ahead of time so that what you deliver aids the client's interpretation but does not attempt to replace it. (blog, Tom Hawes, August 19, 2009
- Analyst skills: timeliness, part 1 — August 18, 2009
An essential part of being a good analyst is timeliness. Without the analytical product being able to be communicated or disseminated to the decision-maker in a timely manner the intelligence is no longer usable or perhaps not as useful. Therefore managing time is a skill that is needed by every analyst and the ability to set time frames is essential in any intelligence manager. (blog) August 18, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: saloon lessons — August 17, 2009
Our jobs in competitive intelligence are to help the "good guys" win against competitors. We orchestrate many things to proactively equip senior management with what they need to know about the environment, specific competitors and possible strategic options. Our jobs matter because few other functions have such a broad portfolio of tasks that affect the "safety" of the company in a dangerous competitive landscape. (blog) Tom Hawes, August 17, 2009
- Digital footprints reveal sensitive company and personal insights — August 17, 2009
Competitive intelligence - by following a group of people in the same company its easy to pick up snippets of information. In the PR industry you can spot when there is a big pitch in play, in FMCG companies when a launch is brewing and in a tech firm when a new product release is due. (blog) Stephen Waddington, August 17, 2009
- Social media: the pathway toward gaining competitive intelligence — August 17, 2009
Do smart b-to-b marketers use every available source of information to learn about developments in their competitive spaces? Not necessarily, according to a recent Hoover's poll gauging our audience's use of social media for gathering competitive intelligence. (article) Tim Walker, August 17, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: what seems to click — August 13, 2009
How many times have you been asked about competitive intelligence? Someone sincerely wants to know what you do and how you might be helpful so they ask the obvious: "What exactly do you do?" Tom Hawes, August 13, 2009
- Conducting research during the crisis — August 12, 2009
In these economically-challenged times, staying too insular and taking your eyes off the competition could prove catastrophic. Historically, downturned economies have ignited rivalry, inspired price wars and fueled other competitive actions. It is imperative to closely monitor the competition during these times, which is also an activity that can often be accomplished with little monetary investment. (blog) Jurgita Adomaityte, August 12, 2009
- Decision maker-derived vs. sales-derived win loss analysis — August 11, 2009
Recently, respected product managers have been discussing the value of win loss reports as they relate to product strategy and technology roadmaps. Win loss analysis is perhaps the most important intelligence you need to validate your product strategies and roadmaps. Let's compare the results between a sales-derived win review and a decision maker-derived win review. (blog/article) Ken Allred, August 11, 2009
- CI series 15: evangelize the mission — August 10, 2009
The final step is to spread the word about competitive intelligence. Some communities call this "evangelizing." In business venues, it means extolling the virtues and power of a concept. The general goals are similar. That is, we are after conversions that represent a change in mindset and priorities. There are some specific goals. (blog) Tom Hawes, August 10, 2009
- Competitive intelligence analysis tools: hybridSEM.com — August 10, 2009
Joe Whyte of HybridSEM.com talks about competitive intelligence analysis tools and reviews a few of the ones HybridSEM uses on a daily basis in the 4th installment of internet marketing 101. (video) Joe Whyte, August 10, 2009
- Failure of competitive intelligence marketing — August 10, 2009
This is exactly where (with exceptions, of course) that the Competitive Intelligence community fails to deliver. There is a lack of intellectual and emotional understanding of the customers and what is important to them. If that understanding existed then there would be less talk solely among CI professionals and more between practitioners and the people that use CI information. (blog) Tom Hawes, August 10, 2009
- Outsource competitor analysis services to India for precise competitor knowledge — August 10, 2009
Competitor analysis, also known as competitive intelligence, plays an essential part in planning and executing a successful marketing strategy. It involves the collecting, analyzing and applying of information about the products, services, customers and pricing strategies of a competitor. Outsourcing your competitor analysis services to India will help you gain important insights into the strengths and weaknesses of competing products or services before launching your product or service or starting work on your own prototype. (blog) n.a. August 10, 2009
- Real-world application of win loss analysis intelligence — August 7, 2009
Running a company means you are constantly evaluating how to make improvements for your customers, your employees, and your partners. Even after doing this for the past decade, we still consistently find important, even critical, intelligence on how to better meet the needs of our customers through our own win loss program. (blog) Ken Allred, Aug 7, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: your sales teams need to know what they are up against — August 6, 2009
There are several reasons to keep a current portfolio of insight on each of your competitors. The obvious reason is to know what you are up against. Equally important is your ability to differentiate your own offerings. You differentiate from your competitors, which you can only do if you know what they offer. The third reason is to make sure that you are never blindsided by their news. (blog) Bruce Brien August 6, 2009
- Relationship economics = correct portrayal of social media ROI? — August 6, 2009
Over the past 5 months I have seen more companies trying to find the ROI of Social Media. In other words, how much is it going to cost and is Social Media worth the resources? The answer to that question is- let us look at the Economics of relationship building. (blog) Derek Showerman, August 6, 2009
- A new paradigm for competitive Intelligence training? — August 5, 2009
Two clients have asked me to help them develop training in competitive intelligence for non-CI professionals. Neither of these companies manages a full-time, centralized CI function. Instead, each company's strategic marketing function wants to instill product, brand, and sales managers with core CI skills to enhance their job performance. These companies may, or may not, develop a dedicated CI team; for now, building CI-related skills and competencies among a broader community is more important. (blog) Ken Sawka, August 5, 2009
- A small business guide to intellectual property — August 5, 2009
The two most precious resources for any small-business owner are time and money. That's why when the subject of intellectual property comes up, many owners run in the other direction. They see images of expensive lawyers and use that as an excuse to ignore the topic, reasoning that it is a problem for big companies to worry about. The trouble is, with the rise of competition through the Internet and on the global market, understanding intellectual property is more critical than ever for small-business owners. Let's explore some of the common fallacies. (article) Darren Dahl, August 5, 2009 NYT
- Competitive intelligence analytics: Google Trends for websites — August 5, 2009
If you are on the web tap into the reams and reams of competitive intelligence data that is available online. Google has a group of tools that provide actionable trends and insights. The first is Google Trends for websites. (blog) Avinash Kaushik, August 5, 2009
- How to get a job in intelligence part 7: beyond borders - Europe, India, and South Africa — August 5, 2009
It has been my pleasure over the last several years to get to know a number of intelligence professionals in other countries. I recently reached out to some of them to ask them what the job market was like for intelligence professionals in their neck of the woods. I received some good replies that I thought were worth sharing. (blog) Kris Wheaton, August 5, 2009
- Keeping an eye on your rivals Q&A — August 5, 2009
Small business owners likely think that competitive intelligence is too complex and expensive for small businesses to undertake. In fact, most CI techniques cost nothing but time, and the findings are vital to small business success, especially in tough times. Ms. Marshall joined us earlier and took your questions about competitive intelligence. Here's the Q&A. (article) Dave Michaels, August 5, 2009
- Law practice technology information sources and tools — August 5, 2009
The most difficult question to answer is "what's the best technology to buy"? The simplest response is "the one you'll use." This article is a short list identifying some ways to learn about new technologies that apply to legal research and law practice. At the same time, some specific tools have been identified that will help manage research, communication and information-based tasks. (article) Ken Strutin, August 5, 2009
- Top 10 things you should not share on social networks — August 5, 2009
Company information (#7). You may be dying to tell the world about your new work promotion, but if it's news that could be advantageous to one of your company's competitors, then it's not something you should share. News of a planned expansion or a big project role and anything else about your workplace should be kept private. (article) Charles Bryant, August 2009
- Apple will learn that secrecy has its price — August 4, 2009
Many experts suggest that openly dealing with and solving a problem help the company, both ethically and economically. Not only does Apple reduce its own reputation for creating "quality" products, but it backs a truck of ammunition to the loading docks of its competitors. You have to bet that companies out to send Apple reeling are at this moment sending competitive intelligence teams swarming through legal research, finding as many examples of safety issues as they can. (article) Erik Sherman, August 4, 2009
- CI series 14: go on the offense — August 4, 2009
By its nature as a service, Competitive Intelligence is a requested activity. That is, a senior management sponsor asks a question about the competitive environment and the CI professional responds. Nevertheless, there will come a time when you (as the CI professional) will have the professional confidence and organizational credibility to lead. (blog) Tom Hawes, August 4, 2009
- Market intelligence: your customers and prospects expect you to know them — August 4, 2009
Obtaining market intelligence on your prospects and customers is critical to forging a long lasting partnership with them. As I said, they expect you to know their industry, market conditions, and specific business environment. They also expect you to come to the table with very specific questions so that no one's time is wasted. (blog) Bruce Brien, August 4, 2009
- Petroleum engineers ponder on challenges — August 4, 2009
The challenges facing the oil industry today are varied, with efforts to prospect for and produce the commodity becoming more difficult and expensive. The challenging environment means the deployment of technology, expertise, best practice and competitive intelligence towards realizing industry goals and objectives. (blog) Endurance Robert, August 4, 2009
- The art of competitive intelligence — August 4, 2009
One of the first tasks I advised the client to work on was to look at the competition. CI s gathering information you can use to make informed decisions. So as a small business owner/ marketer, what should I do? Think about these core steps. (blog) n.a. August 4, 2009
- What is actionable intelligence? — August 4, 2009
Competitive intelligence is any intelligence undergone that leads to a better understanding of the competitive landscape within your niche. Actionable intelligence is any intelligence you can use to improve your marketing position within the marketplace. Sometimes these two kinds of intelligence intersect, but sometimes they don't. (blog) n.a. August 4, 2009
- Beyond Fakirs and call centres: lessons from India's global powerhouses — August 3, 2009
Indian companies, following decades of post-independence mediocrity, have emerged as global business powerhouses. Everyone knows that India, often mentioned in the same breath as Brazil, China and Russia, is emerging as a leading economic power. But what makes India's story more exciting is that its outward expansion has been driven largely by private companies, and not state-owned enterprises as was more so in China. (article) August 3, 2009
- How to get a job in intelligence part 6: Beyond borders — August 3, 2009
So far, I have really only talked about intelligence and intelligence analysis positions within the US. There are actually quite a few ways to find good jobs outside the US as well. There are many reasons to take a job outside the US -- travel, cultural exposure, learning a language, etc. Some of these jobs pay quite well, many are very rewarding and almost all of them are good resume builders. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, August 3, 2009
- Twitter metrics — August 3, 2009
For those of us that are trying to get real value out of Twitter, it's time to incorporate Twitter analytics. Twitter analytics takes the existing tools and uses them to track metrics that are tied back to your marketing goals. Last time I listed several ways businesses are using Twitter. This post is going to create measurable metrics for those as much as possible. (blog) Ryan Nokes, August 3, 2009
- Creating global intelligence — August 1, 2009
Discover the back story of the US intelligence community by exploring "Creating Global Intelligence: The Creation of the US Intelligence Community and Lessons for the 21st Century", a collection of declassified documents from the late 1940s to the early 1950s that ultimately led to the establishment of the CIA. This 800+ collection allows history to come to life as well as giving perspectives on the complex issues that senior US Government officials grappled with when considering how to establish an enduring national intelligence capability. August 2009
- Twelve tips for doing competitive analysis — August 1, 2009
For anyone trying to grow a business, one of the first tasks is to map the competitive landscape. With a good understanding of the competition facing your company, you'll be able to spot and exploit opportunities as they develop. These dozen points should help you draw and refine your map, beginning with your earliest efforts to plan your new venture and continuing for as long as you stay in business. (article) n.a August 1, 2009
July
- Four great suggestions about tapping CI for product success — July 31, 2009
This post is the first of four on the insights from a joint meeting of the Boston Product Marketing Association and the Boston SCIP Chapter held earlier this year to discuss how product management and marketing (PMM) staff could work more effectively with competitive intelligence (CI) and competitive intelligence professionals. (blog) Parmelee Eastman, July 31, 2009
- In French Inquiry, a glimpse of corporate spying — July 31, 2009
The story has the elements of a corporate thriller: a cast of characters that includes former French spies and military men, an American cycling champion, Greenpeace activists and a dogged judge whose investigation takes him from a sports doping laboratory outside Paris to a Moroccan jail and to some of the top corporations in France. Like installments in a serial novel, new revelations have been dripping out since March. And while the climax is still probably many months away, the story is providing a rare glimpse into the shadowy and potentially lucrative business of gathering what corporations refer to as "strategic intelligence." (article) David Jolly, July 31, 2009
- Next Global Brands arriving from emerging markets — July 31, 2009
The days of global dominance by Western brands may be numbered. Due to shifts in global economic wealth, many of the next mega brands are likely to emerge from Asia, the Middle East or South America. Do you expect to see more global brands coming from emerging markets? (article) July 31, 2009
- Separating CI from the sleaze — July 31, 2009
According to a recent article in USA Today, incidents of corporate espionage are on the increase, thanks to cheap, easy-to-use technology devices and increasing numbers of displaced and disgruntled workers due to the recession. Meanwhile, the proper use of business and competitive intelligence by US companies is also on the increase. These two facts are completely unrelated to each other. (blog) Ken Sawka, July 31, 2009
- Twenty one top Twitter tips — July 31, 2009
Turns out there are myriad ways Twitter can have an impact, and not just as a marginal marketing tool. Indeed, we found 21 clever ways to use Twitter--for everything from boosting sales and scouting talent, to conducting market research and raising capital. Chances are, there will be many more. (article) Daniel Adler, July 31, 2009
- Competitive intelligence — July 30, 2009
The short piece, "Competitive Intelligence in a Global Communications Age," talks to information arbitrage and story telling as ways to help people understand this new and more diverse world we live in. Information arbitrage refers back to the practice of people who would buy a currency in one market and sell it in another, based upon knowing that there was a difference in value. (blog) Cliff Krieger, July 30, 2009
- Social media for competitive intelligence — July 30, 2009
Kontent Summer School - Social Media for Competitive Intelligence on Tuesday evening. Here are Tris Hussey's workshop slides for those that would like to review them. (blog/ppt) n.a. July 30, 2009
- Librarians evolve with competitive intelligence — July 29, 2009
Competitive Intelligence in law firms continues to expand and evolve offering tremendous opportunity for law librarians. For librarians looking to play a bigger role in your firm's CI efforts, here are a few suggestions on how to get more involved. (blog) Chris Whitmore, July 29, 2009
- Twitter analytics overview, part 1 — July 29, 2009
This is the first post in a series of 7 focused on applying marketing analytics to Twitter. Using Twitter analytics can help businesses track brand advocates and detractors, follow conversation topics and trends, measure visitors to your site from Twitter, and improve ROI. (blog) n.a. July 29, 2009
- Capturing Knowledge: if you've highlighted everything, you've learned nothing — July 28, 2009
Knowledge Management should not be based on a "cast a wide net" approach to the information that flows in and out of our firms. In fact, most information should be ephemeral in nature; addressing only the specific need of the moment and not be thought of as a permanent addition to the knowledge of the firm. When we try to capture everything, we end up capturing nothing. (blog) Greg Lambert, July 29, 2009
- Competitive intelligence vs. nice-to-know information — July 28, 2009
There's much to be said about the world of competitive intelligence, and the fact that there are just as many terms used to describe it as there are industries that use it, doesn't make it any easier to understand. The most common misunderstanding within the industry, whether by professionals or amateurs, is the difference between competitive intelligence and what people think is competitive intelligence, but is really nice-to-know information. (blog/article) N.a. July 28, 2009
- Keeping an eye on your rivals — July 28, 2009
Small business owners likely think that competitive intelligence is too complex and expensive for small businesses to undertake. In fact, most CI techniques cost nothing but time, and the findings are vital to small business success, especially in tough times. (article) July 28, 2009
- Product review: get organized with Evernote — July 28, 2009
Competitive intelligence is another good use for Evernote. During the day I will often come across a blog, an article or some tidbit is competitive intelligence that I want to capture. I use to post it to the delicious, but I have never found that too productive. With Evernote, I can easily add it to the appropriate Notebook, tag it, and maintain its URL. The old days of stuffing competitive information into a MS Word file are gone. (blog) Mark Officer, July 28, 2009
- State secrets, business information in China — July 28, 2009
A company engaged in competitive intelligence in China will sometimes find a piece of information reclassified at the very moment the information is acquired in the course of research. Or a foreign company may inadvertently uncover state secrets while researching rivals, putting it in a precarious position. People active in the gathering of business information argue that if global corporations stick to international best practices and follow their own corporate charters, their executives aren't likely to be hit with espionage charges. (article) Richard Meyer, July 28, 2009 Compliance Week.
