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2012
January
- Tendersinfo — January 16, 2012
website on information on tenders
2011
December
- Tips to assessing risk — December 14, 2011
core risks we may face before making a strategic or investment decision
- Crystal ball analytics — December 13, 2011
Recorded Future proclaims itself the world's first temporal analytics engine
- Elicitation techniques — December 12, 2011
Capturing competitor and market intelligence from people is both art and science
- clearCi — December 8, 2011
SaaS Competitive Intelligence software
- A taxonomy of OSINT sources — December 7, 2011
Knowing where to get the data from, and what format it takes, is critical to one’s success
- Topsy — December 5, 2011
real-time search engine, with a focus on social media sites
November
- US Intelligence will train super-sleuths with videogames — November 22, 2011
the Sirius program. The initiative aims to create a series of so-called “serious games” that’d help analysts improve their objectivity and reasoned judgment when confronted with complex or culturally foreign scenarios
- Competitive intel — November 16, 2011
slides from the Competitive Intelligence presentation at the Online Marketer conference in Melbourne
- Socializing for intelligence — November 2, 2011
Social media moves a large portion of what used to be private information into the public sphere
October
- Spies like them — October 20, 2011
The School of Economic Warfare was clearly founded to help French companies get a leg up on the competition
- Glassdoor — October 16, 2011
free career community
- PrivCo — October 15, 2011
major privately-held companies information
- Are you ready for the era of ‘big data’? — October 9, 2011
Radical customization, constant experimentation, and novel business models will be new hallmarks of competition as companies capture and analyze huge volumes of data
September
- Intelligently competing — September 22, 2011
there are emerging tools and techniques that those seeking CI must master to keep companies competitive in the market.
- Don’t trust the web — September 18, 2011
Politicians use astroturfing. So do businesses and marketing firms.
- How to use Twitter Favorites — September 13, 2011
Viewing other people’s favorite tweets can yield a surprising amount of useful information, interesting links, or even competitive intelligence.
- Kapow creates its own Google Plus API — September 13, 2011
It can be used for application integrations, as well as for building business intelligence or competitive intelligence dashboards.
- Boehinger Ingelheim — September 12, 2011
evaluated the company's performance against key competitors in terms of criteria such as execution of business strategy, use of competitive intelligence, brand positioning and customer satisfaction.
- Social media advice for job-seekers — September 9, 2011
What should candidates be doing with social media outlets to improve their chances of getting a job? What shouldn't they be doing?
- CI for India’s National Manufacturing Policy — September 8, 2011
growth of manufacturing in India is essentially a CI problem of gaining advantage over other competing locations such as China, Thailand, Brazil, Malaysia, etc
August
- Being intelligent — August 31, 2011
We all know that many factors – internal and external – impact on a company and its ability to function in any given marketplace.
- Guess what — August 31, 2011
as change (both technical and cultural) accelerates, our abilityto predict the future diminishes.
- Visualize this! — August 29, 2011
Data visualization is becoming an increasingly popular tool for communicating information in creative ways
- Without an Rx, some pharmas are skittish — August 24, 2011
Lower margins and strong-arm direct-to-consumer campaigns are two of the primary barriers to selling nutraceuticals, according to a business school ‘war game’
- Right brain, meet left brain — August 15, 2011
Finding a niche for creative competitive intelligence in the Canadian Pharmaceutical industry.
- New Gartner Hype Cycle out — August 12, 2011
The Gartner Hype Cycle is a useful way of thinking about how typical technologies evolve and mature
- The global competitiveness report 2011-2012 — August 12, 2011
how to understand and measure quality growth through a competitiveness lens by defining sustainable competitiveness in economic, social, and environmental terms
- Affiliates get a local user’s view — August 11, 2011
GeoSurf allows affiliate marketers to view and interact with ads and web content from a local perspective in more than 80 countries and US metro locations.
- Thank you, Mr. Keating — August 11, 2011
One of the critical success factors behind a successful competitive intelligence culture is being teachable
- Google’s patenting trends — August 9, 2011
One class of trends that is considered to be crucial while studying technology companies is patenting trends.
