SCIP09 Annual International Conference and Exhibition April 22-24, 2009 Chicago Illinois USA

NEW! Exhibitors: Our exhibition floorplan is now available here . Contact Hilarie Hoting at hhoting@scip.org for information about exhibition and sponsorship opportunities.

The workshops and sessions at theSCIP09 annual conference generally fall into these tracks:

• CI Offense/Defense
• Professional Effectiveness
• Critical Skills
• Entrepreneurial CI
• Intelligence R&D
• Active Dialog

CI Offense/Defense

In competitive intelligence sometimes you're the hunter and other times you are the hunted. What are those techniques that CI professionals can use to explore and evaluate growth opportunities: new products, new geographic markets and new business models? The old rules do not always apply! Topics in this track include:

• Methods to identify and evaluate blue ocean opportunities
• How to conduct CI in new cultural and legal environments
• Competitor employee blogging

Information security is generally recognized as a business risk, and the focus is often on the technical issues around information security. What contribution can CI professionals make to the human side of the issue? Some topics for this track include:

• What are the warning signs of an inside leak?
• Legal and ethical examinations of "plumbing" to stop leaks
• Training colleagues to identify elicitation and social engineering
• The relationship of CI and IT security
• CI advice for Public Relations

Professional Effectiveness

Whether we're practitioners or vendors, being a good CI researcher and analyst is rarely sufficient in and of itself to guarantee career success. We must be able to muster management, communications and other skills to win the client or gain that coveted seat at the senior executive table. This track aims to deliver value to both segments. Topics include:

For practitioners:

• Management of resources, employees and priorities
• Effective communication of competitive intelligence products
• Engaging internal information resources such as sales or product management
• Finding and keeping executive champions
• Maximizing the ROI for your CI budget
• Measuring the value CI delivers to the organization to justify your continued existence
• Career development and hiring for CI excellence

For vendors:

• Starting a CI consultancy
• Marketing and selling professional CI services
• Setting and exceeding customer expectations

Critical Skills

There is a set of tools and skills that every good CI professional should have: primary and secondary research, basic analytical frameworks and product delivery. This track is geared particularly towards the "Beginner" CI professional looking to learn the basics and the "Intermediate" professional eager to brush up their skills or add new details to practiced methods. Relevant topics include:

• Secondary research methods, including library and Internet research
• Primary research methods such as source identification and interview techniques
• Capturing intelligence at trade shows and industry events
• Basic and advanced analytical techniques such as SWOT and scenario analysis
• Standard competitive intelligence products including industry landscapes and competitor profiles
• Analyzing competitor's annual reports and financial filings
• War games and competitive simulations

Entrepreneurial CI

This is a completely new track for the SCIP conference. Returning attendees have indicated that they want to be exposed to new ideas, and this track is intended to provide new methods and practices typically deployed by "Advanced" CI practitioners. The tag-line to remember about the Entrepreneurial CI track is "Show me something I haven't seen at SCIP before!". The emphasis for this track is on real-world applications as opposed to theoretical or academic examinations. Some topics in this track include:

• Advanced techniques in Competitive Financial and Technical Intelligence (CFI / CTI)
• Application of CI to strategic frameworks such as the 7S or RVG
• What's new and interesting in management consulting and what does it mean for CI
• Advanced applications of topics in game theory, economics or analytics to CI

Intelligence R&D

Academics and researchers continue to push at the boundaries of competitive intelligence to identify new methods, tools and analytical frameworks that can add value to the practice of competitive intelligence. This is the track for researchers to continue to push those boundaries as well as explore the topics of competitve intelligence in academia and how the practice can be applied in promoting undergraduate and graduate curriculums. Presentations in this track include multi-disciplinary topics to competitive intelligence and vice-versa.

Active Dialog

A number of topics in competitive intelligence generate considerable differences of opinion. On a number of dimensions, the practice of CI appears to be at a crossroads. Moderators of Active Dialog sessions engage their audience in a semi-structured session to capture the diversity of opinions about the topic.  The goal of an effective Active Dialog is not to necessarily reach a conclusion about the topic, but rather capture the broad strokes of the community opinions. Past topics have included:

• Techniques for evaluating external intelligence partners/vendors
• Wargaming & Scenario Analysis
• Low-cost collection options
• Engaging senior leaders as intelligence contributors
  
  All session presentations will be one-hour in duration.