- The importance of social media audits — July 28, 2009
A comprehensive Social Media Audit should involve all stakeholders internally, i.e. sales, marketing, customer services, product development, competitive intelligence, market research, so that a holistic strategy and action plan can be concluded as the result of the audit. (blog) Jeremiah Owyang, July 28, 2009
- CI Series 13: recruit a staff — July 27, 2009
What about recruiting for the competitive intelligence function that you are building? Why do you need other people? What inducements make a difference to the people you want to recruit? And how is the best way to approach your candidates? In the formation process of the competitive intelligence function, it will be essential to recruit help from within the company. Here are three reasons why that is true. (blog) Tom Hawes, July 27, 2009
- CI in the small firm environment — July 27, 2009
Nuts and bolts of competitive intelligence: CI in the small firm environment. Presentation handouts from Julia Hughes at the AALL 2009 Annual Conference in Washington DC. (PPT)
- How to get a job in intelligence part 5: Beyond the big three — July 27, 2009
When most people think of jobs in intelligence, they immediately think of the CIA or other national agencies. A few think about law enforcement positions and even fewer think about the place, oddly enough, where most of the jobs actually reside -- in business. This breakdown is mirrored in a survey I have been running on another of my websites (more on that later) for the last couple of years. You can see the current results below. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, July 27, 2009
- Managing the news and information in pharma — July 27, 2009
Most of the time I aggregate my information sources and use it for intelligence purposes on demand, ie search. What is interesting is that once you have a database then there is the ability to see and detect strategic trends more clearly, rather than isolated individual items or snippets of data. The more data you have, the more useful those pictures of the trends in real time will be. (blog) Sally Church, July 27, 2009
- Using FriendFeed to learn more about sale prospects — July 27, 2009
One competitive SEO tool that is used includes, FriendFeed, the application consolidating all of your social media activities across different networks in one place. If you are importing your Twitter feed, every time you tweet it will post to your Facebook wall. This may be preferable to updating your status with every tweet such as with the Twitter for Facebook application. (blog) Nick Martini, July 27, 2009
- When big brands discover social media marketing — July 27, 2009
One thing businesses should be aware of is that social media can be a double-edged sword. I was talking to a friend on the train today who revealed how he used Twitter as a competitive intelligence and sales tool. He was monitoring tweets from and about his competitors and could tell who his competitor was selling to. (blog/article) David Roth, July 27, 2009
- Good shows in bad times: exhibiting when your industry is in crisis — July 24, 2009
Competitive intelligence is always important, but seldom as much so as when an entire sector hits hard times. Fortunes can be made and lost in the blink of an eye, which is why it is important to keep a careful eye on what your competitors are doing. (article) Sarat Daniel, July 24, 2009
- How executive find and value information — July 24, 2009
A recent Forbes survey of 354 executives at large US companies indicates that competitor analysis is the most critical area for research. The Internet is valued more than any other information source, including internal, external and personal contacts as well as newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, conferences and trade shows. (blog) Ellen Naylor, July 24, 2009
- Social media monitoring for competitive intelligence — July 24, 2009
The trick now is to not only find the right sources, but also know which tools get you the best results. Without giving too much away, here are my three (okay four) power tools for info gathering and competitive intelligence. (blog) Jessica Kontent, July 24, 2009
- Eyes wide open: embracing uncertainty through scenario planning — July 22, 2009
The workshop, the output, and the eventual impact on decision making represents a perfect illustration of how so-called scenario planning techniques can be utilized to help managers navigate in complex and uncertain environments. Executives had discussed each scenario they developed, the potential triggers for each of them, and how the company should respond to each of these situations if it were to arise. Pulling out the notes from these discussions, they already knew their options and had a view on how they would like to respond. In many ways, they were prepared -- and already one step ahead of some other companies. (article) July 22, 2009
- How to get a job in intelligence: part 4 — July 22, 2009
In fact, the largest and the fastest growing job market for intelligence and, in particular, intelligence analysts, is likely to be companies who need the skills that the typical intelligence analyst possesses in order to understand the broad range of largely unstructured data that confronts the corporate decisionmaker. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, July 22, 2009
- Improve your competitiveness: adopt technology & pharmacology to boost intelligence — July 22, 2009
As a competitive intelligence professional, I am expected to uncover patterns to predict where a competitor, the market or technology is going, so " getting smarter" really resonates, especially from the information glut, never mind the increased connections due to social networks. (blog) Ellen Naylor, July 22, 2009
- The Tweet is mightier than the sword — July 22, 2009
In the Twittersphere, everything looks like a fact. Businesses must be vigilant in protecting their reputations, but given the public's propensity for believing their peers over businesses, this is a tough battle to fight. (blog) Chuck Dennis, July 22, 2009
- Who are you looking at? — July 22, 2009
A business that focuses much effort on learning about its competitors is probably looking in the wrong direction. Surely it would be more sensible to concentrate on what clients need, on the directions their businesses are heading, and on more general economic and market trends (outside the legal sector). (blog) Mark Gould, July 22, 2009
- CI - how do you measure — July 21, 2009
The problem with measuring CI effectiveness is not that it's complicated. It's that anyone notices. At least in the work cultures I was a part of in corporate America, there is usually a "more important" organization which needs to take credit for something that benefited very directly from CI - and does so. (blog) Stan Dyck July 21, 2009
- CI series 12: go for the value — July 21, 2009
If you managed things right, people all over the company are beginning to notice the competitive intelligence work that you are doing. Your name is known. Probably they have heard about your website and seen at least one of the analyses that you completed. Now you have to move beyond your initial sponsor to deliver value to other senior managers. (blog) Tom Hawes, July 21, 2009
- Hoover's user spotlight: Emily Rushing — July 21, 2009
Interview of Emily Rushing of the Haynes and Boone law firm in Dallas on her work and ideas on social media. Emily coordinates with the Managers to provide CI services to all firm leaders, in all practice groups and all offices. (blog) Tim Walker. July 21, 2009
- The next internet revolution isn't what you think — July 21, 2009
But just as the dawning of the 21st century saw the Internet dramatically lower, and in some cases dismantle, traditional barriers to entry in a variety of industries, as this decade comes to a close, a new generation of web-technologies threaten to shake-up and squeeze yet another industry: enterprise software. (blog) Ken Sawka, July 21, 2009
- Competitive intelligence in a web 2.0 world pt2: uncovering the what and who of LinkedIn — July 20, 2009
LinkedIn has become the most popular of the professionally focused social media sites, and therefore a goldmine for various competitive intelligence tidbits, sometimes disclosed inadvertently. What I particularly love about LinkedIn is the web you begin to detect between contacts and their current and previous circles of friends and colleagues. (blog) Laura Walters, July 20, 2009
- Found in the translation — July 20, 2009
What is it about another company that directs it activities, influences its decision making and ultimately affects how it competes? What governs the level of risk that they can tolerate, the determines the goals that they aspire to and empowers them to accomplish what is important to them? Knowing these answers gives an outsider (i.e., a competitive intelligence professional) great insight into what might be coming next for the company. So what are these signals and how do you assemble them into meaningful patterns? Here are four lessons that I have learned. (blog) Tom Hawes, July 20, 2009
- The ROI of competitive intelligence — July 20, 2009
Call it competitive intelligence or call it consumer intelligence, call it whatever intelligence you want; but don't dismiss the value of this information. On the surface it may not make money, save money, or increase equity but if I were going to place a value on competitive intelligence I would say, to use a few sports analogies- It's the 6th man in basketball, the utility club in golf, the setter in volleyball, the pitcher with the rubber arm in baseball, or the slotback in football. (blog) Marc Meyer, July 20, 2009
- The strategic value of corporate intelligence — July 18, 2009
Corporate intelligence includes a wide range of strategic security, including risk management, security consulting, analysis of the competitive market. There are some common sets of skills that should have the intelligence to business professionals, including how to conduct effective and efficient open source research and analysis, threat assessments, thought critical and logical, and effective report writing. (blog) n.a. July 18, 2009
- How to get a job in intelligence pt3 — July 17, 2009
The US National Security Community, while the best known, is not, however, the only place to get a job as an intelligence analyst. There are many jobs available in law enforcement, business, and with non-governmental organizations. While not all of these jobs label themselves "intelligence" positions (and more on that later), they all require what is essentially the intelligence analyst skill set. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, July 17, 2009
- Social media, competitive intelligence and the practice of law — July 16, 2009
Briefly discuss some of the tools and techniques that I use in my capacity as CI Specialist for Haynes and Boone LLP. Increasingly, social media is an integral part of both the CI process and product, and provides an invaluable resource in the identification of business opportunities in the legal industry. The following is a resource guide to selected, no-cost intelligence delivery tools. (blog) Emily Rushing, July 16, 2009
- CI series 11: Expand the brand — July 15, 2009
Here we go with five ways to expand the awareness and scope of your competitive intelligence brand. (blog) Tom Hawes, July 15, 2009
- How to get a job in intelligence pt 2 — July 15, 2009
A high altitude survey of the intelligence job market yields some pretty interesting observations. The first is that the intelligence job market is finite. There are some pretty distinct boundaries and limits to the size of it and knowing these limits and boundaries helps you understand the potential for jobs in this market. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, July 15, 2009
- Selecting the right tools — July 15, 2009
Forward-thinking life science executives are beginning to recognize that a pharma company's competitive intelligence program must provide access to invaluable scientific and medical insights before they are published in journals or presented at scientific and medical conferences. N.a., July 15, 2009
- Thoughts on social media and competitive intelligence — July 15, 2009
The delightful Erin Lindholm of Frost & Sullivan saw the SCIP presentation I gave this spring and then interviewed me to get more of my thoughts on how companies can use social media to harvest competitive intelligence. The fruits of our Q&A are available in this PDF document. (blog/article). Tim Walker, July 15, 2009
- How to get a job in intelligence pt1 — July 13, 2009
The purpose of this series of posts is to explore the job market for intelligence analysts and to offer some advice based on years of talking to recruiters and watching students try to get jobs. I will try to be as complete as possible. I intend to write about not only the national security but also the law enforcement, business and international intelligence job markets. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton,July 13, 2009
- Questions, answers and changes — July 13, 2009
What can you learn about a business by their competitive intelligence questions? Here are some ideas. (blog) Tom Hawes, July 13, 2009
- Fifteen business benefits of using twitter — July 12, 2009
Your competitors are on Twitter. Consider monitoring their tweets from time to time to see what they are working on. Perhaps they are preparing to launch a new product or are opening a new branch. Heck maybe they are going through massive layoffs and an opportunity presents itself to acquire them or at least hire some of their laid off employees. Twitter can be a great environment for monitoring what the competition is doing. (blog/article) n.a. July 12, 2009
- Cloud computing an antagonists view — July 9, 2009
Cloud computing makes business sense. It does in the fact that as a competitive intelligence professional I want you to place all of your data out there for me to mine. What happens when everyone has their trade secrets in a cloud and someone shatters these "virtual" walls in those systems. (blog) n.a. July 9, 2009
- Competitive intelligence for law firms — July 9, 2009
Tim McAllister, Greg Lambert, and J.O. Wallace are all law librarians at BigLaw firms in the US and for an hour and a half, they shared with us their experiences in providing competitive intelligence (CI) to the powers that be. In short, CI is absolutely critical in protecting a firm's bottom line and reputation. (blog) Steve Matthews July 9, 2009
- The Carrot, the stick and other sales effectiveness strategies — July 9, 2009
Best-in-Class companies are 1.6 times more likely than all others to integrate key sales intelligence, such as competitive intelligence and company information, directly into an existing SFA or CRM solution. (article/blog) Alex Jefferies, July 9, 2009
- Which competitors should you watch? — July 9, 2009
In these days of lower budgets, you may have to limit the number of competitors that you track so you need to select the rivals carefully. Recent news brought examples of two classes of competitors to watch: 800 pound gorillas and leading innovators. (blog) Parmelee Eastman, July 9, 2009
- CI and innovation — July 8, 2009
In industries where an increasing amount of knowledge and expertise is being contracted out or outsourced, this means that innovation processes must be built around all experts - internal and external. CI needs to be at the table in these processes to add perspective about competitor technologies, thinking processes, and current views of the issue. (blog) Stan Dyck, July 8, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: seeing the future through the present — July 7, 2009
The future is uncertain and often treacherous, especially for businesses. To avoid being improved upon by a rival company, businesses wishing to stay afloat must use competitive intelligence.
Effective competitive intelligence uses many different means to read the minds of competitors and target consumers. One way is simply monitoring the growth and changes of competitors; another is to monitor how others think about your own company/ (blog) J. Leiman, July 7, 2009
- The excellent case for ‘Maybe' — July 7, 2009
The dependencies are often a richer source for understanding than the straightforward answer. It is an initial lesson for those new to competitive intelligence that assumptions and dependencies have to be documented. Senior management and strategists often deal will questions and answers that are not perfectly defined. Answers are very important to them but the dependencies help illuminate the risk that is implicit in the directions that they choose. (blog) Tom Hawes, July 7, 2009
- How corporate recruiting adds to a competitive intelligence effort — July 6, 2009
As a Recruiting Researcher and Sourcer, I observed there were usually more formal processes around counterintelligence than CI. CI rarely was an organized effort either before or after a new employee was hired. While exchanging information with recruiters when sourcing candidates for them, I realized that we gathered a lot of CI while speaking to prospective candidates that was not well captured or shared. (blog/article) Dorothy Beach, July 6, 2009
- Social media tools for law firm competitive intelligence — July 6, 2009
Social media sites and services like Twitter and Facebook can provide an outstanding resource for competitive intelligence. This article will explore the value of social media tools in collecting and delivering high-quality intelligence, focusing on communications tools and those designed to publish intelligence to key users. (article) Emily Rushing, Texas Law Journal, July 2009
- Strategic and technical intelligence: a prerequisite for life sciences success — July 3, 2009
Forward-thinking life science executives are beginning to recognize that a pharma company's competitive intelligence program must provide access to invaluable scientific and medical insights before they are published in journals or presented at scientific and medical conferences. Delivering strategic and technical intelligence services to monitor and understand new developments in basic and preclinical research will benefit pharmaceutical companies in three primary ways. (article) Bill Kelly, July 2009
- When you talk to people who don't need CI — July 2, 2009
CI & analysis sells when there is pain (aka surprise). CI sells when there is time for exploration and story telling and analogy development. CI sells when key decision maker is tired of being lied to. CI is a partnership. CI is not a project. It's a process. (blog) Stan Dyck, July 2, 2009
- Cooperative intelligence: help yourselves by helping others — July 1, 2009
While there is unquestionably more information available on the Internet and social media, we still need people to help us, if for no other reason than to ascertain that the information we are providing is timely and accurate. You almost always need people's cooperation to develop and organise analysis, make recommendations and suggest appropriate investments with confidence. (article) Ellen Naylor, July 2009
June
- Competitive intelligence: check your sparkplugs — June 30, 2009
Suppose we forget to check on what the competition is doing or we poorly understand the overall competitive environment. When this happens, the organization begins to misfire. There are 10 signs to look for that indicates such misfires. (blog) Tom Hawes, June 30, 2009
- Older C-level execs avoud Twitter, blogs — June 30, 2009
The top three research topics that C-level executives seek are competitor analysis (53 percent), customer trends (41 percent), and corporate developments (39 percent). However, information priorities vary by job function: of those executives in sales and marketing, 76 percent say they seek customer trends; of those executives in finance, 63 percent said they seek competitor analysis; of those executives in IT, 59 percent seek technology trends. (article) Anna Maria Virzi, June 30, 2009
- Spying, security and the psychology of secrets — June 30, 2009
There are recognized behavioral characteristics that everyone has. Knowledge of profiling methods as used in the intelligence and law enforcement realms simply allows analysts to take what would appear to be innocuous traits of a subject and extrapolate behaviors. If we know that a particular executive displays particular traits, that individual's responses in various scenarios are, to a degree variable with the number of data points, predictable. (article/blog) George Dennis June 2009
- CI in innovation — June 26, 2009
Our knowledge within specific markets and industry of mega trends, external influencers, new technologies, unmet customer and consumer needs, and comprehensive sources of information across functions/boundaries gives CI professionals perhaps a unique role. (blog) Stan Dyck, June 26, 2009
- Don't let the recovery catch you by surprise — June 26, 2009
Trying to predict precisely when the economic recovery will begin, how resilient it will be, and how competitors, customers, and other players will behave when it starts is foolish. A scenario planning mindset to the recovery will most likely better position your company to benefit when it occurs. (blog) Ken Sawka, June 26, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: keeps you ahead of the competition — June 25, 2009
Competitive intelligence is an absolute must for developing a profitable business with quality products and efficient services that constantly outperform those of your competitors. It should be included in your small business marketing plans and given serious consideration when writing a business plan. (blog) N.A. June 25, 2009
- Should salespersons be expeted to do more than sell? — June 24, 2009
Salespersons are centrally involved in the competitive marketplace and thus could obtain valuable information about emerging trends in the given industry, current and imminent developments in competitors' organizations, customers' unmet needs, etc. However, it is unreasonable to expect salespersons to obtain this information unless they are involved in strategic planning and understand why such information is needed. (blog) Bob Morris, June 24, 2009
- Strategic secrecy and excellence — June 24, 2009
Cross-post a forum discussion topic that I posted in the Competitive Intelligence community on Ning that explores the concept of Apple's strategic secrecy. My hypothesis is that Apple and other companies earn the privilege to be strategically secret (note: not completely opaque) by delivering customer value and excellent products or services. (blog) August Jackson, June 24, 2009
- Business intelligence vs. competitive intelligence — June 22, 2009
From the outset it is crucially important to understand that BI can not replace CI and visa versa. Both has its place and both is of the utmost importance for the success of any organization. Business Intelligence is the management of a company's internal data. Competitive Intelligence is the gathering and analysing of intelligence about the behaviour of the market you deal in, in order to make certain decisions based on market trends. (blog) Jan Steyl, June 22, 2009
- CI series 9: secure the budget — June 22, 2009
CI investments should be justified based on the value produced compared to the resources invested. This is a financial calculation but it determines the level of respect that the function (and its advocates) will receive. Management values what they count and they count nothing as precisely as they count money. (blog) Tom Hawes, June 22, 2009
- Poll results: social media and competitive intelligence — June 22, 2009
We ran a little poll on the Hoover's front page asking "Does your business use social media for competitive intelligence?" It's heartening that the largest category here is of people who do use social media for competitive intelligence. People are out there on blogs and Twitter and forums and whatnot, talking about you and your competitors and your industry - so why not listen to them and harness the information and opinions they're sharing? (blog/article) Tim Walker, June 22, 2009
- The moral compass — June 22, 2009
Generating and using competitive intelligence is a key strategic activity in the highly competitive world in which we all work. Most mature companies have guidelines for executives, management and staff that integrate the need for gathering and protecting competitive intelligence into a corporate code of conduct. (blog) Ian Graham, June 22, 2009
- Secrets stolen, fortunes lost, part 1 — June 21, 2009
We have found two profound misconceptions common among CEOs. One of the great misconceptions is that the threat of economic espionage or trade secret theft is a limited concern-that it is only an issue if you are holding on to something like the formula for Coca-Cola or the design of the next Intel microprocessor. The case studies included here illustrate the fallacy of thinking that this threat is someone else's problem. (e-book chapter/ blog) Richard Power, June 21, 2009
- Investigating your competition at tradeshows — June 19, 2009
If you're wondering how you can effectively investigate your competition, including their new products and services, marketing strategies, and upcoming changes that could affect your business, you should consider participating in a tradeshow. Also known as competitive intelligence, knowing what your competitors are up to is good for your business and can make a huge difference in your profitability. (blog) n.a. June 19, 2009
- SCIP Past President Named Fulbright Scholar — June 17, 2009
Dr. Paul Dishman, long-time member and Past President of the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture and research at the University of Donja Gorica (UDG) in Montenegro during the 2010 academic year.