- OpenGrey — August 9, 2011
multidisciplinary European database, covering science, technology, biomedical science, economics, social science and humanities.
- AdScope — August 8, 2011
multimedia advertising intelligence
- Viralheat — August 8, 2011
social media monitoring
- Environmental scanning — August 6, 2011
There are six main categories of environmental data to consider when evaluating marketing decisions.
- Be social, stay competitive — August 4, 2011
Leveraging social media for competitive intelligence gives your brand an edge over the competition
- Facebook analytics get savvier, deeper — August 3, 2011
new measurement system, Social Essentials, which aims to enable brands to understand the size and composition of their social media fan base
- Revealed: operation Shady RAT — August 2, 2011
Every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised
July
- Mashable’s Compete Guide to Google+ — July 28, 2011
an extensive guide on all of Google+’s key features, as well as an introduction to the service and the important things you need to know about it.
- Minesoft — July 28, 2011
intelligent patent information solutions
- Cases in Intelligence Analysis — July 26, 2011
events in foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, terrorism, homeland security, law enforcement, and decision-making support
- Refocusing customer intelligence — July 25, 2011
competitive and market intelligence deliverables often end up confusing and overwhelming sales reps instead of helping them
- Intelligence analysis — July 19, 2011
add new techniques to your arsenal like the ones found on this site
- Cisco: The internet of things — July 17, 2011
infographic that offers a simple example of how Internet of Things will affect you in your everyday life
- Software firm finds cloud nine — July 3, 2011
Another client is Australian start-up Marketscout.com.au, for whom Trineo has developed competitive intelligence and collaborative research software.
- Modern intelligence analysis — July 1, 2011
The International Spy Museum's podcast interview of Randolph H. Pherson who teaches critical thinking skills and advanced analytic tools and techniques
June
- Roundtable discusses strategic HR — June 23, 2011
senior HR professionals have to be well versed in business drivers including financials, industry, market circumstances, and competitive intelligence
- Company, know thyself — June 17, 2011
Many corporate moves can be pieced together via the social media sites of major execs.
- Zanran — June 9, 2011
Zanran is Google for data.
- GageIn — June 8, 2011
new suite of content-based applications
- Competitive intelligence — June 2, 2011
scanning and tracking of market and competitive news and information through open secondary sources and primary interviewing
May
- Should you trash competitor profiles? — May 26, 2011
Competitor profiles is possibly the most frequently produced competitive intelligence output. But it is also perhaps one that is least critically evaluated.
- What industry analysts do — May 26, 2011
the core business of industry analysis - inquiry, advisory and fact-based consulting
- Real-time competitive advantage — May 13, 2011
In David Meerman Scott's book, Real-Time Marketing & PR, he explains the competitive advantage to companies and individuals of being responsive to events that affect them in real-time.
- Text analytics demand — May 12, 2011
Software and service text-analytics growth is steepest for applications that seek business insight in social networks, online media, and surveys.
- Competitive Intelligence in the real world — May 2, 2011
Without fail, the MBAs told me that they do / did competitive intelligence by going online and looking at companies' websites, and sometimes also by reading their press releases.
April
- GageIn — April 27, 2011
GageIn combines social, news media tracking with discussion
- Recorded Future — April 15, 2011
Visualization tools allow you to quickly see temporal patterns, or link networks of related information.
- Jive Software — April 13, 2011
The interface analyzes data and user behavior - including their interests, work and the people with whom they collaborate - called the enterprise social graph.
- Kline Group — April 8, 2011
Agrochemical and specialty pesticides studies
- Fetch Technologies — April 5, 2011
Clients rely on Fetch's innovative technology to provide competitive intelligence, news aggregation, content aggregation, and background screening solutions.
- MutualMind — April 1, 2011
enterprise social media management system.
- Zepol.com — April 1, 2011
industry leading trade data tools
March
- Why do war games work? — March 28, 2011
What is it about business war games that produces insights that evidently elude other approaches?
- Finding the revenues of a private company — March 25, 2011
There may be some ways of getting these revenues through primary research; but even secondary research can help you gain an idea of a private company's revenues.
- Trendistic — March 24, 2011
a tool that allows you to track trends on Twitter, similarly to what Google Trends does for Google searches.