- CI series 7: Accumulate the tools — June 16, 2009
In competitive intelligence, it is also true that there are common tools that should be identified and acquired early. Although you don't have to have all of these tools on day, it is useful to know that you will need them. Here is a partial list by category of some tools that you will likely need. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, June 16, 2009
- Competitive intelligence and the government librarian — June 16, 2009
This was a very informative session given by Roberta Shaffer, Director of FLICC/Fedlink. Competitive Intelligence is a process used to gather data – same as what librarians have called Information Analytics. CI is morphing into business intelligence or in the government – strategic intelligence. (blog) ‘David’ June 19, 2009 http://dmcbee.weblts.com/?p=224
- It's the people, stupid — June 14, 2009
Strategists and competitive intelligence professionals have become enamored with their tools and techniques to an extent that excludes consideration of the impact on people that matter to the success or failure of their effort. The relationships that are required have not been established or nurtured, the requisite trust is not present and the everyday communication is neglected. What would happen if we spent as much time learning about and applying good relationship skills as we did on web search techniques (or whatever favorite tools that you use)? (blog/article) Tom Hawes, June 14, 2009
- Drug firms gain edge copying James Bond — June 12, 2009
Over the last decade or so competitive intelligence in pharma was aimed at in-licensing opportunities. The focus has changed and broadened, It now includes looking at rivals' research and development spending, successes and failures, marketing and branding strategies, financial health - even human resources. (article) Peter Benesh, June 12, 2009
- The great comeback part 7: competitive intelligence — June 10, 2009
Do you know how your competition is reacting to the Great Recession and what they are planning to do after it ends? Understanding your current positioning versus your competitors', and how they will respond to your Comeback Plan, are important considerations.The Competitive Intelligence process requires you to answer these questions in order to see if you really know how to categorize and label your competition's actions. (blog) Jim Tompkins, June 10, 2009,
- Between goal and result, project management to the rescue — June 9, 2009
There is no way you can talk about success in an organisation without talking about strategy. It has to have it unique. You will not talk about an organisation without talking about competitive intelligence. An organisation must be able to look around itself; watch what is happening around it and know how to craft out its own niche in that particular field. Also you cannot talk about an organisation without talking about research.. (article) Philip Okafor, June 9, 2009
- Never cross the line — June 9, 2009
Competitive intelligence from public sources, customers, and third parties can help businesses anticipate market opportunities, trends, and strengths and weaknesses. However, intelligence gathering must be done in an ethical and reasonable way. These guidelines from MarketingScoop.com provide a step-by-step way to acquire the information you need without crossing the line. (blog/article) Ken Beaulieu, June 9, 2009
- CI series 6: introduce the brand — June 8, 2009
It is also important when starting a new Competitive Intelligence program. The CI brand that you develop will empower you to accomplish great things. In previous entries in this series, we have already talked about Setting Some Standards and hinted at branding elements at the Tease The Vision step. Now it is time to make the critical branding elements explicit. So, here they are. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, June 8, 2009
- Never underestimate intelligence — June 8, 2009
New York's Westchester County Business Journal, in its weekly business advice column, has just run an article entitled ‘keeping abreast of the competition'. For us, as market research and competitive intelligence experts, we can never read enough articles that encourage organizations large and small to recognize the importance of quality, up-to-date business intelligence. (blog)n.a., June 8, 2009
- How do I get sales to make use of the marketing materials I create? — June 7, 2009
I am a product marketing professional. I work day and night on competitive intelligence, product positioning and messaging and other tools. I store everything on our company intranet and I send notification e-mails out to the sales teams, with detailed instructions on how to use the tools. Unfortunately I still get the same questions over and over again and it seems like no one is reading my e-mails or using the material I created. What am I doing wrong? (blog/article) Mark Eteer, June 7, 2009
- My RSS presentation for the SLA conference — June 6, 2009
I will be reprising my presentation on how competitive intelligence professionals can best use RSS as a low-cost method to cast a wide research network. I've tried to update the material to discuss the potential of Twitter to track sentiment, issues and breaking events in near real-time. (blog) August Jackson, June 6, 2009
- Producing intelligence analysis from patents — June 5, 2009
Jack Sandeen's exploration of patent analysis was a very interesting project. The really interesting stuff he discovered had to do with the process of patent analysis itself. His report, built using Google Sites, provides a concise, useful overview of patents and patent analysis. He also provides a good strengths, weaknesses and how-to section and some very valuable resource pages. Some of the more interesting aspects of his case-study are the different ways he was able to visualize and analyze the data he collected. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, June 5, 2009
- The power of a company's ‘invisible balance sheet' — June 5, 2009
When an individual, team or business unit shares and collaborates what they know, trust increases, cooperation is spread and the value of the company increases. It's a line on the "invisible balance sheet" called competitive intelligence. (blog) Jim Sellner, June 5, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: getting past impossible — June 4, 2009
In competitive intelligence there is an article of faith that almost every question has an answer that can be discovered ethically, albeit with some uncertainty. That is, evidence can be assembled, primary sources queried, data correlated and so on to produce credible and actionable answers. Smart people sometimes doubt that this can be done because they have previously tried for the same answers or relied on someone that tried and failed. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, June 4, 2009
- Just how social is social networking? — June 4, 2009
I like to weave cooperative intelligence into my social networking practices. Cooperative intelligence assumes that you are a giving person without strings attached and that you don't just give to get. (blog) Ellen Naylor, June 4, 2009
- Your time, my time — June 4, 2009
In most law firms, the library is a part of the Competitive Intelligence department and thus participates with the strategic planning of the firm's vision and goals. This supportive visibility has in many instances assisted with maintaining library staffing levels and justified ancillary business resource costs. (blog) Linda Will, June 4, 2009
- The prime directive of competitive intelligence — June 2, 2009
It is time for there to be a prime directive for competitive intelligence. The directive is specifically aimed at those that profess to practice competitive intelligence in service of others. The directive is meant to be helpful by defining a standard or goal against which one's activities can be compared. Indeed, sometimes we will fall short but that should not obviate the directive. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, June 2, 2009
- Five reasons companies don't improve competitive intelligence — June 1, 2009
In meeting with leaders from multiple companies, there is a common thread that I observe about the need for and lack of competitive intelligence in their businesses. Given the dearth of competitive intelligence insight, why don't companies spend more time and money getting better at this function? There are five common reasons that I hear from companies. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, June 1, 2009
- Performing research in a difficult economy — June 1, 2009
If your research team doesn't manage the competitive intelligence function formally, now is the time to build it. In these economically-challenged times, staying too insular and taking your eyes off the competition could prove catastrophic. Historically, downturned economies have ignited rivalry, inspired price wars and fueled other competitive actions. It is imperative to closely monitor the competition during these times, which is also an activity that can often be accomplished with little monetary investment. (article) n.a. June 1, 2009
- The many faces of Google for business intelligence — June 1, 2009
Too often, individuals searching business related information turn to Google and surfing through the listing of results from a general search. It is important to remember that Google offers more than a general search tool for users. Ian Smith, (PowerPoint) June 2009
- Three senior management pleas for competitive intelligence — June 1, 2009
Senior management desperately needs effective competitive intelligence. CI professionals can easily damage their reputations and hinder their effectiveness when they ignore the common pleas from senior management. (blog) Tom Hawes June 1, 2009
May
- CI series 5: setting some standards — May 29, 2009
Where you set the bar for competitive intelligence is exceedingly important. Why? Because you will find that you are touching on important subjects involving important people that might drive important changes in the organization. By definition, this requires high expectations of you. There are 3 areas where you need to decide on high expectations: Integrity, value and work quality, (blog) Tom Hawes, May 29, 2009
- Introduction to pivot tables in intelligence analysis — May 29, 2009
Pivot tables are a handy but under-utilized feature of Microsoft Excel's program. Crime analyst's, in particular, make good use of these in their work but they are largely unknown to the wider community of intel analysts. Brent Pearson, explored this particular tool as part of my Advanced Analytic Techniques class last term. He put together a couple of useful videos to introduce the novice to this particular tool. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, May 29, 2009
- Resolving the 80/20 dilemma — May 29, 2009
End users are spending less time on gathering the information they need - but their search failure rate is going up. Competitor information is their top unmet specific requirement - and certain categories of information figure so strongly in their wish list that information managers could invoke the 80/20 rule, satisfying large swathes of need by concentrating on just a few categories. (blog) Tim Buckley Owen, May 29, 2009
- Tools to channel the information deluge — May 28, 2009
We can tap the same tools and skills we use to promote ideas to transform the glut of information into valuable, actionable knowledge and perhaps even competitive intelligence with only a modest investment of time or capital. Here are some proven shortcuts that will help you channel the flood of information. (article) Nicholas Gaffney, May 28, 2009
- Using competitive intelligence concepts to protect business and increase revenue part 2 — May 28, 2009
We looked at how competitive intelligence can help you drive and even increase top-line revenue. Benchmarking clients against their key competitors or entire industry is one of the best business development uses of competitive intelligence. In the webinar example, we looked at the labor and employment for Continental Airlines. (blog) Patrick Fuller, May 28, 2009
- It's 10am, do you know who's talking to your clients? — May 27, 2009
In a competitive marketplace law, accounting and consulting firms need to proactively gather competitive intelligence and respond to the marketing and relationship development moves of their competitors. Begin by asking some of the following questions. (blog) Paul Gladen, May 27, 2009
- Research: just do it (right) — May 27, 2009
Competitor intelligence is the analytical process that transforms disaggregated competitor intelligence into relevant, accurate and usable strategic knowledge about competitors, position, performance, capabilities and intentions. If your organization doesn't have a formal process for gathering, analyzing and developing strategic action plans from BI and CI, I strongly suggest you start focusing some resources in these areas - it's easier than you think. (blog) Pat McGraw, May 27, 2009
- Cut now, lose later — May 26, 2009
Companies, unsurprisingly, are slashing budgets for market research and competitive intelligence even though the insight from research can dramatically improve the return from larger expenditures on new products or services and marketing programs. In a recession, it's essential to get a clear read on existing core customers, including those who are most loyal to the brand and those who are most profitable. (Blog) Parmelee Eastman, May 26, 2009
- Ours is to reason why — May 26, 2009
Many companies employ people whose job it is to gather information on competitors. This typically results in the development documents that summarize data points such as company size, profitability, products, features, locations and the like. While these activities are typically described as "competitive intelligence," what they really are is reporting. Analysis is the piece that is often missing, and it is a critical to transforming information into insights that can offer relevant guidance to the business. (article) Amelia Young, May 26, 2009
- Competitive analysis for startups: being better, not just different — May 25, 2009
I'd like to see more startups openly talk about direct competition and how they're designed to win that kind of competition. When you think about it, saying you're unique is just another way of saying your R&D and product development is better than your rivals. In the end there's a lot more direct competition than startups like to think. (blog) May 25, 2009
- Competitive analysis for startups: the goal — May 22, 2009
Whether you're preparing a VC pitch deck or just strategizing about your business, remember that your real goal is to be an expert about your competitive landscape (and a paranoid one at that). The real goal of the Competition section of your business plan is to impress the reader that you are a) an expert about your competition and b) more paranoid than the reader (since the reader isn't the one running the business). (blog) May 22, 2009
- Going to trade shows like it matters, part 2 — May 22, 2009
Unless you are at the wrong show your competitors will be there as well. Someone from your company has to be designated the official competitive intelligence officer for this show. They are in charge of coordinating collection of competitive data, and preparing a summary report which contains facts as well as analysis. (blog) Steve Blank, May 22, 2009
- Brining customers into the company — May 21, 2009
What is perceived as a competitive intelligence tool by some is regarded as a collaboration tool by others. In the world which our users inhabit, collaboration and competition are two sides of the same coin. (blog) Yukun Harsono, May 21, 2009
- CI series 4: Frame the foundation — May 21, 2009
The next step is to frame your CI foundation for all that is to come. There are three things to do to make sure that your foundation is what is needed for long term success. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, May 21, 2009.
- Larry King would have been great in CI — May 21, 2009
This instinct for asking questions and a real desire to know the answers is also extremely useful in competitive intelligence and is why some journalists move into CI. (blog) Parmelee Eastman, May 21, 2009
- French Chinese CI cooperation — May 20, 2009
After several cooperative efforts between the ACFCI, the Shanghai Library and various French experts in Competitive Intelligence (all these events are available in this site), a delegation of the Hunan Provincial Competitive Intelligence Center has been received at the ACFCI (Assembly of the French Chambers of Commerce and Industry) in Paris for a seminar and various conferences about Competitive Intelligence the 19th of May 2009. (blog) May 20, 2009
- Effective competitive intelligence — May 19, 2009
A seven step framework for competitor intel: choose the ‘right' competition (it may not always be obvious); distinguish between the nice-to-have and need-to-know; focus on the environment around which you and your customers fit; determine the inference and action sought; consider the entire process, from collection to analysis; also understand what storage needs and share mechanisms you need; know where you stand on the ethics of your project. (blog) Jason Figg, May 19, 2009
- Forty-seven awesome Twitter tools you should be using — May 19, 2009
Twitter has already become an integral part of many of our online experiences. As the volume of users rise, so does the number of third party sites, tools, and services that all serve to make Twitter more dynamic, meaningful, and useful. Here's some of the best Twitter sites and services the Net has to offer. (blog) Deontee Gordon, May 19, 2009
- Getting into your competitor's head — May 19, 2009
So if you want to anticipate rather than react to strategic moves, you must analyze a competitor at two levels: organizational and individual.This approach moves you beyond the data-gathering efforts of most competitive-intelligence functions, toward a thought process that helps turn competitive intelligence into competitive insights. (article) Hugh Courtney, May 19, 2009
- Intelligence analysis in virtual worlds — May 19, 2009
Presentation by Dr. Jeffrey Morrison, US Navy, from the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds on the use of Virtual Worlds for Intelligence Analysis. Discusses two virtual world programs specifically designed for intelligence analysis, Time Machine and Mind Snaps.
- SCIP Merges With Frost & Sullivan Institute — May 19, 2009
The Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals has agreed upon a merger with the Frost & Sullivan Institute, another nonprofit organization. The SCIP membership concluded its vote on the opportunity to partner with the Frost & Sullivan Institute on May 15. The merger was approved by 94 percent of voting members.
- Collecting information on your competitors — May 18, 2009
Collecting information about your competitors makes good business sense. However, you must do so in an ethical and reasonable way. Competitive intelligence from public sources, customers, and third parties can help businesses anticipate market opportunities, trends and competitive strengths and weaknesses. (blog) n.a., May 18, 2009
- CI series 3: Tease the vision — May 15, 2009
You goal is to begin establishing a pattern that will characterize all of the competitive intelligence things that are to come. The pattern will eventually lay the foundation for your personal competitive intelligence brand. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, May 15, 2009
- Mining social networking sites — May 15, 2009
With social networking growing in leaps and bounds, and ranging from broad-based options like Facebook and Twitter, as well as niche-oriented resources, expect to see more marketers using the resource to find out everything they can about their target markets and competitors. The process may be time-consuming and could yield more information that you know what to do with, but in the end even the tiniest nugget of competitive intelligence gleaned online could pay off. (blog) DeeDee Banks, May 15, 2009
- Cybersleuthing: checking your company's pulse in the land of blogs — May 14, 2009
This article discusses the benefits of setting up a system that monitors what is being said about your company in the blogosphere. It also discusses the pros and cons of employees blogging about their employers, with a specific focus on the drug and medical device community. (article) William Kastner, DRI The Voice, v7/19 May 14, 2009
- CI series 2: Get the job — May 13, 2009
Because of your interests, skills and initiatives, you convince someone to assign to you what you wanted all along. What does it take to get the job? There are two important points to remember. (blog/article) Tom Hawes, May 13, 2009
- Competitive data acquisition and analysis — May 13, 2009
Competitive intelligence is a marketing tactic and it is imperative that businesses incorporate it in their strategic marketing plans. It mandates a data gathering system, a process to verify the credibility of data, analysis of data collected, and formulation of action plans based on this information. (blog) Saurav Kneoteric, May 13, 2009
- 2009 text analytics survey — May 12, 2009
I asked those respondents that were deploying text analytics, what kinds of applications they were using it for. The results were not surprising. The top three responses: Voice of the Customer (VoC), Competitive Intelligence, and eDiscovery, were also in the top three the last time I asked the question. (blog/article) Fern Halper, May 12, 2009
- CI series 1: Find the pain — May 12, 2009
Competitive intelligence is more important in hard times though the methods employed may be different. So, what is the absolute first step that is critical for the eventual success of a CI program? (blog/article) Tom Hawes, May 12, 2009
- Just how important is product lifecycle management? — May 12, 2009
Competitive intelligence will play a big role here. As you see competitive products stealing volume, you need to act quickly. Depending on how well the product is solving a problem and delivering unique and relevant value to your consumer, competitive barriers to entry will help with this. But over time, they will find a way to deliver a "me too" product or probably something even better. (blog) Julie Abraham, May 12, 2009
- Stocks of CCOs rise during downturn — May 12, 2009
According to findings from The Rising CCO, an annual survey, the volatile economic climate has seen global corporate communications officers stock rise in the workplace over the last year while social media/blogging is the most frequently added function to their departments. In Asia Pacific, CCOs pinpointed competitive intelligence and risk management tools along with the company website as communications resources that will increase most dramatically in importance. (blog) Ben Burrowes, May 12, 2009
- LeadTail and Ureeekah - what's the difference? — May 11, 2009
Yureekah appears to focus on serving media professionals primarily as a competitive intelligence tool enabling agencies, advertisers, business owners, and publishers to: identify what their competitors' ad creative looks like; understand where their competitors are advertising online; find out where top brands and other large advertisers are advertising online. (blog) Carter Hostelley, May 11, 2009
- Research on competitors — May 11, 2009
Competitor intelligence is very important, and you are right to expand beyond their new products and features. Price is a key issue to get competitive intelligence on: a) what do customers really pay for your competitive products and how does the perceived cost of ownership compares with yours? b) how do your competitors react when you change your price? (blog) Koen Pauwels, May 11, 2009
- Competitive intel and the social media footprint — May 10, 2009
In the capital intensive world of technology and telecom millions of dollars are at risk when it comes to decisions related to product development and to-market strategies. For this reason, companies invest considerable resources to gather intelligence about competitors. Here are how social networks and online communities can be appropriately leveraged as part of an intelligence gathering initiative. (blog) Marc Hausman, May 10, 2009
- Fifteen effective tools for visual knowledge management — May 10, 2009
For visual learners and information visualization fans, having a graphical representation of knowledge and seeing how things relate is a must have feature. Luckily, in the past few years there has been a rise in the number of knowledge management applications that offer this capability. The following is a list of interesting /unique / effective tools for knowledge management and information visualization (not listed in any particular order) (blog) Eric Blue, May 10, 2009
- On Twittering or not — May 10, 2009
Process the information and you have a pretty good idea of where your competition is, and even what they are soon capable of. Raw data is everywhere and when analyzed well you have a nearly perfect picture of what your competition is up to. So writing Twitter snippets pretty much reveals where you are on your business plan. (blog/article) Bob Arno, May 10, 2009
- Change and innovation — May 8, 2009
Creativity and innovation are corporate assets that can't be taken away, either by competitors or tough economic conditions. You cannot hope to succeed without being open to change. (blog) Ken Sawka, May 8, 2009
- Competitive Technical Intelligence (CTI) released at SCIP09 — May 8, 2009
This book fills a void as a current, comprehensive CTI resource. Competitive Technical Intelligence focuses on science and technology (S&T) and provides methods and tools to help companies, labs and governments maintain a technical competitive edge. The book is divided into 5 areas: CTI Today; CTI Organizations and Operations; CTI Tools and Methods; CTI Company and Industry Case Studies and Outlook for CTI. There are 20 chapters each written by a CTI expert. Ellen Naylor, May 8, 2009
- Merger SCIP/ Frost & Sullivan Institute — May 8, 2009
As the SCIP members have been informed and a wide spread discussion is in full swing at the various intelligence blogs I would like to inform my blog visitors about the merger between SCIP and the Frost & Sullivan Institute (FSI). (blog) Jens Thieme, May 8, 2009
- The human side of competitive intelligence — May 8, 2009
Establishing an effective competitive intelligence system to deliver significant results is not a fast process. Aside from the knowledge and techniques that are required, there are many human elements that affect progress. People and their response to change are probably the largest determinants for the success of a new competitive intelligence program. (blog) Tom Hawes, May 8, 2009
- Tips for entrepreneurs in tough times — May 8, 2009
In a recession, competition accelerates because more businesses are chasing less demand. Analyze who your competitors are in the marketplace and what they're doing to capture business. Competitive intelligence can go a long way in determining how to structure your business model to succeed in the long-term. N.a. May 8, 2009
- Canadian charities — May 7, 2009
Researching Canadian charities is a difficult and frustrating undertaking. Here is the short course in starting an investigation of a Canadian charity. Richard McEachin, May 7, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: don't play blind — May 6, 2009
This is where business development and competitive intelligence in the real world comes into play. Knowing how to gain insight from the massive budgets of your competitors is the key to spending wisely, knowing that when you take your shot that you a significantly higher chance of putting the ball exactly where you want. N.a. May 6, 2009
- How real is the risk of corporate espionage today? — May 6, 2009
Businesses also should be careful of foreign-government spying and U.S. companies that outsource data to India should be mindful of industrial espionage by the country's businesses. Many more competitive intelligence units have been created in order to spy on competitors, especially because it is now much easier to do so. Kevin Murray, May 6, 2009
- Patents analytics and intelligence: a helping hand for strategic decision making — May 6, 2009
Patent and technology intelligence is very crucial in today competitive environment directing the innovation process. Tracking of patent can help in providing directions for the innovation portfolio, perfecting the design of the product under development and avoid in re-inventing. Detailed analysis of patents could be used to assess the competitive position and expected competitive moves. Vinod Singh, May 6, 2009
- Sustainability vs ISO 14001: seeking the edge in a competitive world — May 6, 2009
Be keenly aware of your external business drivers and what will stimulate business growth. Know what your supply chain is requiring - what are the critical success factors to keeping their business. Update the competitive intelligence of your competitors to know what is guiding their capture strategies and tactics. Develop a formula for success that addresses business, environmental and stakeholder factors that leads to tangible, real results. Dave Meyer, May 6, 2009
- Turing information into strategic tools to achieve competitive advantage — May 6, 2009
Competitive intelligence is an important tool for organizations to use during times of rapid change and economic downturn. It facilitates competitive benchmarking to identify risks and opportunities in their markets, pressure-tests their plans against market responses and provides insights into what their competitors are doing to ensure they make informed decisions. (blog) May 6, 2009
- Using social media for competitive intelligence — May 6, 2009
I gave a presentation titled "CI in a Web 2.0 World" at the 2009 annual meeting of SCIP. I came away with a much better idea of the opportunities that await CI professionals as they become more familiar with the social media and the information that can be gleaned from them. Tim Walker, May 6, 2009
- iSessions in the cloud — May 6, 2009
Since it's over the public Internet, the data going to the cloud provider should be encrypted in some manner. You'd be surprised what information can be surmised about your organization just by watching non-critical unencrypted traffic, and in some industries you'd be surprised who's looking (insurance, for example, has long had competitive intelligence teams that are very Internet savvy). Don, May 6, 2009
- How to find conversations by tracking brand mentions — May 4, 2009
Don't forget to check which of your competitors' links are being tweeted the most. You may find some interesting competitive intelligence that way. Your name mentions aren't the only thing you should be monitoring on Twitter. You also want to watch for instances of people passing around your links. For this I like BackTweets. (blog) Lisa Barone, May 4, 2009
- Use social networks for competitive intelligence — May 4, 2009
CI departments rely on and use information about competitors -- external information about competitors and information within the department's own company that needs to be shared and assessed to be of value. One of the more difficult tasks of CI practitioners, however, is establishing networks of employees and external sources. Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking Web sites and tools have enormous potential for making that job easier. Ken Sawka, May 2009,
- Improving sales and marketing effectiveness with social software — May 3, 2009
With marketing and sales teams distributed across borders it is hard for team members collaborate, and to learn from each other's findings and feedback. Learn how collaboration software is being used by sales and marketing to improve market and competitive intelligence, teamwork, and win rate. (webinar) May 2009
- How companies respond to competitors: A McKinsey Global survey — May 2, 2009
On the whole, as companies determine how to respond to a competitor's moves, they generally assess three or fewer options and don't look forward more than two years. About half don't examine more than one round of countermoves by any competitor. A significant number rely on intuition to determine a response. (article) McKinsey Quarterly May 2008
- Mining the Twitterverse for current awareness — May 1, 2009
The nature of current awareness is changing. The aim with any filter is to show you the useful chatter and minimize the noise. Filtering in Tweetdeck seems quite simple at the outset, but does take some getting used to. (blog) Wendy Reynolds, May 1, 2009
- Traffic and audience measurement - what free tools do you use? — May 1, 2009
Free tools and services people use to gauge levels of traffic and the nature of the audience to any website. Obviously this information is useful for competitive intelligence, media planning and buying, search optimisiation, online PR, affiliate marketing etc. (blog) Ashley Friedlein, May 1, 2009
April
- Defensive competitive intelligence in a web 2.0 environment — April 30, 2009
All firms (large and small) must set aside the time to execute some defensive competitive intelligence strategies. In short, defensive competitive intelligence addresses the availability of strategic information about companies and their activities in the public domain. A clear example is a company assessing the amount of strategic details made available in its respective corporate press releases. (blog) Ian Smith, April 30, 2009
- Web 2.0 social media update — April 30, 2009
Periodically I take stock of my web 2.0 efforts, to ensure that I continue to derive value from the tools that matter and discard the rest. Here's my latest appraisal. (blog) Altman Weil, April 30, 3009
- What's your company's competitive intelligence? — April 30, 2009
We all keep tabs on the marketplace to a greater or lesser extent. In casual terms, we call it "gossip." On a more serious level, it's referred to as "competitive intelligence." We all know that a challenging marketplace makes it essential that you stay sharp in every aspect of your business, and that applies equally to keep tabs on the competitive situation in your marketplace. (blog/article) Lee Distad, April 30, 2009
- Dialog on social networking in competitive intelligence — April 29, 2009
This continues my report from talks I attended at SCIP's annual conference in Chicago last week. Roger Phelps and Suki Fuller facilitated this open dialog on social networking. (blog) Ellen Naylor April 29, 2009
- Gap analysis — April 29, 2009
From an intelligence analysis perspective, "gap analysis" can be used as a tool to identify the likely pathway or pathways a target may take to arrive at a given endstate from a known position. Thus, "gap analysis" does not necessarily provide an estimate, but rather provides the analyst with a list of possible actions a target may likely take. Gap analysis as an analytic technique bears a striking resemblance to several other methods, such as Indicators & Warnings and Decision Trees. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, April 29, 2009
- Ireland knows how to support growing companies — April 29, 2009
I continue to be amazed by Enterprise Ireland-Ireland's Department of Commerce. The support it provides startups and high-potential Irish companies is something we can all learn a lot from. EI provides funding, programs, advisers, resources, introductions to key decision makers, market research, competitive intelligence, advice on market entry strategies, partnering and acquisition strategies, and what appears to be endless support. (blog) April 29, 2009
- Competitive intelligence in China — April 28, 2009
Awareness & use of CI is growing in China, especially in the interior regions & 2nd tier cities. The Chinese feel an urgent need to invest overseas, which creates a need for more CI. They recognize the need, but can't serve themselves, so they're looking outside for that expertise. (blog) Michael Muth, April 28, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: keeping your friends close and your enemies closer — April 28, 2009
Competitive intelligence, also called competitor analysis, is a process where information is collected, studied, evaluated, and eventually used for purposes of modern-day marketing planning for a product, service, or company. It is a vital component of marketing planning that is meant to determine the risks and opportunities in marketing. By knowing the market environment of a product, service, or company, the marketing planners can better map out a most suitable direction amidst market competition. (blog) G. Serrano, April 28, 2009
- Four reasons I'll use Twitter and more reasons others will — April 28, 2009
Here are several reasons to use Twitter, including Competitive intelligence -- Don't just find out what people say about you and your company - check out the competition too. What are their customers saying and what does that mean to you? (blog) Cindy Butts, April 28, 2009
- The future role of business intelligence within the global financial community — April 28, 2009
In looking at the number of banks and businesses that failed, it is ironic that many of the participants had also invested millions of dollars in sophisticated business intelligence (BI) systems, processes and consulting firms. Decision makers at all levels were bombarded with conflicting and incomplete information from a wide variety of sources. The majority of BI deployments was biased toward the internal operations of the individual institutions and did not adequately address the interactions between members of the value chain. (blog/article) Michael Brooks, April 28, 2009
- Are we in a rut in CI innovation? — April 27, 2009
The innovation that people shared was around process which involved social networks and more sophisticated monitoring and analysis tools. The cost of information acquisition is really inexpensive today even compared to 10 years ago, so companies can afford to text mine and use tools that provide visualization at a reasonable cost. (blog) Ellen Naylor, April 27, 2009
- Four stealthy sources of powerful internet marketing intelligence — April 27, 2009
In online marketing it is critical that you keep up with what is going on in your industry. You do need to know who is doing what - and why they are doing it. You do need to take the time to research potential joint venture partners, products, and competing businesses. Here are four excellent tools and how to use them. (blog) Bharat Bhasha, April 28, 2009
- Practicing competitive intelligence — April 27, 2009
Today, with the mainstream acceptance of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, information spreads in real time. Companies not only struggle to maintain control of their own messages but also to stay abreast of the ever-changing competitive landscape. One way to keep up is to apply competitive intelligence techniques that go beyond gathering and analyzing competitor moves to anticipate and uncover threats. Here are some tips for putting such strategies into practice. (blog) Kerry Walker, April 27, 2009
- TOR vs. TIVE — April 27, 2009
At SCIP09 my job was to moderate and guide a discussion ("Active Dialog") of the intelligence practitioners in the room. Our topic was the ROI (return on investment) of intelligence, and how to increase it. It really worked, almost everybody talked, there was a very free flow of conversation in the session, and we talked frankly about some sensitive topics. The session wasn't billed as "group therapy", but it had a similar effect. (blog) Tim Powell, April 27, 2009
- Twelve questions to test your competitive fact-finding skills — April 27, 2009
Clients will be needing help adjusting and prospering in this brave new world where technological advances are overhauling and significantly transforming the rules of the game. Is your firm ready to help? These 12 questions are designed to focus on testing knowledge of the use of technology, the ability to obtain competitive intelligence, and business development acumen. (blog) Howard Wolosky, April 28, 2009
- Useful approximations in CI — April 27, 2009
In competitive intelligence, we are often asked to assign a number to something a competitor is doing. For instance, our management might want to know how much research and development money has been spent on the latest product from our competitor. This isn't a number that most companies will report publicly. So what do we do? Give up? No, rather we fall back on the article of competitive intelligence faith that there is always an ethical way to give a good answer. (blog) Tom Hawes, April 27, 2009
- Three free great marketing tools you need to be using, but probably aren't — April 26, 2009
Most of the things you really need to effectively market your product, service or site can be found for free. The three tools below are just a few of those resources - I picked one from each major search engine to illustrate just how much competitive intelligence you can get - for nothing - if you know where to look. (blog) Ian Hollander, April 26, 2009
- Using competitive intelligence to drive business — April 25, 2009
The smart companies are thinking differently. They're integrating CI, landscape assessments, KOL research and highly technical analyses in one project via the market research or marketing departments that helps them understand the bigger strategic issues to enable smarter decision making. (blog) Sally Church, April 25, 2009
- Is the CI industry in a rut? — April 24, 2009
Different industry norms regarding the nature of competition, assumptions about how industry participants operate, and other factors seem to influence the openness of CI innovation. The experiences of many seasoned CI professionals, suggests that innovation is shared only among small, semi-formal networks, not in large conference sessions. To innovate, then, is to be a superior networker, making personal connections with other practitioners with whom you can share and learn innovative ideas and practices. (blog) Ken Sawka, April 24, 2009
- Luscious fruit: the competitive intelligence that hangs in a company's telephone tree — April 24, 2009
What kinds of things can you learn in a company's telephone directory? If you have a company you admire it might profit you immensely to spend some time doing some voice mail mining by tediously calling through each number of a company's internal dial system. Following are some other "tidbits" of valuable information that a directory might yield. (blog) Maureen Sharib, April 24, 2009
- Luscious fruit: the competitive intelligence that hangs in a company's telephone tree — April 24, 2009
The technique of "farming" a company's telephone directory - an activity that can be performed on just about every major company in America from the comfort of your own desk and telephone. A few things that a directory reveals, these being only a smidgen of the type of information that can be extrapolated from a company's telephone directory. Following are some other "tidbits" of valuable information that a directory might yield. (blog/article) Maureen Sharib, April 24, 2009
- CI pro interview with Emily C. Rushing — April 22, 2009
Topics for our intelligence frequently include: 1) profiling competitors' practice areas and clients, 2) identifying business development opportunities for the firm among existing clients and developing strategic targeting programs, and 3) developing intelligence in preparation for business development meetings with existing or potential clients. (blog) Ann Lee Gibson, April 22, 2009
- Game theory — April 22, 2009
Game theory is a method based on applied mathematics and economic theory. It can be useful when attempting to analyze (and ultimately predict) the strategic interactions between two or more actors and the way in which their actions influence future decisions. Game theory assumes that all actors are rational, and can be influenced by various individuals and factors. Games typically involve five common elements: players, strategies, rules, outcomes, and payoffs. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, April 22, 2009
- Competitive intelligence is crucial, or is it? — April 17, 2009
Intelligence is really another form of gathering customer insights that add value to your business. Used well and judiciously, it will actually save you money in the long run and save you a lot of pain in very competitive market places. It doesn't really matter how you go about gathering the information; the important thing is how valuable is the intelligence that was gleaned? (blog) Sally Church, April 17, 2009
- Why businesses fail — April 17, 2009
Well established enterprises need to have a continuous process of reinventing themselves. They should use a process like learning organizations, always learning and upgrading. They must be updated with market trends, new products, new demands and they must control costs, prices and margins. Resuming, they need to have an effective process called competitive intelligence. (blog) Mario Ferreira, April 17, 2009
- History and geography distort search engine results — April 15, 2009
Google search results are based on your web history and geographic origin. If you want to see how this can distort the search results you get, then do a Google search using your normal ISP connection, then do the same search using TOR, then again with Xerobank. Each search will return different results. Richard McEachin, April 15, 2009
- Red teaming — April 15, 2009
Red Teaming is an analytical modifier that can be used in two distinct ways: First, it is used to challenge emerging operational concepts in order to discover weaknesses with an organization's procedures and reactions. Second, red teaming is used to generate options for adversaries that may be overlooked due to biases or heuristics. When red teaming is used in the first manner, the effectiveness of red teaming is usually easier to monitor and evaluate. When using the second approach, it is more difficult to measure the effectiveness of red teaming, as the effectiveness is subject to forces outside of the method itself. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, April 15, 2009
- Seven ways CEOs can use LinkedIn — April 15, 2009
What are CEOs getting from LinkedIn? More effective hires, more efficient sales, and better use of their networks. Why? Because LinkedIn makes it easier to manage relationships. You can check out prospective partners, find experts, close sales, identify potential employees, contact media, and research competitors-and spend less time doing it. (blog) Dan Nye, April 15, 2009
- Capture competitor and market intelligence through elicitation — April 14, 2009
Teach Sales elicitation skills: they don't get it anywhere else and it will help them close more deals and collect information to help your company develop better products. It does involve planning to make it work, since most of us grow up asking people questions directly to extract information. (blog) Ellen Naylor, April 14, 2009
- Finding key influencers on Twitter — April 14, 2009
Engage with individuals from the industry. Competitive intelligence complements research, so go one step further than reviewing public information. Use conversation to get to the heart of the behavior behind a challenge or competitive issue. (blog) Beth Krietsch, April 14, 2009
- Decision trees — April 8, 2009
A visual representation exploring all possible courses of action and the resulting consequences to aid in the decision making process. Decision trees are comprised of nodes (decisions/consequences), branches (links between nodes), and probabilities. The resulting form resembles a tree. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, April 8, 2009
- Twitter search: are your clients happy? — April 8, 2009
With Twitter beta-ing its search function and a handful of new Twitter search aggregators out there, I have begun monitoring Twitter for industry chatter and competitive intelligence. One thing became immediately clear to me: When customers can tweet their frustrations to the world as easily as they can text their friends, all your customer satisfaction surveys and percentages go out the window. (blog) Ian Alexander, April 8, 2009
- A flexible future - pharma sales and marketing — April 7, 2009
A recent survey of more than 100 senior pharmaceutical executives in Australia conducted in March 2009, the hot topics of interest included sales excellence and SFE (67%), marketing strategy (54%), customer/market insights (53%), business and competitive intelligence (53%), sales management and coaching (46%), sales operations (43%), pricing and reimbursement strategies (37%), branding/marketing communications (35%) and forecasting (31%). (blog) n.a. April 7, 2009
- Designing your market presence for Twitter — April 6, 2009
By making Twitter a company-wide initiative, you can easily harness all the benefits of reputation management, prospect building, lead conversion, customer support and competitive intelligence with minimal effort. It does take some diligence, but the benefits can be outstanding. (blog) Stacey Schneider, April 6, 2009
- Argument mapping — April 1, 2009
Argument mapping (AM) is an analytic modifier that can be used to examine the logic behind the development of a particular conclusion and/or hypothesis. The product of AM is a visual representation (typically a box-and-line diagram) of the reasons that support and oppose the claim. Constructing a visual depiction of a complex argument reduces the level of abstraction in evaluating a decision. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, April 1, 2009
- Defense contractors need specialized technical pros — April 1, 2009
Demand is high for a wide range of functional specialists who can work in these areas. These include competitive intelligence, market intelligence and technology-transfer monitoring specialists; engineers in a wide range of subspecialties; intelligence analysts; linguists; and computer specialists of all types. (blog/article) n.a., May 1, 2009
- Knowledge for successful selling — April 1, 2009
Selling requires an immeasurable amount of education of company, industry and competitive intelligence. Clients receive immense value in the knowledge provided by the selling professional. In a time pressured world, clients are concerned about value not price. (blog) Drew Stevens, April 1, 2009