- Using stories to persuade — March 24, 2011
Effective storytelling can serve anyone in leadership who seeks to persuade others to his or her point of view.
- Spying on competitors can be road to ruin — March 22, 2011
The main points of confusion over CI stem from trying to understand what is acceptable and unacceptable in terms of approaches and behaviour. Here are some straightforward guidelines.
- Why I love Quora — March 17, 2011
Quora is quickly becoming a key tool for me in doing competitive intelligence. It's like the love child of Wikipedia and Ask Jeeves.
- Intelligence Analysis for Tomorrow — March 15, 2011
Behavioral and social scientific knowledge can help the IC to understand and improve all phases of the analytic cycle. (book)
- Anticipating the competition in pharma — March 14, 2011
understanding as much as you can about what your competitors could do in the future in order to make your strategy as robust as possible.
- Corporate spies don't need license — March 14, 2011
France's highest judicial authority buried a project by the interior ministry to force corporate intelligence firms to seek a license to operate.
- Playing war games to win — March 12, 2011
War games can be a powerful business tool, but only if you get the design right.
- SinglePoint — March 10, 2011
strategic research portals offer dashboard tool
- McKinsey's corrupted culture — March 9, 2011
management consultants in general, and McKinsey consultants in particular, have made their entire business out of exploiting the moral grey zone surrounding confidential information
- This man can predict the future — March 7, 2011
the company makes maps of future events based on collective knowledge from millions of sources, online and off
- patch.com — March 7, 2011
community-specific news and information platform
- The limits of evidence-based marketing — March 6, 2011
That's what most of us do. We present facts and proof and expect a rational consumer/ voter/ follower/ peer to make an intelligent decision on what's better.
- Expanding internationally? Is it right for you? — March 3, 2011
the U.S. business that expands overseas can benefit back home from increased cultural sensitivity, competitive intelligence, new opportunities and better management practices.
- LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner talks shop — March 2, 2011
the whole notion of sharing information and knowledge - collaborating, sharing business intelligence and competitive intelligence.
- Know your enemy — March 1, 2011
Small companies can collect and use intelligence just as well as larger organisations.
February
- Data confabulation in business intelligence — February 24, 2011
Data confabulation in business intelligence occurs when intuition-driven business decisions are claimed to be data-driven and justified after the fact using the results of selective post-decision data analysis.
- The leaky corporation — February 24, 2011
Companies have to decide what they should try to keep to themselves and how best to secure it.
- If you steal my articles.... — February 23, 2011
There's a popular practice for generating would-be unique content from a preexisting article, called "article spinning."
- Social software for business performance — February 23, 2011
Deloitte Center for the Edge's paper discusses how companies can leverage social software to significantly enhance business performance in the short-term and transform it in the long-term.
- Search Monitor — February 19, 2011
provides real-time competitive intelligence to monitor brand and trademark use.
- Economic intelligence — February 18, 2011
The intelligence is the set of coordinated activities of collecting, processing and dissemination of information useful to economic players for its operation.
- How to measure ROI in social media — February 18, 2011
On demand videos, discussing key insights into real world metrics used to gain the most business advantage through social media.
- Burning Glass — February 10, 2011
when postings are aggregated for a given industry or employer they deliver significant insight regarding future direction.
- Using social media for competitive intelligence — February 10, 2011
With the uncertain economic conditions, companies have not only intensified competitive pressure but they have also increased appetite for ongoing intelligence on their competitors.
- Monitoring vs. Analytics — February 9, 2011
Looked at every social media listening, monitoring, analytics, intelligence and insights firm.
- Strategic bets — February 7, 2011
Sooner or later, most global business leaders will have to put their entire enterprise at risk.
- Risk reduction advice from a legend — February 4, 2011
Another key element of strategic planning--risk--is often overlooked, because most company cultures discount it and it is difficult to calculate.
- Official Company Registers — February 3, 2011
Organised by continent and then country and concentrates on what is available at the online registry web sites.
- Basic gap analysis — February 1, 2011
Gap Analysis is one of the many Competitive Intelligence tools you can use to interpret the information you have on your competitive environment.