- Should CI take the lead on EB or should it stay with HR, strategy and marketing? — April 1, 2009
mployer Branding (EB) is one of the fastest growing business tools today, how company's potential employees view your company, how your current employees feel about your company is critical to success in todays world. Strategy teams know how important the people component of their corporate strategy is. The more I work within EB projects the more I ask myself why CI aren't more involved and more imporantly why isn't someone from CI in the senior management team for EB. (blog) Heather Disher, April 1, 2009
March
- Competitive intelligence toolkit — March 30, 2009
For those who are new to producing competitive intelligence, I will share three of the analytical tools I have come back to again and again in my CI career. These tools do not require CI-specific training. In fact, most of you are probably familiar with at least one of them from your business or insurance training, as well as even college courses. They may not be everything you require to fully answer a question or issue, but in my experience, they provide the foundation from which to launch a sound analysis on most issues. (blog) Karen Rothwell, March 30, 2009
- Persuading through CI tools: the cooperative angle — March 30, 2009
Don't be so persuasive that you forget about the dignity of the people you are addressing. Tell a good story that leads them to your conclusions, as though your audience had thought them up themselves. (blog) Ellen Naylor, March 30, 2009
- Competitive intelligence - a selective resource guide — March 29, 2009
Guide leverages selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites and sources to effectively profile and monitor companies, markets, countries, people, and issues. This guide is a "best of list" of web, database and email alert products, services and tools, as well links to content specific sources produced by governments, academia, NGOs, the media and various publishers. Sabrina Pacifici, March 29, 2009
- Four possible futures for law firm scenario planning — March 29, 2009
Here is a summary of four possible futures we have developed for senior legal marketers. Working in small groups, they will identify core and contingent strategies for success under different scenarios, identify early warnings to recognize when scenarios are "coming true," and challenge their own and others' assumptions and strategies. (blog) Ann Lee Gibson, March 29, 2009
- Thoughts on Social CRM, hype and usefulness — March 29, 2009
I've had some time to stew over the developments that Web based CRM platform, Salesforce, has made with regard to introducing the ServiceCloud to solve real life problems. (blog) Joe Manna, March 30, 2009
- Semantic intelligence — March 28, 2009
Most people think of traditional business intelligence (BI) as a collection of business-critical information from inside the enterprise. However, consumer comments, independent reviews, and market reports online are crucial pieces of information coming from the outside that infinitely affect any organization. Semantic intelligence provides early identification and analysis of consumer sentiment, purchasing trends, market deals, and competitive information. (article) Brooke Aker, March 28, 2009
- Ex-Valspar employee accused of industrial spying — March 27, 2009
A former Valspar Corp. employee was accused by U.S. prosecutors of stealing trade secrets from the paint maker, then packing his belongings for a one-way trip to China, where a new job in the same business awaited him. (article) March 27, 2009 bloomberg
- Eric Garland and the Future of CI — March 26, 2009
In this far-ranging interview, Eric Garland discusses the evolving role of CI and complexity in the global economy. (podcast) August Jackson, March 26, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: when social networking backfires — March 25, 2009
I discovered my arch-nemesis Randy had a Twitter page. And it was unprotected. In just a few short minutes, the wealth of competitive information I was able to gather from Randy's 30 or so 'Tweets' was nothing short of astounding. With social networking sites, there is an implied barrier of confidentiality that really doesn't exist. In about half an hour, I was able to assemble a profile on the CEO of my company's closest competitor. (blog) Eric Prudolf, March 25, 2009
- Dealing with affiliates: a roadmap to success — March 25, 2009
Lori Weiman focuses on monitoring your affiliates' efforts. Her system is a competitive intelligence tool that looks at ads across different mediums, including search. They identify affiliates who direct link, affiliates who operate their own Web pages, watch for brand terms, head terms and long-tail terms. She's often asked if affiliates are a problem or a solution. They look at it as a solution: (blog) Virginia Nussey, March 25, 2009
- Dialectic and the Socratic Method — March 25, 2009
The Dialectic Method is an analytic technique designed to force the participants to re-examine their internal beliefs, biases, and conclusions through an open and directed dialogue. The Dialectic Method uses questioning techniques with the intention of creating a better understanding of a problem or concept. In the realm of intelligence analysis, it should be used as an analytic modifier; i.e. a technique to reassess the validity of the analytic process, not as a forecasting method. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, March 25, 2009
- Science searches — March 25, 2009
I had to locate articles written by a prominent scientist and here are some of the sites that proved useful. You may not know much about science, but a guy who does is probably published. (blog) Richard McEachin, March 25, 2009
- Think of it as safety — March 25, 2009
Business strategists and competitive intelligence professionals deal in ideas. At first it may seem that having a good idea is the biggest challenge. Later we come to know that affecting people successfully with those ideas is a much greater challenge. (blog) Tom Hawes, March, 25, 2009
- What's your competitive edge? — March 25, 2009
What makes your business unique? What is your competitive edge? It's important for new businesses to complete a competitive analysis during the business planning stage, but competitive intelligence can also be useful for marketing, pricing, managing and other strategic planning for retailers. Before you can know your competitive edge, you must know your competitor. Shari Waters, March 25, 2009
- BCG Matrix share: a visual strategic CI tool — March 23, 2009
A strategic visual competitive intelligence tool I like is an adaptation from the Boston Consulting Group's (BCG) Matrix Share model which depicts share momentum. In competitive intelligence terms, the BCG Matrix Share is a great primer to communicate a snapshot of competitor's share of market. (blog) Ellen Naylor, March 23, 2009
- CI in tactical times: actions and cautions — March 23, 2009
Let me give you some more reasons why an approach of "always and only strategic issues" is not a subtle enough approach for a CI professional. Work can be tactical for a while but there are cautions in every case.(blog) Tom Hawes, March 23, 2009
- Search technology in business intelligence not the answer — March 18, 2009
You should be using search to help you get competitive intelligence, market intelligence. But all you're doing is throwing more information at business users, and they'll be saying, 'You give me 10 bits of information and tell me to make a decision? Well how do I know what I should act on unless you give me an environment in which I can model a business outcome?' That is modeling based on guesswork. (article/interview) Christina Torode, March 18, 2009
- Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis — March 18, 2009
SWOT is the result of structured brainstorming on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of an organization or, as an intelligence analysis technique, of a competitor, enemy or rival. While not designed to generate an estimative conclusion by itself, SWOT serves as a possible convergent-thinking technique in the early stages of strategy formulation. (blog/article) Kristan Wheaton, March 18, 2009
- Surprise: strategic planning's Achilles heel — March 17, 2009
Surprise acts as a risk-multiplier. It's bad enough for companies to be confronted with an external development that complicates their strategy. However, if companies at least have an indication that such developments could occur, they can focus on remediation. The solution, I believe, lies in a system that combines structured analysis of plausible threat scenarios with a simple and effective approach to information monitoring. (blog) Ken Sawka, March 17, 2009
- The secrets of strategy — March 17, 2009
Strategy is the guiding principle on which are based a series of interlinked decisions regarding the selection and deployment of resources and tactics, whose purpose is realizing a vision and achieving decisive objectives in a competitive and changing environment. Strategy is broad and all-encompassing. With that in mind, here are the 8 steps in formulating strategy: 1. Set your vision; 2. Gather environmental and competitive intelligence, etc. (article) ‘Tolik', March 17, 2009
- Answers to using the internet to research private companies — March 15, 2009
On 25 February I delivered a well-attended webinar for the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) on some of the methods I use to collect information about private (and other hard-to-research) companies on the Internet. As promised, I wanted to follow up on the Questions that came in via the chat channel here on this blog. (blog) August Jackson, March 15, 2009
- Create a CI report card — March 13, 2009
A competitive intelligence (CI) report card is such a case. It is an indication of impending failure if a competitive intelligence professional does not get a report regularly on his or her performance. Why? Because a CI function depends on the relationships with and value to senior management. When either the relationship or recognized value is waning, then corrective action must be taken. (Or, you need to look for a new job.) (blog) Tom Hawes, March 13, 2009
- No country for partners either — March 13, 2009
Yet, BigLaw still hasn't gotten it how to use digital as a new-business development tool. Experiment with mini projects. The big nut to crack is coming up with a message that will resonate. Testing out can be done quantitatively, qualitatively [using blogs, Tweets can generate a gold mine of data and competitive intelligence], and being a guest commentator on others's digital sites. (blog) Jane Genova, March 14, 2009
- Why now is the time to consider scenario planning — March 13, 2009
The risk, of course, is not having a clear strategy for growth once the recession ends, or worse, failing to position now for future opportunities. That's why cogent strategy development is more important now than ever before. With forecasts deemed virtually meaningless, and the future harder and harder to envision, managers need a tool for flexible and realistic strategy development. (blog) Ken Sawka, March 13, 2009
- Analyzing your business' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — March 12, 2009
A SWOT analysis aims to provide decision makers with an overview of a particular target. This particular article focused on business and competitive intelligence (BCI) SWOT analysis, although the information has generalizability. Conducting a SWOT methodology yields a number of benefits. (blog) Andrew Canfield, March 12, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: learn what competitors are doing — March 12, 2009
When you look around at your current competitors, do you know what they're doing? Do you know how effective their current operations are, or how satisfied their customers are? When you develop your business strategies, do you consider what your competitors' strategies might be? (blog/article) n.a. March 2009
- Fresh look at strategy under uncertainty — March 12, 2009
Although even the highest levels of uncertainty don’t prevent businesses from analyzing predicaments rationally, says author Hugh Courtney, the financial crisis has shown us the limits of our tools—and minds. (interview) McKinsey Quarterly, March 12, 2009
- A framework for identifying inventions worth patenting — March 11, 2009
What patents are the company's competitors obtaining? Competitive intelligence is another important part of the invention selection process. While U.S. patent applications can be confidential for at least 18 months, regular searches on issued patents, published U.S. and international applications provides significant information. If a competitor is filing aggressively in a particular technology area, that should increase the value of inventions by the company in that same area. (article) Robert Sachs, March 11, 2009
- Are you really hearing your customers voices? — March 11, 2009
The impact of the Internet and then of the online social network phenomenon on the consumer buying behavior is a fact. You can therefore imagine that monitoring and, when possible, trying to influence the opinion expressed on these sources should be a main priority for any company. (blog) L. Scagliarini, March 11, 2009
- Conducting a proper SWOT analysis: going beyond the book — March 11, 2009
At the most basic level, a SWOT analysis involves collecting data and information about one's organization and industry (competitors, etc.), processing and assessing the relevant data, and creating four lists. (blog) ‘Jack S.' March 11, 2009
- The five myths of generic competition — March 11, 2009
Understanding and forecasting generic competition remains undoubtedly a serious strategic challenge for anyone with a brand product on the market. In analyzing the study findings, Thomson Reuters offers guidance on when and how best to improve competitive intelligence processes by focusing on more effective sources of long-range signals, and by providing brand teams with the resources and tools necessary to better understand generic competition. (report) March 11, 2009
- Link building 2.0 getting attention in the social age — March 10, 2009
Tools like Linkscape and Yahoo Site Explorer now mean that we have even more information than ever before about who links to our competitors. Find out who they are and then add them to your target list. (blog) ‘Matt,' March 10, 2009
- Marketing's primary mission — March 10, 2009
Successful firms know and understand the strengths as well as weak areas of their direct competitors. They constantly seek competitive intelligence and apply it to their on-going marketing and sales tactics. (blog) n.a., March 10, 2009
- British pair charged in industrial espionage row — March 9, 2009
A leading British manufacturer has been caught up in an industrial espionage row after two engineers used a mobile telephone to photograph a secret piece of equipment at an American factory. (article) David Brown, March 9, 2009
- Collecting primary research data on emerging nanotechnology innovations — March 9, 2009
Use executive interviewers of the highest calibre - provided with knowledge such as keyword triggers so as to understand what is important to probe endlessly. Interviewers who understand their position is to feed competitive intelligence, not just ensuring objective data alone. Frequently a trail of whispers collected by acute interviewers, beyond the pure survey, make important topics for boardrooms discussions. (blog/article) Grett Galvin, March 9, 2009 Fast Company,
- Competitive Intelligence Summit SCIP2009 Chicago — March 9, 2009
I know budgets are tight. Most of our companies are feeling the pinch, which is all the more reason to be involved in this important event. I know that the opportunities available through this gathering of CI professionals are something nobody can afford to sacrifice. The information you garner in our education sessions will make your work more valuable and effective, and SCIP09 vendors are excited to supply attendees with the best service for the best prices. (blog) Jens Thieme March 9, 2009
- How'd they do that? Enthusiasts aren't the only ones interested in finding out — March 9, 2009
You'd think, with all the competitive intelligence that could be gathered during the auto show, the manufacturers would be more guarded with who has access to the display stands, but that's not the case. It's tolerated because sooner or later their engineering and product planning staff are going to be making the rounds too.(blog) Mike Levine March 9, 2009
- Info Junkie: Brad Wilks — March 9, 2009
Never skip the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. Yahoo Finance has great competitive intelligence on its message boards. "So much of what appears is driven by internal people who've got information. Too often corporations overlook that, but we're of a mind that whatever you communicate internally, you can expect to see online within two minutes. (blog) Christina Le Beau, March 9, 2009
- Online impressions count when it comes to law firm evaluation — March 9, 2009
A recent survey of the Web habits of general in-house counsel has revealed that almost 90% of them agreed that a law firm's Web site plays a key role in influencing a purchasing decision. Nearly all of the general counsel interviewed stated they make broad use of the Web at work, primarily for research, including competitive intelligence gathering, industry information, legal research and information from legal and trade publications. (article) Jeremy Hill, Legal Technology Journal March 9, 2009
- The end of transactional executive search — March 9, 2009
To be a valued talent/HR organization, knowing and mapping the marketplace is a must. If done correctly, an internal executive search team will transcend the req-filling recruiter role to an intelligence function - a function with their finger on the pulse on competitive intelligence, marketing & branding opportunities, new sources of revenue, and potential M&A targets. (blog/article) Fernando Delgado, March 9, 2009
- Competitive intelligence and the spectre of executive negligence — March 6, 2009
What happens to competitive intelligence people when the system they operate within is profoundly flawed? What happens to their motivation when the competitive intelligence analyst realises that the whole game is so rotten that the data becomes totally valueless? How do competitive intelligence analysts remain of sound mind when the majority of their thoughts are almost totally derived of corrupted data? What happens to their confidence, to their behaviour and to relationships both inside and outside this context? (blog) n.a. March 6, 2009
- Competitive intelligence and the spectre of executive negligence — March 6, 2009
What happens to competitive intelligence people when the system they operate within is profoundly flawed? What happens to their motivation when the competitive intelligence analyst realises that the whole game is so rotten that the data becomes totally valueless? How do competitive intelligence analysts remain of sound mind when the majority of their thoughts are almost totally derived of corrupted data? What happens to their confidence, to their behaviour and to relationships both inside and outside this context? (blog) n.a. March 6, 2009
- Signs, signs, everywhere the signs — March 6, 2009
One thing that is true in competitive intelligence (CI) is that signs are everywhere. Contrary to the image of a spy sleuthing through trash or bugging phones, an ethical CI professional is swamped with publicly available information. The question is rarely about the quantity of information but how to identify and interpret the valuable information. (blog) Tom Hawes, March 6, 2009
- Top 5 ways retailers may loose customers — March 6, 2009
It's important for new businesses to complete a competitive analysis during the business planning stage, but competitive intelligence can also be useful for marketing, pricing, managing and other strategic planning for retailers. Before you can know your competitive edge, you must know your competitor. (blog) Shari Waters, March 6, 2009
- How to get a lost account to speak with you — March 5, 2009
One of the most difficult things in Win/Loss Analysis is getting someone from a lost account to speak with you. Why would they spend the time, and why would they reveal anything to you? The preparation work is essential to get the information you need. (blog) Alan Armstrong, March 5, 2009
- Mindset is more important than skillset for CI — March 5, 2009
Over the past few years, I've had conversations about how to hire for CI positions. The longer I do this work, the more I seek out those who think a particular way rather than those that necessarily have specific CI experience or skills. Of course, having both is ideal, but I will take a creative, curious thinker who is always asking questions and thinking several steps ahead over someone who has mastered Five Forces, online searches, etc. (blog) Bill Fiora, March 5, 2009
- Boston SCIP member among first to question Madoff — March 4, 2009
Harry Markopolos has attended a number of SCIP Boston chapter meetings and provided an excellent presentation on the difference between espionage and competitive intelligence. Here's one article from the Boston Business Journal. (blog) Jorge Posada, March 2, 2009,
- Look at their job postings — March 4, 2009
When looking at another company, that company's future plans are important to know. The company may be contemplating entering or leaving a market. They may be creating products which increase their competitiveness. Product lines may be expanded or contracted. There is no one measure (short of public announcements) that signals the future. However there are many activities and actions which may help produce a reasonable guess about future plans. Job postings are one type of signal that may indicate a company's future plans. (blog) Tom Hawes, March 4, 2009
- Sell-side research: there's value tracking the flow — March 4, 2009
We're starting to do some research with the Street Pulse database to see what kind of web-based information has the potential to move stocks. I don't expect to find many instances where articles and posts we process and aggregate are actionable, but I do expect to find evidence of excellent early warning signs and valuable market and competitive intelligence. (blog) Steve Goldstein, March 4, 2009
- The armchair sleuth: competitive intelligence via search — March 4, 2009
Would you like to have a heads-up any time your competitors are about ready to launch a new product? In many cases you can get good advance warning with clever use of search. There are specific competitive intelligence tactics that make this relatively straightforward. You can easily find out ALL of the new product offerings, ad campaigns, and catchy slogans that your competitors are about to lob into your vertical. (article) Lori Weiman, March 4, 2009
- Competitive intelligence sleuthing — March 3, 2009
Competitive Intelligence (CI) does not involve covert operations or espionage but it is sleuthing ... nearly almost always in electronic form. Law librarians have been doing CI sleuthing for a while and have seen an increase in the number of fee and free tools available nowadays. (blog) Evelyn Campbell, March 3, 2009
- Commentary on blogs and blogging — March 2, 2009
Blogging has changed my personal working habits. I have learned to present myself better, to offer opinions, and to invite commentary. Researching my field on the web and reporting on it, I've learned how to separate relevant from irrelevant information and to develop more sophisticated ideas of my topics. Being able to see what others are writing about and being able to compare them has led me to clarify my topic. N.a. (blog) March 2, 2009
- Filling in the Gaps: Company intelligence beyond the corporate website — March 1, 2009
Somewhere between paid databases and Google, there's a wealth of company information available to researchers who ask the right questions and poke into the odd corners. Sarah Hinton provides an overview of her normal research process for corporate information, which uses the corporate web site as a springboard into competitive, patent, market, industry and insider information. (article) Sarah Hinton, March 2009
- Holding business professionals accountable for leadership malpractice — March 1, 2009
A flawed strategy is almost always the product of failures further up in the decision making process. This process begins with diagnosis - identifying the correct problem or opportunity. It is followed by having the appropriate input - the information and insight necessary to understand the problem or opportunity - and throughput - the ability to reach the most appropriate and impacting conclusions from the data and situational analysis and connecting them to strategies. (article) Paul Kinsinger, March 1, 2009 Thunderbird Knowledge Network,
- Managerial (in)attention to competitive threats — March 1, 2009
We integrate the Attention Based View of the firm and Regulatory Focus Theory to propose a model of managerial (in)attention that explains why appeals by middle managers for top managers to attend to specific threats of emerging rivals go unheeded.
February
- Lessons from a wise old bird — February 28, 2009
People are talking about your brand, are you tapping in when they are conversing? Listening can do many wonders for your company. Conversations (either negative or positive) around your brand means they care about your brand. Social media monitoring is essential for your company's competitive intelligence. Isabelle Joo, Feburary 28, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: learn what competitors are doing — February 27, 2009
A competitor is a rival company operating in the same industry as you, selling similar goods or services. You may be competing against your rivals to win customers on the basis of price, the type of product you sell, the type of promotions you run, or perhaps the quality of service you offer. (article/fee) n.a. February 2009
- It's not the quills (analysis poverty) — February 27, 2009
My experience in competitive intelligence (CI) is that organizations have favorite techniques to interpret the competitive environment. When a small number of approaches are used repeatedly, it may signal what I call analysis poverty, the condition whereby a large variety of problems are addressed by a narrow set of analytical techniques. The impact of analysis poverty is that the organization will not likely understand the environment appropriately and they will dampen the impact (through misapplication) of the techniques that they know best.. (blog) Tom Hawes, Feb 27, 2009
- Patent cluster tool — February 27, 2009
Patent clustering tools aid the patent analyst in his daily analysis and review of huge set of patent documents. PatentCluster.com provides patent cluster tools, where documents get automatically clustered into various clusters based on the technology elements and patent focus/ (blog) Vinod Singh, February 27, 2009
- Six ways to kill competitive intelligence — February 26, 2009
There are many things to do to be successful in a competitive intelligence (CI) function. There are some things that will likely doom an effort. When working in CI it is important to understand both perspectives. That is, there are things to ensure and things to avoid. Here is my list of things to do to "doom" a competitive intelligence effort. (blog) Tom Hawes, February 26, 2009
- Six ways to kill competitive intelligence — February 26, 2009
There are many things to do to be successful in a competitive intelligence (CI) function. There are some things that will likely doom an effort. When working in CI it is important to understand both perspectives. That is, there are things to ensure and things to avoid. Here is my list of things to do to "doom" a competitive intelligence effort. (blog) Tom Hawes, February 26, 2009,
- Ten steps for successful competitive intelligence — February 26, 2009
There are many important things to consider for establishing and executing a successful competitive intelligence function. Some of these steps may be executed "outside" of a designated competitive intelligence staff. Nonetheless, my argument is that all of the steps are critical. Here are the 10 steps that I think are important. (blog) Tom Hawes, February 26, 2009
- Building a trusted brand — February 25, 2009
A current competitive intelligence strategy is key to an organization's success. Understanding what others in your market space are doing, how many people they serve, what large contracts are they implementing, what are they doing well, and where could they improve can make the difference between success and failure. (blog) n.a., February 25, 2009
- Sales intelligence: the secret to sales nirvana — February 25, 2009
In November 2008, Aberdeen surveyed over 300 companies to understand how organizations leverage sales intelligence information to improve the effectiveness of the sales force and enrich the quality of leads in the sales pipeline. This report examines how top performing companies are implementing sales intelligence initiatives to increase the quality of leads in the pipeline and contextualize opportunities with relevant industry or account information. (report) Alex Jefferies, 28 pages. February 2009
- Why is my competitor doing that? — February 24, 2009
Competitive strategy is often an exercise of imitating a competitor's actions instead of charting a unique course of action -- an approach that rarely results in a company establishing a leadership position in its industry. the biggest mistake companies make when establishing a CI function is that they position it as a research function instead of a resource for informing strategic decisions. (blog) Ken Sawka, February 24, 2009
- Alacra pulses with new product energy — February 23, 2009
Alacra's new Pulse Platform reflects the reality of where people now look for corporate news, information, and analysis. It's no longer sufficient to rely upon investment house research reports, whether those reports come from the buy side or the sell side. Bloggers and analysts from outside the traditional investment community have taken up the slack. An increase in available information, however, raises a different type of trustworthiness issue: how to separate the wheat from the chaff. (article) Marydee Ojala, February 23, 2009
- Opportunity analysis in bad times — February 23, 2009
We need to consider the entrepreneurial businesses, which have made America great such as Google, Intel and Microsoft. Let's be on the lookout for the next Google to invest in. We still have great innovation in America. Let's not curb their enthusiasm. (blog) Ellen Naylor, February 23, 2009,
- Social media targeting for people and businesses — February 23, 2009
Professional marketers, especially direct marketers, study what their competition is - and is not - doing in great detail. They may also try to understand why the competition is doing what it does, and if a campaign is used over and over, they'll assume that the campaign is profitable. Watch your competitors and you'll learn how they position themselves, what they write about, what keywords they optimize, where they bookmark their content, what tags they use, and much more. (blog) Larry Brauner, February 23, 2009
- Competitive audits — February 22, 2009
Further proof that the scope and advantage of mystery shopper programs extends well beyond that of a perfunctory customer service evaluation is their effectiveness as a tool for conducting competitive audits - and for building a body of competitive intelligence that can be used to inform your own product, staffing and service-based decisions as well as long-term strategic development. (blog) David Rich, February 22, 2009
- Managing corporate reputation online can no longer be an afterthought — February 22, 2009
Weber Shandwick and The Economist released a study based on interviews with more than 700 executives, designed to address the key challenges companies face today and specific actions that need to be taken. The highlights included: Most surveyed executives say they utilize the Web more for competitive intelligence than understanding their company's reputation positioning. (blog) Mike Spataro, February 22, 2009
- Moving CI from information-driven inquiry to decision-support consultancy — February 22, 2009
I want to encourage researchers to move from thinking about requests for specific information and focusing more on the motivating decision that they are trying to inform. I have been looking at this concept recently based on some observations I've been pulling together about some cognitive biases that occur when competitive intelligence tasking is focused strictly on finding specific information about the market or a competitor versus inquiries and support based on decision support. (blog) August Jackson, Febrary 22, 2009
- Recruiting firm keep focus to weather the tough times — February 22, 2009
Sheila Greco and Associates has four main branches: research, recruitment, competitive intelligence and the company's special executive tracker. In hard times, Greco believes it is more important than ever for businesses to have the best possible people, and clients will turn to her to seek them out. (article) Jessica harding, Daily Gazette Schenedtady NY, Febuary 22, 2009
- Risky Business Reputations Online — February 22, 2009
Weber Shandwick commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to conduct a worldwide online survey of 703 senior executives from 62 countries. Risky Business addresses such issues as the vulnerability of company reputations, the resources executives rely upon to assess company reputations, the identification and prioritization of online risks to reputation, the impact of traditional and new media on reputation, the globalization and localization of digital reputation, the viability and penetration of Web 2.0, the threat of employee cyber-sabotage, and most importantly, the best measures for protecting a company's reputation online. (PDF full report) 20 pages. 2009
- Selected Philippine online media sources — February 22, 2009
I do daily media scanning and news analysis. Simply put I track relevant issues so that I can provide risk assessment, competitive intelligence, and early warning to clients. The following are my staple of on-line media sources. (Blog) Eero Rosini Brillantes, February 22, 2009
- The basic rules of competitive intelligence — February 22, 2009
Every business has to deal with customers, suppliers, employees and others. In nearly every branch of trade there are many companies dealing with the same reference groups. These companies are competitors because they offer similar products to similar customers. Therefore, it is so crucial to know what the other companies, the competitors, are doing. (blog) Sophie Bonczyk, Febuary 22, 2009
- Turning business intelligence into business decisions — February 22, 2009
Many organizations, however, have spent substantial time and effort building a business intelligence capability only to struggle with acting on the intelligence gathered. Often, competitive intelligence fails to include actionable insights that decision-makers can put to use. How then, to ensure that business intelligence drives decision-making. (article) Ken Sawka, February 2009 Kiplinger Business Resource Center.
- Better to fetter: Mintel vs Neerghen — February 21, 2009
There's a new decision out of the N.D. of Illinois addressing the question of what justifies direct access to a non-party's hard drives in the context of employee data theft. What Mintel should have done from the start was seek appointment of a neutral examiner to undertake the examination. A neutral could assess evidence of usage and re-distribution of Mintel's stolen data while ameliorating the risk that Mintel might use third-party discovery as a means of competitive intelligence. (blog) Craig Ball, February 21, 2009
- Making great leaders: social intelligence and the biology of leadership — February 21, 2009
Being in a good mood, research finds, helps people take in information effectively and respond nimbly and creatively. In other words, laughter is serious business. Excerpts from Social intelligence and the biology of leadership, by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatsis. (blog) David Harkleroad, "," February 21, 2009
- Social media and pharma — February 20, 2009
Things are still evolving in the Pharma industry as a few players have only just started to experiment with the cool social media tools that are out there. There will be a lot of interesting battles with internal medical-legal-regulatory review teams to come though. (blog) Sally Church, February 20, 2009
- Follow your client's breadcrumbs - follow up sales tips — February 19, 2009
The first thing I would do is try to get competitive intelligence on the new contact's past company and see if they would be a good prospect for your business, perhaps this new contact could introduce you. Second I would follow the old contact to their new place of employment and see if they could purchase services from you again. Lastly I would ask who he replaced at the new job and where they moved to. (blog) Oliver Feakins, February 19, 2009
- Intellipedia suffers midlife crisis — February 18, 2009
The U.S. intelligence agencies' internal wiki Intellipedia has gotten glowing press reports and accolades, as well as input from thousands of analysts. However, the wiki still struggles to make a permanent home in the spy agencies. The growth of the collective intelligence site so far largely has been fueled by early adopters and enthusiasts. If the intelligence agencies want to get further gains from the site, they need to incorporate it into their own formal decision making process. (article) Joab Jackson, February 18, 2009
- New Intel related articles on Wikipedia — February 18, 2009
One of the assignments I give the grad students in my Intelligence Communications class is to write a Wikipedia article on something that is both "intelligence related" and that has not been covered before on Wikipedia. Last year's class generated a good crop of articles and this year's class -- while extending the definition of "intelligence-related" somewhat -- is no different. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, February 18, 2009
- Sales training for competitive intelligence — February 18, 2009
An important area in your sales career make is sales training and you should find a course in Competitive Intelligence. It is important to understand your competitors. It is not industrial espionage, competitive intelligence is an ethical and legal business discipline used routine in the business community. (blog) Bob Beck. February 18, 2009
- The other death spiral — February 18, 2009
This death spiral is where you start to believe too much of your own thinking. Over years of experience -- particularly within a single organization -- a kind of inertia builds up. Make periodic assumption questioning part of your routine process. Take a step outside of your comfort zone. Really do a scenario analysis of how the options will play out over time. (blog) Tim Rochte, February 18, 2009
- Best practices in competitive technical intelligence — February 17, 2009
Best in class companies consider primary intelligence gathering a key practice. While technology has made great strides for information collection and organization, people are still needed, since critical thinking is absent strictly using technology. Tap into individual networks and get access to intra-company networks, company to government R&D organizations, and company to company networks (from conferences and presentations). (blog) Ellen Naylor, February 17, 2009
- Dominating your SEO competition through competitive knowledge — February 17, 2009
Knowing who your competitors are and what kind of time and monetary investment they are making into their online marketing is nearly as essential as implementing your own marketing strategy. If you have a good idea of what you're up against can make better decisions about where and how to invest your own time and money. (blog) Stoney DeGeyter, February 17, 2009
- Leadership skills: understanding the competition part 2 — February 17, 2009
This article is one in a series focusing on your building intellectual capital. The last article and this one target a particular area: competitive intelligence. In this column, we focus on obtaining high level financial information, and it differs if it is for public or private companies. (blog) Marian Cook, February 17, 2009
- The airport waiting area syndrome goes global with Twitter — February 17, 2009
Now Twitter opens up a whole new way to give away your company secrets to anyone anywhere who wants to listen. I was talking with a marketing person who subscribes to his competitors Twitter feeds. He finds that they often discuss recent sales calls on Twitter. He can then forward the competitive intelligence on to the appropriate people in his sales force. (blog) Bill Ives, February 17, 2009
- Top 10 Twitter tips for beginners — February 16, 2009
Is it finally time to take the Twitter plunge? The free service that lets users micro-blog 140 characters at a time had accumulated around 1.9 million users as of December 2008, according to comScore. If you are just now jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, or are intimidated by your inexperience with Twitter etiquette and acronyms, allow us to share some Twittery tips that will make your experience easier and more enjoyable. (blog/article) Sean Ludwig, February 16, 2009
- Collecting competitive intelligence on sitepoint — February 14, 2009
Although the SitePoint marketplace is pretty big and has a lot of prospective buyers, you still need to stay up-to-date with what your competition is doing and why. The reason is simple - benchmarking. Every single time one of your chief competitors sells a website, you need to know when it happens, what got sold and, most importantly, why. (blog) ‘George', February 14, 2009
- Old habits die hard: why a revised approach to M&A due diligence is key — February 14, 2009
Traditional approaches to M&A due diligence may allow vital issues in today's cross-border M&A environment to fall through the cracks, potentially giving acquirers an incomplete, and possibly faulty, view of the deal landscape. In some cases, basic information required to make deal decisions simply doesn't exist or is of questionable quality. Against these odds, how can management make the best quality investment decisions? (report) 4 pages February 4, 2009
- Researching intellectual property law in the Russian Federation — February 14, 2009
With the advent of globalization attorneys increasingly confront the necessity to research intellectual property law in jurisdictions other than the United States. This task can be complex and intimidating at times, depending on the amount of information available and the extent to which the foreign law differs from American law. The purpose of this guide is to assist attorneys and other legal professionals in the research of contemporary intellectual property law in the Russian Federation. (article) Julian Zegelman, February 14, 2009
- Six ways to make web 2.0 work — February 14, 2009
Web 2.0 tools present a vast array of opportunities-for companies that know how to use them. Over the past two years, McKinsey has studied more than 50 early adopters to garner insights into successful efforts to use Web 2.0 as a way of unlocking participation. We have found that, unless a number of success factors are present, Web 2.0 efforts often fail to launch or to reach expected heights of usage. (article) Michael Chiu, Andy Miller and Roger P. Roberts, McKinsey Quarterly, February 2009
- Collecting competitive intelligence on SitePoint — February 13, 2009
Gathering competitive intelligence is essential to any business. If you're going to take on the competition, you need to offer something at least similar to what they're providing. Your competitors on the SitePoint marketplace are your best source of competitive intelligence. (blog) George Chernikov, February 13, 2009
- Competitive intelligence using lost deals — February 13, 2009
Win/Loss analysis is one of the most powerful tools in the product manager's belt. Gather competitive intelligence from last year's losses. Sales people rarely follow up once they feel an account is dead. Therefore you are looking to find accounts that sales considers dead, but in which you can get a lot of valuable information. It would be hard for sales to prevent you from calling dead accounts. There are two main kinds of dead accounts, and you can learn different things depending on what you find. (blog) Alan Armstrong, February 13, 2009
- Time to assess: who is your real competition? — February 13, 2009
This article explores the increasing ways in which competitive intelligence can help law firms differentiate themselves from the pack and more successfully vie for the anticipated redistribution of client relationships and revenue streams in a disrupted and changing marketplace. (article) Liz Pava, National Law Journal, February 13, 2009
- Twitter: what is it good for? — February 13, 2009
"communications protocol" that allows users to blast small bursts of info to their followers and friends, according to new data by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Twitter, Yammer, Facebook and other micro-blogging platforms are becoming journalism tools: Reporters use a dedicated newsfeed to keep up with the competition, and to solicit ideas from their readers. (blog) ‘JDP, February 13, 2009
- Fifteen nifty SEO Google Alert tips — February 12, 2009
You may know that you can get the latest news headline links using Google alerts. Simply go to http://www.news.google.com and put in a search for something you want to know more about. Here are some ideas about how you can use Google Alerts. (blog) Greg Cryns, February 12, 2009
- Who washed my briefs? — February 12, 2009
Change is a given in any industry, but especially so for us legal folks. Recently large-scale change has been visited upon us in terms of our clients, the economy, and our internal organizations. The interesting thing about clients is that they expect their professional service providers to be proactive, not reactive. Proactive strategies are the result of knowing your market, your clients, and your industries inside and out. (blog) Laura Walters, February 12, 2009
- Competitive analysis: 12 free competitive intelligence tools — February 11, 2009
Of course there are a lot of [search marketing] tools that companies can spend a lot of money and resources on to track their competition, but there are also a number of free resources that you can use to gain competitive intelligence. Here's a look at twelve great online competitive intelligence tools... and they are all free. (blog) February 12, 2009
- Getting into your competitor's head: a case study — February 11, 2009
Competitive intelligence professionals often spend too much time collecting competitive data and not enough time digesting what it really means, and how it can help their managers make better decisions. In the February McKinsey Quarterly, "Getting into Your Competitor's Head," the authors (Hugh Courtney, John Horn and Jayanti Kar) discuss that in order to be more predictive you need to insert yourself into both your competitor's company moves as well as their decision-making, which often don't match. (blog) Ellen Naylor, February 11, 2009
- Evaluating intelligence: part 8 batting averages — February 7, 2009
Clearly, given the caveats and conditions under which I am attempting this analysis, I am looking only for broad patterns of analytic activity. My intent is not to spend hours quibbling about all of the various ways a particular judgment could be interpreted as true or false after the fact. My intent is to merely make the case that evaluating intelligence is difficult but, even with those difficulties firmly in mind, it is possible to go back, after the fact, and, if we look at a broad enough swath of analysis, come to some interesting conclusions about the process. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, February 7, 2009
- Sharpen your emotional intelligence skills — February 7, 2009
Emotional Intelligence is as important component of cooperative intelligence. Referred to as EI, often measured as an Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), it is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power of emotions to facilitate high levels of collaboration and productivity. In my field of competitive intelligence a high EQ is helpful since we're often delivering people bad news. (blog) Ellen Naylor, February 7, 2009
- Evaluating intelligence: part 7 the Iraq WMD estimate — February 6, 2009
These three documents, prepared at roughly the same time, under roughly the same conditions, with roughly the same resources on roughly the same target allows the accuracy of the estimative conclusions in the documents to be compared with some assurance that doing so may help get at any underlying flaws or successes in the analytic process. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, February 6, 2009
- Getting into your competitor's head — February 6, 2009
You must analyze a competitor at two levels: organizational and individual. At the organizational level, you have to think like a strategist of your competitor by searching for the perfect strategic fit between its endowments and its changing market environment. At the individual level, you have to think like the decision makers of the competitor, identifying who among them makes which decisions and the influences and incentives guiding their choices. (blog/article) Hugh Courtney et al. February 6, 2009
- The disappearing corporate career path — February 6, 2009
I am amazed how many marketers avoid public contact. They avoid meeting new suppliers because they do not want to be bothered hearing pitches. I found suppliers became my best sources of competitive intelligence. (blog) n.a. February 6, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: inside is best — February 5, 2009
In my view timely competitive intelligence should be an important part of the "innovation algorithm."
Sources of competitive information cover the gamut and range from web sites, to analyst reports, to primary research to web searches. There is one source, however, that is often overlooked and that is a company's own internal activities. (blog) Andres Jordan, Feburary 5, 2009
- Evaluating intelligence: part 6 the decisionmaker's perspective — February 4, 2009
Experienced decisionmakers do not expect intelligence professionals to be able to understand external forces to the same degree that it is possible to understand internal forces. They do expect intelligence to reduce their uncertainty, in tangible ways, regarding these external forces. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, February 4, 2009
- Strategies for preparing for a patent interference — February 4, 2009
Your client will never know a patent problem exists (until it is too late) unless it is obtaining competitive intelligence. Each company should employ a procedure to obtain competitive intelligence. Most companies set up an information "watch," which is a periodic retrieval of targeted information, as part of this procedure. (article) Richard Neifeld, n.d.
- Win loss analysis is more than competitive intelligence — February 4, 2009
Win loss analysis is my favorite tactical cooperative intelligence practice as it offers the best ROI of any sales intelligence tool. You gain intelligence by interviewing your customers shortly after the sales event to find out why they chose to do business with you or decided on a competitor. The data gathered combines knowledge from sales, customers, competitors, and your marketplace. (blog) Ellen Naylor, February 4, 2009
- Ignorance management — February 3, 2009
Donald Rumsfeld is credited with this legendary remark back in February 2002: "...as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know." Turns out, he knew what he was talking about. (blog) n.a. February 3, 2009
- Learning from loss — February 3, 2009
When you lose a sale, it's an opportunity to learn something about yourself and your firm and also about your competitors. Recently, I spoke with Ken Sawka, and asked him how a firm could get the most from these opportunities. He had suggestions well worth passing on. (blog) Ford Harding, February 3, 2009
- Oh social networking tools — February 3, 2009
Currently, those of us that are pushing the benefits of Twitter, or the comment strings on blogging, are telling our colleagues that this is a wonderful resource where you can truly get a water cooler topic going on a global scale. Unfortunately, it is also ripe for being crushed by the very openness that makes it so great. (blog) Greg Lambert February 3, 2009
- Another cap feather, sort of — February 2, 2009
As an active member of the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals I was recently invited to sit on a panel. One of the other panelists, Mark Chussil of Advanced Competitive Strategies, is one of those guys whose math skills you flat-out envy, and he invited the audience (and those of us on the panel) to be part of some pricing research he's doing for an upcoming book. (blog) Roger Courville, February 2, 2009
- Pharma versus Pharma — February 2, 2009
How should companies respond to this pharma-versus-pharma environment? Here are 10 competitive success factors for surviving and thriving in the competitive stage. #2 Most pharma brand teams assign a single product manager, market researcher, or competitive intelligence professional to be "in charge of" competition. More progressive companies, however, use multi-disciplinary groups, such as competitive Centers of Excellence, or full-time competitive teams to handle such responsibilities. (blog/article) n.a. February 3, 2009
- Social media analysis comes of age with an association? — February 2, 2009
Forrester coined the phrase listening platforms to describe the social media monitoring industry, and also suggested that the feature set of such platforms is expanding. I agree, but I also think the industry is moving beyond listening to engagement, developing technologies and practices that enable companies to solve particular problems within the enterprise. (blog) John Cass, February 3, 2009
- The anonymous investigator — February 2, 2009
During Competitive Intelligence projects, I have found certain web servers that serve-up disinformation to the competitor's IP addresses. TOR can prevent this (blgo) Richard McEachin, February 2, 2009
- The pricing strategy simulation — February 2, 2009
Participants at the January 27 SCIP Oregon meeting faced a challenge. Three, actually. What pricing strategy should they implement in a fictitious ailing industry, mature industry, and fast-growth industry? And who, among the strategists, would win? We gave each participant information about the industries in which their businesses would compete, and we asked each of them to design pricing strategies for their businesses. (blog) Mark Chussil, February 2, 2009
- Creating a technology profile on a competitor — February 1, 2009
It's amazing how much you can learn with a little effort and an internet connection! You can build a pretty good profile on a competitor's environment relatively quickly. I'll show you how and where to do the research to start assembling that profile. (blog) n.a. February 1, 2009
- How presenting live, via the web, is different — February 1, 2009
One of the biggest problems with presenting online is a failure to adapt to the medium. Over and over I see experienced presenters, whether public speaking pros or senior corporate execs, deliver LAME online presentations because they either don't see it or they fail to heed it. (blog) Roger Courville, February 1, 2009
- Job hunting case study — February 1, 2009
Your resume is a marketing tool, plain and simple. It's designed to get a reader's attention and compel them to call you for an interview. Your résumé has less than 3 seconds to impress a reader enough to compel them to read it entirely. (blog) David Perry, February 2, 2009
- Risk WatchDog — February 1, 2009
Business Monitor International has a free e-newsletter called the Risk WatchDog. Some interesting posts, and did I say it was free?