- BlogPulse Trend Search — February 1, 2011
Allows you to create graphs that visually track "buzz" over time for certain key words, phrases or links.
- Manzama — February 1, 2011
The platform automatically searches, classifies, and ranks legal and industry-specific sources, blogs, Twitter feeds and other social media, and delivers relevant results.
- NeXplore — February 1, 2011
An innovative social search engine that makes finding information on the Internet more personal, more efficient.
- Sedulo Group — February 1, 2011
Launched its newest branded service: Clarity, a qualitative market research service.
- Yippy — February 1, 2011
a metasearch engine
January
- Social Mention — January 28, 2011
A social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.
- GrowFL — January 27, 2011
the official Economic Gardening Technical Assistance Pilot Program for the State of Florida and a program of the Florida Economic Gardening Institute.
- How to deliver bad news — January 27, 2011
There is, more or less, a single method for dealing with this most challenging of business situations. Here's four steps to delivering bad news.
- Sedulo Group — January 26, 2011
the opening of its new London office
- AdGooroo — January 25, 2011
Acquisio formed a strategic partnership with online marketing intelligence and keyword tool provider AdGooroo.
- FRASER — January 25, 2011
Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research
- IARPA Sirius Program — January 25, 2011
enable player-participant recognition and persistent mitigation of cognitive biases.
- Pot calls kettle black: Huawei sues Motorola — January 24, 2011
We never thought we would see the day when a Chinese telecom company, which has in the past been accused of industrial espionage by US companies, would sue a US equipment maker.
- The new kid on the block — January 24, 2011
Surveys are projecting high demand for business intelligence applicants in business analysis and performance management.
- Be careful what you wish for — January 21, 2011
Before you attempt to reposition your competitive intelligence function, be sure you acknowledge all that doing so entails.
- Google's plan to combat search spam — January 21, 2011
Google admitted that search spam has increased and the search giant has outlined its plan to combat spam and the rise of "content farms."
- OpenCorporates — January 21, 2011
the open database of the corporate world
- Outlook on the global agenda 2011 — January 21, 2011
This new reality is manifest by global power shifts, economic uncertainty, resource scarcity, and institutional weakness.
- Social Strategy1 — January 18, 2011
Combines state-of-the-art natural language processing and data mining technology with subject matter-experts who analyze digital conversation.
- The Flightdeck — January 18, 2011
Gives marketers visibility on social media chatter and tracks share price and monitors competitor activity.
- Throwing cold water — January 18, 2011
Unbridled optimism, assumptions, and emotions can obfuscate critical analysis of significant industry and competitive developments.
- Yatedo — January 18, 2011
free people search engine
- So, what makes you different? — January 17, 2011
The question as to what makes you and your company different is either the easiest question in the world to answer, or it is the most difficult question to answer.
- The competitive intelligence - IT interplay — January 16, 2011
It only makes sense that IT, with its multiplier effect on productivity and communications reach, would contribute (or detract) from the effectiveness of a CI function.
- JetNet — January 13, 2011
information and intelligence on the worldwide business aircraft fleet and marketplace
- Harry Markopolos to speak Feb 9 at SCIP Boston meeting — January 12, 2011
Join us for this unique event, as Harry Markopolos, "the Madoff Whistleblower," details for the first time how he uncovered Madoff's scheme using CI techniques and how CI techniques continue to help him in his current cases.
- Indeed.com — January 12, 2011
Indeed.com is a search engine for jobs
- Newswise news alert feeds by topic — January 12, 2011
A press wire for universities, research institutions, non-profit organizations, and other groups that release what Newswise calls "knowledge-based news."
- We're tired of Google, it's time for a change — January 12, 2011
A fresh, young search engine that manages to provide accurate, mostly spam-free results via a clean, sleek interface free of distracting clutter and screaming ads.
- CI Radar — January 11, 2011
Released new tracking and monitoring tools which cover the key vendors mentioned in the Gartner, Inc. report, "Magic Quadrant Report for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting".
- FirstRain — January 10, 2011
Actis, a private equity investor in emerging markets, has selected FirstRain for use in its investment research process.