January
- CI, ethics and consequences in France — January 31, 2009
Only ethics can save CI profession in France and elsewhere in the world. Guy Gweth wrote a very interesting posting I just discovered citing some recent scandals in France where ethical and legal boundaries have been crossed. (blog) Andreas Romppel, January 30, 2009
- Good shows in bad times — January 31, 2009
Competitive intelligence is always important, but seldom as much so as when an entire sector hits hard times. Fortunes can be made and lost in the blink of an eye, which is why it is important to keep a careful eye on what your competitors are doing. (blog) Susan Friedmann, January 31, 2009
- IFI patent intelligence report 2008 — January 31, 2009
IFI Patent Intelligence, a Wolters Kluwer Health business, has released an annual compilation of the world's top-ranked U.S.-patent companies, which suggests America's longstanding dominance of new U.S. patents may be slipping. (blog) Vinod Singh, January 31, 2009
- Patent family analysis — January 31, 2009
Patent family members are patents which claim at least on common priority. This definition becomes more complex in case of extended families and the analysis of patent families becomes more tedious and time consuming. The Patent Lens databases provide the nice representation in table and chart format for analysis of their association with priority claims. (blog) Ramesh Verma, January 31, 2009
- See the first open source intelligence brief in a virtual world — January 31, 2009
About a week ago, I wrote about the Visual Short Form Analytic Report exercise I run in my intelligence communications class each year. I got a ton of interesting and creative projects this time but two of my students attempted to use the web-based, virtual world construction kit JustLeapIn.com to complete their projects and the results are pretty cool. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, January 31, 2009
- Social networking more popular than porn — January 30, 2009
While the cast of players may change (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) the concept of social networking and subsequent threats and opportunities are here to stay. (blog) August Jackson, January 30, 3009
- Duplicity: CI is not this sexy — January 29, 2009
So often the government intelligence types get the Hollywood treatment. Now corporate espionage gets the treatment. How do I know it's corporate espionage and not competitive intelligence? Because CI, while being something I find a lot of fun, is so not sexy. (blog) August Jackson, January 29, 2009
- Evaluating intelligence part 4 — January 29, 2009
The fundamental problem with evaluating intelligence products is that intelligence, for the most part, is probabilistic. Even when an intelligence analyst thinks he or she knows a fact, it is still subject to interpretation or may have been the result of a deliberate campaign of deception. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, January 29, 2009
- Fifty blog tools to help you blogging — January 29, 2009
Blogging is more than just posting your views, thought, opinion, and share. There are many specialized tools available on the Internet that can enhance your website to a outstanding extent and the only way to know what is going to work to your profits is to giving them try out! Here is a list of 50 useful blogging tools that will help you in picking up your choice. (blog) n.a. January 29, 2009
- Four step action plan for social media marketing — January 29, 2009
In business world, they refer to listening as "competitive intelligence." While that totally sounds like a moment in the life of James Bond, it boils down to simply listening, reading and scoping out the environment for your community. You can listen by simply searching for what people are talking about with easy to use tools like Google Blogsearch, Technorati or BoardReader. (blog) Joe Manna, January 29, 2009
- Indeed.com is a powerful trend tool — January 29, 2009
Indeed.com is one of the most useful tools out there to understand the trends concerning what is hot, or not, in your industry. it, is what I call the Google of job search. It indexes most of the job sites out there so you don't need to go to each and every one. (blog) Collin LaLonde, January 29, 2009
- Sally Church's observations of new ways of knowing 2.0 — January 29, 2009
We were privileged to have Sally Church of Icarus Consultants join us for our New Ways of Knowing 2.0 session yesterday and share her experience using social media for competitive intelligence discovery. Sally blogged about New Ways of Knowing 2.0, and here are some excerpts. (blog) January 29, 2009
- Google street view — January 28, 2009
It's always good to take a look at the premises from which a business operates to avoid dealing with a phantom business. I requested that our agent in San Francisco go there and take a picture. He said it would be less bother to get it from Google Street View. (blog) Richard McEachin, January 28, 2009
- Hospital strategy adjustments in economically troubled times — January 28, 2009
An important feature of this discussion should be the highly dynamic nature of the environments in which hospitals (and other health care organizations) operate, requiring an equally dynamic approach to managing the strategies. (blog/article) George Moseley, January 28, 2009
- KM in Practice: an exploratory case study — January 28, 2009
K'Netix is the knowledge network developed by Buckman to fulfill the company vision of knowledge sharing and organizational learning. The type of knowledge shared includes customer knowledge, competitive intelligence, process knowledge, and product knowledge. (blog) n.a. January 28, 2009
- Keeping an eye on your rivals — January 28, 2009
This is competitive intelligence, and Jonathan Calof, a professor at University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management and a leading CI expert, says it's widely misunderstood. Perhaps the biggest misconception is that competitive intelligence is too complex and expensive for small businesses to undertake. In fact, most CI techniques cost nothing but time, and the findings are vital to small business success, especially in tough times. (article) Joanna Pachner, The Globe and Mail, January 28, 2009
- Performing a simple competitive analysis — January 28, 2009
Once you identify your most direct competition and have a firm grasp on your second- and third-tier competitors, project which actions they're likely to take in the next year or so. Forecasts of competitors' future activities depend on your knowing and understanding their objectives, strengths in the marketplace and resources. Key intelligence for your brand's success. (blog) Mark Levit, January 28, 2009
- Use customer intelligence to elevate sales in a down economy — January 28, 2009
Use sales dashboards to automatically gather intelligence about the prospective clients, enabling you to capitalize on the best opportunities in the pipeline or manage threats to your business. Use intelligence-gathering mechanisms to capture essential data about your prospects' organizational structure, political underpinnings, areas of growth and more. (article) Tom Aley, January 28, 2009
- Anticipating competitive threats to global growth strategies — January 27, 2009
The topic that I was asked to speak on was on ways that companies can anticipate and evaluate competitive threats to their global growth strategies. I wanted to share the (slightly redacted) slides from that presentation. (blog/ powerpoint) August Jackson, January 27, 2009
- CI techniques - finding jobs as recruiters, part 1 — January 27, 2009
Sticking to the theme of my blog purpose of competitive intelligence - what does this mean towards recruiting? How does CI translate into recruiting mechanics in the end? Part 1 of this series will define CI again, but translate how this applies to our industry of recruiting. (blog) Kristin Newman, January 27, 2009
- Competitive intelligence: think like your competitor and war gaming — January 27, 2009
Competitive Intelligence has become one of my default job responsibilities. my competitive intelligence responsibilities include reviewing the quarterly financial filings of other insurance carriers, analyzing market share by product line, and working with the sales teams on gathering market buzz. SCIP has provided a structured way for me to think about my intelligence gathering. (blog) N.A. January 27, 2009
- Evaluating intelligence, part 3 — January 27, 2009
Clearly there is a need for a more sophisticated model for evaluating intelligence - one that takes not only the results into consideration but also the means by which the analyst arrived at those results. It is not enough to get the answer right; analysts must also "show their work" in order to demonstrate that they were not merely lucky. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, January 27, 2009
- Social networking action and privacy risk — January 27, 2009
Social networking websites are rising in prominence in every aspect of an average person's lifestyle. The purpose of the Social Networking Action & Privacy Risk (SNAPR) methodology is to evaluate the risk posed to an individual user from information posted on a social networking website, such as Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. SNAPR answers the question, "What risk is posed to an individual with a profile on a social networking website?" The results create decision advantage for users of social networking websites by highlighting the contributing factors of their overall risk. (website)
- Targeting consumer-focused IT — January 27, 2009
Developing a competitive intelligence system will require the solid partnership of marketing, IT, finance, human resources and the service lines with special emphasis on governance and provider feedback. (article) William Sorrells, Advance for Health Information Executives, v11/8 p25 n.d.
- Teaching the computer to read - in stages — January 27, 2009
Natural language processing identifies factual statements based on grammatical analysis of content. This is helpful for understanding the reason behind sentiment and potentially huge for competitive intelligence and finance applications. (blog) Nathan Gilliatt, January 27, 2009
- The most important thing that your company can do on social media — January 27, 2009
When I mention "Social Media" to most marketers, they immediately think - Facebook, YouTube, "viral", Myspace, Linkedin, Blogs and Twitter. While these are all great potential tools in your social media toolbox, and creating a social media presence can be extremely valuable, but creating "official profiles" for all of them, in my opinion, is NOT the Holy Grail of Social Media Marketing. Find people who are already talking about you (both good and bad) and engage them. (blog) Krista Neher, January 27, 2009
- The slippery slope of price fixing — January 27, 2009
A recent ruling by the Supreme Court is in the spotlight for retailers, lobbyists and economic theorists. For the past 96 years, retailers have been protected under an umbrella of antitrust laws prohibiting the collusion of manufactures from establishing and maintaining minimum prices for retail and consumer goods. The implications of the new ruling present a significant change to the relationship between price, value and demand in the U.S. market. The new ruling opened the door for manufacturers and domineering retailers to discuss pricing strategy. (article) Russ Aldrich, E-Commerce Times, January 27, 2009
- Evaluating intelligence, part 2. — January 26, 2009
I want to tell you a story about two weathermen; one good, competent and diligent and one bad, stupid and lazy. Why weathermen? Well, in the first place, they are not intelligence analysts, so I will not have to concern myself with all the meaningless distinctions that might arise if I use a real example. In the second place, they are enough like intelligence analysts that the lessons derived from this thought experiment - sorry, I mean "story" - will remain meaningful in the intelligence domain. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, January 26, 2009
- How to protect your profits — January 26, 2009
Have eyes and ears in as many geographies as possible to monitor competitive pricing moves and cash-flow positions. Regularly review their websites, press releases and press coverage to learn about their new products, promotions and strategic moves. (article) Yosi Heber, January 26, 2009
- The need for competitive intelligence in this recession — January 26, 2009
Global competitors never stop their competitive monitoring around the globe. While corporate budgets are being cut, there are ways that companies can continue their competitive monitoring during this year and the next few years of recession until economic recovery. (blog) Ruth Stanat, January 26, 2009
- Evaluating intelligence, part 1 — January 25, 2009
This is another in a series of posts that I refer to as "experimental scholarship" -- or using the medium of the internet and the vehicle of this blog as a way to put my research online for more or less real-time peer review. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, January 25, 2009
- Business lessons from The Office: Season 5 Episode 12 — January 23, 2009
Dunder Mifflin corporate asked Michael to gather some information on a competitor in a potential new market. Michael and Dwight decide to go "undercover" and obtain competitive intelligence. Michael pretended to be a potential client while Dwight pretended to be an interested potential employee. (blog) Ron Desi, January 23, 2009
- Competitive intelligence — January 23, 2009
In SEO there's a term that's used quite often called "Competitive Intelligence". Some people even refer to it as "Competitive Analysis". Either way you say it, it means the same thing; taking a good long look at what you're competitors are doing (or not doing as the case may be), and then creating a plan for yourself in order to make use of the information you've found. (blog) Kristine Wirth, January 23, 2009
- Predicting layoffs using social networks — January 22, 2009
Social Networks like LinkedIn are a wealth of information, not just for consumer insights but of course for competitive intelligence as well. For instance, just over the past couple of weeks, the number of people joining a networking group from the same company in a short period of time seems to be highly correlated (though often with a lag), with layoffs from that company. (blog) Tom Anderson, January 22, 2009
- The three biggest kludges of copyright law — January 22, 2009
Yesterday, we took a look at five "stupid" copyright questions and why they weren't stupid at all. As was illustrated in the post, copyright law, in places, is a hopeless kludge and even the most basic questions can have very complicated answers. (blog) Jonathan Bailey, January 22, 2009
- Visual short form analytic reports — January 22, 2009
One of the exercises we routinely assign in our Intelligence Communications and Intelligence Writing and Presentation classes is a "visual" short form analytic report. The fundamental intent of the exercise is to engage students' creativity and to get them to think about other -- primarily visual -- ways to produce an intelligence report. To get the students started, I point them towards a number of resources. (blog) Kristan Wheaton, January 22, 2009
- Competitive urban legends — January 21, 2009
Managers can hold similar myths, stereotypes, and distortions about competitors, industry conditions, or other business matters. It's hard for executives, especially those who have been in the same industry or with the same company for most of their careers, not to develop deep-seated beliefs about their business environment. (blog) Ken Sawka, January 21, 2009
- Economic Development Commission Director remarks — January 21, 2009
This year will begin "economic gardening" programs. Economic Gardening is an economic development strategy that focuses on supporting local entrepreneurs and small businesses. It is economic development from the "inside-out" versus from the "outside-in". Programs focus on three areas to help build small business. 1. Information resources and marketing assistance or also know as competitive intelligence. 2. Infrastructure development. This includes the traditional items like roads, and taxes as well as quality of life and education. 3. Networking and information sharing. (blog/speech) January 21, 2009
- Few tips to learn how to do a competitive analysis — January 21, 2009
Why some online businesses are successful and others are not? Why some customers have preference for one business than the other? In order to understand these questions it is important that proper competitor intelligence is done. (blog) NA, January 21, 2009
- Leadership skills: understanding the competition pt 1 — January 21, 2009
As a practitioner of competitive intelligence (CI), I can speak from experience that this is a very rigorous discipline and effort. There are a few tricks that will open your eyes and build your value if you invest your time in learning and using them. (blog/article) Marian Cook, January 21, 2009
- Not only the president faces a BlackBerry challenge — January 21, 2009
Some of the legal and practical compromises lawyers urge on business when e-mail is a primary form of communication. While one may dismiss security as a concern for the private sector, business espionage has always been present, even if lawyers prefer euphemisms such as "due diligence" or "competitive intelligence" to describe what goes on behind closed doors, or, quite literally, over the airways. (article) Stanley Jaskiewicz, January 21, 2009
- Using competitive intelligence for your marketing strategy — January 21, 2009
Are you familiar with competitive intelligence, and how it can help your company grow? Competitive intelligence is the purposeful and coordinated monitoring of your competition, wherever and whoever they may be within a specific marketplace. (blog) D.J. Heckes, January 21, 2009
- Collaborative analytics - an emerging practice — January 20, 2009
The old model of business analysis is about to change. Collaborative technology is ready. But more importantly, today's business and economic climate demands collaborative understanding and problem-solving. There will be turbulent times; to navigate you'll need to make the right discoveries, ask the right questions, find the right answers and devise the right solutions. That's a tall order for the solitary business analyst. Collaborative analytics is an idea whose time has come (blog) Dave Wells, January 20, 2009
- Ethics and marketing — January 19, 2009
As long as it is not illegal, is any method of gathering sensitive information acceptable? Sometimes information is gathered in a way that is not illegal-that is, it does not violate the EEA or any other law-but still poses an ethical dillemma. The perception of privacy depends on an individual group's norms and codes, target audience and aim. (blog/article) January 19, 2009
- Competitive intelligence tools — January 18, 2009
This video shows many tools aiming to give an inside on competitors' behavior in the internet. Here you may find some answers to questions you have always asked yourself: How do companies keep their competitors under surveillance, how can they control each step they make? What are the tools to do so? (blog/video) Sophie Bonczyk, January 18, 2009
- How I use social media in my job: part 3 social networking sites — January 18, 2009
Instead of trying to reach all audiences, I view social media as another communications avenue to expand the reach of my company to key B2B marketing audiences and customers. In this third installment, I highlight how I participate in social networking sites as part of my day job. (blog) Cece Salomon-Lee, January 18, 2009
- Integrating competitive intelligence and marketing — January 18, 2009
Last week I traveled to San Francisco to help instruct an AMA (American Marketing Association) course on Integrating Competitive Intelligence into Marketing. In the cooperative spirit, I shared this book list to supplement our teaching which I am sharing with you. (blog) Ellen Naylor, January 18, 2009
- Marvelous techniques: streaks, slumps, and improving your odds — January 17, 2009
People ask my colleagues and me about the value of business war games, strategy simulations, crisis simulations, competitive intelligence, market research, win/loss analysis, advertising, and more. Many want to know how confident they can be that one of those marvelous techniques will improve their bottom line, market share, quality of decision-making, crisis preparedness, or whatever they care about. The important (and answerable) question is whether the likely benefit of a marvelous technique will outweigh its costs. (blog) Mark Chussil, January 17, 2009
- Hulu's mark on the video on demand sector — January 16, 2009
Internet TV is receiving a boost from Hulu.com. A growing site in the Video on Demand (VOD) sector, web surfers can view streaming video of their favorite television shows and movies with very minimal commercial interruption. A joint-venture owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, direct and indirect competitors face new challenges with the emergence of Hulu. (blog)January 16, 2009
- Intelligence studies in higher education — January 16, 2009
Intelligence studies as an academic discipline was slow to develop in universities. Yet, since that time, intelligence and security studies have taken on a new life in academe. Even as student interest is burgeoning, universities find themselves grappling with resourcing, staffing, and curricular challenges facing such a uniquely interdisciplinary, historically secretive, politically sensitive, policy-driven academic field. (article) Martin Rudner, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, January 2009
- Open source intelligence makes a difference — January 16, 2009
My assumption why Competitive Intelligence is still the most underrated management discipline: You cannot talk big about the results of your excellent research and analysis efforts because then you are about to lose the competitive advantage you just gained. (blog) Andreas Romppel, January 16, 2009
- Tapping competitive intelligence to drive product success — January 16, 2009
The Boston Product Marketing Association and the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals co-hosted an event last night titled "Tapping Competitive Intelligence to Drive Product Success". The event featured several product management and competitive intelligence professionals. Here's my summary. (blog) Christopher Cummings, January 16, 2009
- Collaboration across a distributed marketing force — January 15, 2009
Today, businesses are moving from a "need to know" to a "need to share" culture. If individuals rethink competitive intelligence, they can take the approach to deploy social software as a solution for collaborating within the team and that group will quickly develop a group memory. Collaborative intelligence allows marketing professionals to look at a different way to utilize business social software tools to further realize the power of the various contributing teams. (article) Ross Mayfield, January 15, 2009
- Essentials of patents by Andy Gibbs and Bob DeMatteis — January 15, 2009
While there are many books on "how to patent" and patent law, Essentials of Patents delivers practical advice on how to leverage patents as a powerful competitive corporate tool. Gibbs and DeMatteis show how patents can enhance competitive intelligence, product development cost reduction, product line expansion, and revenue streams, making this guide a must-have for the savvy manager. (blog)N.A., January 19, 2009
- In praise of trade shows — January 15, 2009
For journalists, buyers, and manufacturers alike, trade shows are a seething petri dish of connections and creativity that are well worth the trip. Trade shows are also where a lot of competitive intelligence gets done. Nobody at Samsung will ever give an LG exec a tour of Samsung's product line. But there it all is at the Samsung booth, plain for everyone to see. (blog/article) Sascha Segan, January 15, 2009
- Interview with Josh Stomel, ResumeBucket — January 15, 2009
All of the other sites--LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, and Monster--are really large destination sites. The users go there to do a lot more than just create a resume and share and distribute it. There are lots of people there doing competitive intelligence, or doing research on an industry or landscape. ResumeBucket is a portal that allows consumers to simply put their resume online, within seconds. (blog/interview) Benjamin F. Kuo, January 15, 2009
- Swirrl — January 15, 2009
Swirrl is a web application that allows your team to store, share, edit and analyze information. It combines the flexibility of spreadsheets and the power of databases with the collaboration features of a wiki. In addition to the normal wiki features, you can also share and manipulate structured data as a team. Looks like Swirrl could possibly be a competitive intelligence tool worth checking out. (blog) Ina O'Murchu, January 15, 2009
- Ethics and marketing — January 14, 2009
A company's survival may depend on how quickly and effectively it can gather information about its competitors' plans for products and services. Companies thus place a great deal of pressure on employees to locate and analyze sensitive information by whatever means possible. In order to meet the company's expectation, employees often feel they must operate at the very limits of ethical behavior. How far should they go to gather information? (blog) January 14, 2009
- How I use social media in my job: part 2 search feeds — January 14, 2009
Instead of trying to reach all audiences, I view social media as another communications avenue to expand the reach of my company to key B2B marketing audiences and customers. In this second installment, I highlight how I use search feeds for my day job. (blog) Cece Salomon-Lee, January 14, 2009
- I’d like to meet Harry Markopolos — January 14, 2009
I’d like to meet Harry Markopolos. Not because The Boston Globe called him a whistleblower for attempting to alert authorities of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme as far back as 2000. But because he is very good at searching for the unvarnished truth about a corporation. (blog) Leonard Fuld, January 14, 2009
- New ranking reflect law firms' web presence — January 14, 2009
Muzeview, which calls itself a "competitive intelligence services provider working with professional services firms," has completed a new analysis of the internet strength of major law firms. (blog) Elie Mystal, January 14, 2009
- Competitive advantage or necessary to compete? — January 13, 2009
Information is the currency that companies have used for competitive advantage in business since the earliest beginnings. In today's highly competitive global economy, knowledge of consumer and business behavior, socio-economic, lifestyle and/or demographic information can be transformed through information analysis (known as decision science, marketing science or customer analysis) into actionable insight. It is this insight that provides key decision-making support to companies that seek to enhance profitability and/or gain a competitive business advantage. (blog/article/ podcast) Leslie Ament, January 13, 2009
- Connecting networlding and cooperative intelligence — January 13, 2009
Networlding is a lot like cooperative connection, a component of cooperative intelligence. Networlding is cooperative: networking is often collaborative. This is an important distinction. People know when you are giving to get. They also know when you are giving to give. (blog) Ellen Naylor, January 13, 2009
- Review of the legal experience.... — January 13, 2009
Westlaw Profiler is a proprietary tool created by Westlaw to provide competitive intelligence for lawyers about their opponents in civil litigation. Profiler automatically scans Westlaw, and creates a list of the number of times an attorney's name appears in Westlaw. (blog/article) Zachary Kitts, January 13, 2009
- Senior marketers: research, innovation key in ‘09 — January 13, 2009
Marketing budgets may be on the chopping block, but market research and innovation are high up on the priorities list, according to results of the newly released "Top Marketing Trends for 2009" survey from the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). Other high-ranking concepts this year, in order, are brand loyalty and segmentation (each cited by 61%), quality (56%), search engine optimization (48%), competitive intelligence, data mining and lead generation (each cited by 43%). (article) Karlene Lukovitz, Marketing Daily, January 13, 2009
- Competitive counter-intelligence: the secrets of an African Company — January 12, 2009
Today, I invite you to discover an African company, whose practices of competitive counter-intelligence (not academic, not expensive, discrete and effective) force the respect of competitors equipped with enormous monitoring budgets. Counter-intelligence consists of tools, methods and activities of protection of which the goal is to neutralize (or divert) in a legal way any espionage or hostile CI operation. (blog) Gweth Marshall, January 12, 2009
- How I use social media in my job: part 1 microblogging — January 12, 2009
There has been a lot written about how to use social media and what the ROI is from using the various tool. I thought it would be interesting to highlight how I use social media for my day-to-day job. I use Twitter as my main microblogging platform, with Twhirl to manage my personal and corporate accounts. I also follow individuals from competitive companies. This is key for monitoring what competitors are doing and who they may be speaking with. (blog) CeCe Salomon-Lee, January 12, 2009
- Playing card program for unsolved police cases — January 12, 2009
Creative action can take place in any context. It always requires a good understanding of the problem you are trying to solve and some expertise about the internal and external environment in which your company operates. Have you ever thought of asking your workers what is going on? (blog) John Gaynard, January 12, 2009
- Intelligent revenue generation — January 11, 2009
The brief presentation below outlines our "Intelligent Revenue Generation" framework. It describes how Law, Accounting and Consulting firms should use market and competitive intelligence to generate revenue growth. (blog/powerpoint) Paul Gladen, January 11, 2009
- It's not about the technology? — January 11, 2009
Try to understand a different geographic market with no travel budget. Using Twitter, you could follow people who live and work in that area and get to know what's important to them (free competitive intelligence). (blog) Harold Jarche, January 11, 2009
- Are trade shows a thing of the past? — January 10, 2009
I used to be responsible for the Business and Market Intelligence function at MAAX and Venmar. My role was to track and monitor marketing activities, pricing strategies, new product launches from all of our key competitors. In the early 2000s, I would say that 20% of the valuable information could be found over the internet and the remaining 80% was in the hands of our reps, at our customers retail locations or trade shows. Now, I would say, it is quite the opposite. You will find an increasing share of unbiased information coming directly from users of your competitive products through online customer reviews or youtube rants about products. (blog) Etienne Chabot, January 10, 2009
- Level of maturity of the competitive intelligence function: case study of a retail bank in South Africa — January 10, 2009
While competitive intelligence (CI) is a relatively new business discipline, it is evolving in complexity and importance, to maintain pace with rapid business development. It is the aim of this paper to establish the level of maturity of the CI function within a South African retail bank based on key characteristics for different levels of maturity. (article) David Heppes, Adeline du Toit, Aslib Proceedings, V61/1, 2009 p48-66. (fee)
- A primer: web 1, 2, and 3 — January 9, 2009
A simple way of understanding Web 3: Imagine something similar to your Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, or My Yahoo pages that delivers to you everything your friends are doing, the news about the topics you care about, competitive information about products or services you want to buy, and everything else you might want from the Internet without the constraints, control, adware, or spyware of Facebook, MySpace, Google, or Yahoo. Rather than you surfing the Web (which you could still choose to do), the Web serves you. (article) Vin Crosbie, January 9, 2009
- Tapping CI to drive product success — January 9, 2009
Product managers and marketers (PM for both) are key users of competitive intelligence (CI), tracking rivals and their products all through the product development, launch, and market process. Many PMs already utilize CI in their product plans, while many CI professionals work regularly with PM groups. The goal of this meeting is to expand understanding of each other's needs and processes to increase success for both functions. PMs and CI professionals will also have an opportunity to share what works and what doesn't. (blog/meeting) Stewart Rogers, January 9, 2009
- Subaru owners duped by scam, company claims — January 8, 2009
This complaint is an excellent source for competitive intelligence about Subaru which is owned by Fuji. Its not that this information isn't available elsewhere but the succinct summary of the company, its history and business is useful as is a nice chart showing all the Subaru trade-names and marks. (blog) Randy Wilson, January 8, 2009
- Using CI to spot risks and opportunities — January 8, 2009
In every company I've worked for I've always ended one of the go-to dudes for competitive intelligence, officially or unofficially. The reason is simple, really. I love CI, and it's critical to figuring out price/package/position and all that. And helping others think about what would work best for them, too. (blog) Roger Courville, January 8, 2009
- Yelp UK — January 8, 2009
Yelp, the community-led local search site, today announced the availability of Yelp UK (http://yelp.co.uk). Now people in the UK can use Yelp to read and write reviews about great businesses in their neighborhood. Additionally, small business owners can set up a free business owner's account to attract new customers and communicate with current ones. (press release) January 8, 2009
- Corporate yammering — January 7, 2009
Yammer takes the basic idea behind Twitter and moves it into the workplace, where it is only accessible via SSL to employees with a valid company email (and other security restrictions). (blog) Richard McEachin, January 7, 2009
- Trade shows: can you really afford not to go? — January 7, 2009
There are multiple advantages to be gained from exhibiting including gaining competitive intelligence, meeting buyers and generating leads, meeting the press and other members of the distribution channel, and most importantly, to sell. Gaining competitive knowledge by visiting competitors' booths can help you learn about both other companies and yourself. You are able to gain knowledge on how you compare to the competition, how they do things, what makes them more or less successful, and what the competition thinks about your product (blog) N.A. January 7, 2009
- Attacks in politics and marketing — January 6, 2009
So, what should you do if you are attacked in the marketplace? First, stop. Think. It means that you got someone`s attention for some reason. You may have not even intended to get this attention, but that`s what the attack may mean and that`s valuable competitive intelligence if you can confirm it. Remember, if you were really irrelevant, chances are you`d be ignored. (blog) Jim Grisanzio, January 6, 2009
- How does meaning extraction work? — January 6, 2009
Meaning extraction.What exactly is that, you ask? Other than a catch phrase, one of those one of those unique combinations of words that marketing folks crave to have associated with their brand.I submit this definition of "meaning extraction" for your consideration. (blog) David Seuss, January 6, 2009
- How the heck do you get this information? — January 6, 2009
This network lets us get around any ethical questions about how we obtained information and is key because most of the information you get from vendors in briefings or even in product demonstrations is too high level to be of much use when it comes to systems selection. In fact, I think the best way to "do CI" is to speak to both actual customers, channels and SIs who are putting in the systems. That way you get the details and dirt that vendors tend to wipe away all too quickly when they're talking about it. (blog) Jason Busch, January 6, 2009
- New ways of knowing 2.0 — January 6, 2009
"New Ways of Knowing 2.0? will be an interactive educational event in which we will examine the potential of social media to improve the intelligent organization of the future. Participants can expect to teach as much as they learn and see connections among diverse concepts, tools, intelligence practices and business processes. (blog) Eric Garland, January 6, 2009
- The economic crisis: will your CI function survive? — January 6, 2009
In times of economic slowdowns, corporations look to cut excess costs. Many a support function - in particular strategic planning and marketing, to name two - are often the first to get whacked. And competitive intelligence, which for most firms is nothing more than a big old cost center in the eyes of the CFO, can have a big target painted on it. (blog) Ken Sawka, January 6, 2009
- York pro co-authors report about competitive intelligence — January 6, 2009
Businesses need to be careful that they don't violate good ethical practices when sleuthing for inside information about their competitors. "Competitive Intelligence: Ethical Challenges and Good Practice" - for the UK-based Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) is the newly published report highlights the ethical challenges and questions that confront organization. (press release) January 6, 2009
- CI group on ning now counts 500 members. Well almost — January 5, 2009
The group at Ning is providing a group of people a venue to discuss issues related to competitive intelligence in an informal setting. It's kind of like being able to shoot the breeze with attendees at a live event but without the actual event. (blog) N.A. January 5, 2009
- In search of the Holy Grail - competitive intelligence and KM's role — January 5, 2009
This type of information can and should be the Holy Grail when it comes to building a knowledge tool and a competitive intelligence resource that will leverage existing information against the firm's future challenges. Remember, it sure helps to know where you are going, if you know where you've already been. (blog) Greg Lambert, January 5, 2009
- Local experts look back and ahead during these uncertain economic times — January 5, 2009
To take stock of recent events and ponder the year ahead, Star Business Weekly recently assembled a panel of local business and economic experts to discuss how recent upheavals are playing out in the Kansas City area. One of the panelists was Chris Kuehl, managing director of Armada Corporate Intelligence. (article) Chris Lester, Kansas City Star, January 5, 2009
- What is your competition up to these days? — January 5, 2009
While it is illegal to use "black hat" techniques to keep tabs on your competition (such as using "spy ware" type software programs), keeping your eyes and ears open to what your competitors are doing is a critical part of being successful online. (blog) Joe Teixeria, January 5, 2009
- Five tips on twittering for business — January 4, 2009
Not only can you use Twitter to give out information you can also use it to garner information on competitors. By monitoring your competitors' tweets and conversations you might discover new products they are working on, watch their customer service interactions or the sort of promotions they are running. (blog/article) Helen Leggatt, January 4, 2009
- Six social search engines to start 2009 — January 4, 2009
Many reasons to search social media include monitoring for brand and reputation management purposes. Smart online marketers have also been using social search for other reasons including competitive research and opportunistic content marketing through social keyword trends. Here are 6 free social search tools that may help small businesses make their initial foray into searching the social web more productive while keeping costs to a minimum. (blog) Lee Odden, January 4, 2009
- TouchGraph revisited — January 4, 2009
When you search on a URL or some text you will get a connected graph that you can then drag around, select items to expand or edit and explore connections. I remember using an earlier version to do some competitive intelligence. Although most of the connections were obvious I did find some links that were surprising. My experience with these kinds of visualizations is that they don't provide a way that you may want the structure of the data arranged, but the new look can lead to things you may have not known. (blog) Franz Dill, January 4, 2009
- Advice, gullibility, and predictions — January 3, 2009
What we really want is to find a theory (in the sense of a model or system, not in the sense of an idea) that repeatedly, not anecdotally, predicts future events well. That's how it works in science, where the scientific method is designed to foster testing, evaluating, and enhancing models, not people. I am not saying it's easy. I am saying it is possible and it doesn't have to be perfect to make an improvement. (blog) Mark Chussil, January 3, 2009
- An argument for open source intelligence secrecy — January 3, 2009
Open source intelligence refers to intelligence that is derived from unclassified, legally accessible information sources. But the fact that the underlying sources of OSINT are unclassified doesn't mean the resulting intelligence can be disclosed. Decision advantage has nothing to do with the classification of the sources and methods. It has to do with the insights that the intelligence can deliver. (blog) January 3, 2009
- The new open source intelligence and Silobreaker — January 3, 2009
The consumers of the present practice of intelligence are kept in the dark. Most intelligence activities are just information or data hoarding and at best secondary research smartly upgraded by buzzword wizards. Maybe this is a bold statement but our experiences and encounters with decision makers and their support teams within both governments and business the last 20 years all confirms this observation. (blog) Mats Bjore, January 3, 2009
- My favorite books for business 2008 — January 2, 2009
My list of favorite business books each year is most often focused on a few core concepts that caused me to rethink my assumptions about decision making, management, innovation and strategy within the framework of my professional orientation around the use of competitive intelligence in business. (blog) Arik Johnson, January 2, 2009,
- Using the internet to research private companies — January 2, 2009
I will be reprieving an updated version of the very successful webinar I delivered for the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals on using the Internet to research private companies. I'm particularly excited about some of the updates that I'm going to be able to detail new methods and tools to research private companies using social networks. (blog) August Jackson, January 2, 2009
- Why cooperative intelligence? — January 2, 2009
We have plenty of support to become good at our skill such as law, finance, accounting, art, marketing, or my area-competitive intelligence. However, many of us have trouble listening, being heard and taken seriously by the right people in our companies. I have learned that an attitude of cooperation is one of the best ways to encourage people to share, regardless of what you do or what industry you work in. (blog) Ellen Naylor, January 2, 2009
- Enterprise mashups: the new face of your SOA — January 1, 2009
There's a vast wealth of publicly available information about your competition - key announcements, news, financial performance, partnering, and business development, even speeches and marketing campaigns. Imagine a mashup that captured this - one that included an RSS feed from Google News on key competitor search terms, and benchmarked pricing on key competitive products against your own. (blog/article) John Crupi Cloud Computing Journal, January 2009
- Googling companies: a webometric approach to business studies — January 1, 2009
The number of links pointing to companies' websites correlates significantly with the business performance measures of the entity. Links to a website could be used as a timely indicator of business performance. The examination of co-links have been used for CI purposes. (article) Esteban Romero-Frias, 2009
- Intelligence competitive innovation et developpement — January 1, 2009
This Audiobook read by the author (Henri Jean-Marie Dou) presents the development of the methods and tools of Competitive Intelligence and Regional Development using as a guideline the cycle of intelligence. This audiobook (copyright protected) can be freely downloaded for personal use only. (in French) (blog)January 1, 2009
- Who is the information professional? — January 1, 2009
The information professional is the person who works on a more abstract level and clearly demonstrates the value-add of the information organization to clients and key stakeholders, he/ she can also be called a business/ marketing/ competitive intelligence specialist, knowledge broker (Boom, 2002), information manager or chief information officer. (blog) Hannah Verhoeff, January 2009.
2008
December
- The dilemma about blogs as marketing tools — December 31, 2008
Gaining competitive intelligence about competitor's means of marketing can be done by searching for other blogs related to your field of business. This is mainly because blogs allow a user to openly react or state an idea or thought. This in turn helps you realize other potential strategies and tactics to do to promote the growth of your online business. (blog) Steve Fultz, December 31, 2008
- A question of survival — December 30, 2008
The Preemptive Enterprise takes nothing for granted. It knows that its deepest and strongest customer relationships are constantly at risk. It also knows that both existing and emerging competitors are able to create new value, and that its customers will always be attracted to that new value. Through the use of competitive intelligence and scenario analysis, it is able to understand the goals, strategies and capabilities of its competitors and consistently dilute and diffuse any new value that its competitors plan to bring to the market. (blog) Adrian Davis, December 30, 2008,
- The role of the extended AR team in rebutting analyst commentary — December 30, 2008
The extended AR team can play a critical role in rebutting analyst commentary. Many employees hear about analyst commentary, whether written or spoken, before AR does. For instance, marketing or competitive intelligence staff that monitor media and published research might come across something that deserves attention. Well-informed sales representatives can acquire analyst comments if they make a habit of asking prospects about what they are hearing from the analysts. (blog) NA December 30, 2008
- Dataopedia: free web intelligence tool — December 29, 2008
Here's another great, free tool for getting invaluable competitive intelligence: Dataopedia.com. Just visit the site, type in a website URL, and up will come a host of traffic and other information about that site. (blog) Anna Johnson, December 29, 2008
- How do you respond to information about your company? — December 29, 2008
Web Ink Now features an article about the Air Force's use of social media. Included is a flowchart the Air Force uses to respond to blog posts about them. This could easily extend beyond blogs to just about any form of communication. (blog) NA, December 29, 2008
- Interview with Mark Asher - CI manager Adobe — December 29, 2008
Our competitive intelligence practice has two main charters. The first of those is primarily to keep our management team aware of competitive developments across all of Adobe's business thrusts and interests, as well as providing them with thoughtful implications and recommendations about how to react to those events as they occur. (blog) Sean Campbell, December 29, 2008
- Intel definition — December 27, 2008
There is no standard definition of "intelligence". Popular thinking and the best efforts of legislatures, agencies and academics to the contrary, no generally agreed upon definition of intelligence exists. This problem is exacerbated when the newly formed intelligence communities in law enforcement and the private sector are included. (blog) December 27, 2008
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