- Hoovers — January 10, 2011
agreement with LinkedIn to integrate elements of LinkedIn's functionality into Hoover's online business information platform.
- I wish I'd know that — January 10, 2011
This post is a collection of six things I wish I knew before I started my career in decision support systems.
- Informa — January 10, 2011
provider of competitive intelligence, market research, mystery shopping, and compliance testing services to the financial industry.
- mBLAST — January 10, 2011
mPACT takes a comprehensive approach to the world of measuring influence.
- Competitive myopia — January 8, 2011
A focus on a competitor or rival that is so intense that it causes distraction from larger strategic threats or opportunities.
- Spying probe centers on electric cars — January 7, 2011
Three Renault SA top managers at the center of a spying probe are accused of disclosing secrets about the car maker's electric-vehicle technology.
- GrowFL economic gardening — January 6, 2011
GrowFL supports the growth of Florida businesses by providing a free suite of economic gardening support services, as well as unique access to market research and technology.
- Profitero — January 6, 2011
An Irish digital retail analysis start-up that provides a competitor monitoring service for online retailers, it won Media Cube's Innovation Cubed 2010 competition.
- See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil — January 6, 2011
If you have a good idea, there is a very real chance someone, somewhere, is already working on it. Hire yourself a good competitive intelligence firm and find out what the competitive landscape looks like.
- Merial selects Digimind — January 4, 2011
Merial selects the Digimind solution for its competitive intelligence process.
- Thomson Reuters IP solutions — January 4, 2011
The IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters and ChemAxon today announced a strategic partnership.
- Business competitive intelligence — January 3, 2011
Effective implementation of its CIP requires not only information about the competitors, but also information on other environmental trends such as industry trends, legal and regulatory trends, international trends, technology developments, political developments and economic conditions.
- ImportGenius — January 3, 2011
Provides instant access to more than 48 million ocean freight shipping manifests.
- PatentCafe — January 3, 2011
PatentCafe released the newest generation of its patent research and intellectual property management solution.
- R1 Intel — January 3, 2011
R1 Intel has introduced five new products to deliver patent innovation intelligence to subscribers.
- QL2 software — January 2, 2011
QL2 Software now supports five of the top ten pharmaceutical companies with their on-demand data extraction and integration solutions.
- Challenges to strategic management — January 1, 2011
With the globalization, e-commerce and other changes in the business environment, todays business world has become hyper competitive where the organization can no longer survive without executing proper competitive strategy.
- Darwin's Awareness Engine — January 1, 2011
Darwin's Awareness Engine collects and presents information in a Scan Cloud showing the correlation between key words, instead of by popularity ranking used by search engines.
- New help for new business — January 1, 2011
Re-launched by the Ministry of Economic Development, www.business.govt.nz is the first stop shop for people wishing to start, manage and grow small-to-medium sized businesses (SME's).
- Onyx IP hiding — January 1, 2011
Onyx can also be used for Competitive Intelligence gathering, such as web harvesting, price scraping, and online research, by defeating IP blocking and web cloaking techniques.
2010
December
- California woman arrested in insider trade scheme — December 29, 2010
U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday charged a California woman with leaking secrets about technology companies to two hedge funds in exchange for illegal payments, expanding their probe into insider trading.
- Web analytics year in review 2010 — December 28, 2010
The year that was 2010 can really be defined as one of the first years businesses stopped, assumed responsibility for meaningless reports and asked "so what?"
- Are you driving blindfolded? — December 27, 2010
Primary CI research is the only business discipline that can provide a company with accurate, forward-looking intelligence.
- Technological Innovation and CTI — December 21, 2010
This conference presented most of the advanced development in Innovation and Competitive Technical Intelligence in China.
- Information sharing — December 20, 2010
Information sharing is a relatively unexplored part of the information behaviour.
- Google Alerts for reputation monitoring — December 18, 2010
There's a lot of hype in the social media realm over the dozens of new tools and dashboards that help you keep an eye on what people are saying about your company.
- Canned vs. customized — December 17, 2010
Why do companies think they need CI software, and do they provide the best value?
- 2011: the year business truly goes social? — December 10, 2010
Altimeter's Jeremiah Owyang recently presented this following forecast on how social media will be integrated into the heart of business starting next year.
- Eleven best web analytics tools — December 10, 2010
Every company, regardless of size, requires multiple tools to understand the performance of its website, happiness of its customers and gain key context from competitors.
- Hottest tactics to beat your competitors — December 10, 2010
It takes a savvy staff or outside experts to listen and engage prospective customers in the marketplace. That's why big companies have become astute in social-media strategies and they invest in competitive intelligence.
- An introduction to competitive intelligence — December 3, 2010
An increasing number of companies regardless of size and complexity, including your rivals are making use of Competitive Intelligence, to identify specific threats to their business, analyse their business landscape and fresh opportunities.
- Mystery shopping the competition — December 3, 2010
Some companies have taken mystery shopping a step further and "shopped" their competition to see how they perform across key customer service and sales initiatives.
- See the future with a search — December 2, 2010
A startup called Recorded Future has developed a tool that scrapes real-time data from the Internet to find hints of what will happen in the future.
- Using competitive intelligence data — December 2, 2010
Competitive Intelligence is most useful when it is seen as a proactive force within a company in partnership with key decision-makers.
- Competitive intelligence for territories — December 1, 2010
“territorial intelligence”, a part of competitive intelligence devoted to cities and territories, proposes interesting opportunities of research
November
- Zabasearch compared with Pipl — November 29, 2010
The benefit of pipl.com is that it gathers information from other websites, which results in a wider range of information than you will find on zabasearch.
- What is competitive intelligence? — November 28, 2010
Competitive Intelligence is the ethical gathering AND analysis of data dealing with the competitive environment.
- What happens next? — November 26, 2010
I've become alert to a tendency that we all share: we expect the future to unfold as a magnified or extrapolated copy of the present.
- Cultivating David vs. Goliath — November 23, 2010
The Littleton economic gardening initiative provides local entrepreneurs with access to competitive intelligence on markets, customers and competitors.
- Expect the unexpected — November 8, 2010
Knowledge management, client relations, competitive intelligence, business development, and alternative fee management are just some of the newly named departments, and each firm structures these in its own way.
October
- Scrapers dig deep for data on web — October 23, 2010
Firms offer to harvest online conversations and collect personal details from social-networking sites, résumé sites and online forums.
- Analytics: the new path to value — October 1, 2010
Research now shows that leaders of the smartest organizations have moved past "overwhelmed" and are already capitalizing on increased information richness and analytics to gain measurable competitive advantage.
September
- Why and how extreme presentation works — September 30, 2010
Most people use slides to help themselves remember the material they are presenting, but they are not usually created to help you the audience understand the material.
- Revenge of the introvert — September 13, 2010
Scientists now know that introverts do seem to process more information than others in any given situation.
- You know what it is like when... — September 13, 2010
There are official definitions and there are practical ones. We need both in competitive intelligence. This short video covers both types of definitions.
- Business competition and partner research — September 12, 2010
Since the business world is changing by the second, a business must thoroughly investigate the company they plan to partner with or the competitors in their market.
- Competitive Intelligence in the age of Google — September 10, 2010
What is CI. Required skills and training. The CI process. The role of the information professional. Searches within the CI remit. Searches beyond today's search engine capabilities. (powerpoint)
- Profile of a patent searcher — September 9, 2010
Many of us work in corporate environments, and must understand business strategies, competitive intelligence tactics, and high altitude data visualization techniques.
- Four good places to find content — September 8, 2010
Your sales team and account managers make friends and influence people wherever they go -- conferences, industry events, professional networking groups -- while bringing back great competitive intelligence.
August
- Research vs. Intelligence part 2 — August 31, 2010
Need to know or nice to know? That is perhaps one of the most significant criteria that separates intelligence from information.
- 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.
- Interview with Michael Marshall - what's SEO-CI? — June 10, 2010
Competitive Intelligence is the process of determining the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors so that you can properly ascertain what the threats and opportunities are for your success.
- 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
- Top 5 pharmaceutical blogs — January 15, 2010
This graphic shows you the Top 5 Pharma Business Blogs (blogs devoted to the pharmaceutical industry.
- 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
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