How many of you remember this dialogue? If you don’t know what a dial-up modem sounds like, you are probably too young to remember this movie. Scientist: General, are you prepared to destroy the enemy? General: You betcha! Scientist: Do you think they know that? General: I believe we’ve made that clear enough. Scientist: Then don’t! Tell the President to …
What’s After Next
Leveraging competitive intelligence to identify innovation white space Today many companies are surveying the market and asking themselves, “What can we make next, how can we improve our product and what would be innovative?” ‘What’s next?’ can often lead to incremental innovation, continued competition, and a lack of differentiation. Instead we should be asking, ‘What’s after next?’ Leveraging competitive intelligence, …
Threat Matrix
Several years ago, two American astronomers, Marcus Wolf and Leo Biederman, working on a mountain top in Arizona, saw something in the night sky that caused them great concern. A comet. But the comet was, well… There was a remote possibility that the comet was on a path that could bring it into direct contact with the Earth. Now we …
Threat Indicator Analysis
This is a series of six blog posts designed to provide analytical tools that will help competitive intelligence practitioners link CI to strategy. If It Is Good Enough for the CIA… While serving in Kuwait as a counter-terrorist agent for the US Government, one of my responsibilities was to detect, evaluate and report on potential terrorist threats in the region. …
DIY Competitive Intelligence
The Pros and Cons of “Do It Yourself” Competitive Intelligence I can say with confidence that 99% of companies in the world practice some form of competitive intelligence (CI). It may not be a formal, sophisticated process, but almost all companies have some way of trying to figure out what their competition is up to. Often when I am explaining …
Anatomy of CI – Part 2
Ad-hoc vs Monitoring Imagine if you tried to navigate a busy street but you could only see and hear for 5 seconds out of every minute. Would that be a safe way to travel? No, because the situation would change too fast, and with far too great of consequences to be safe. Think about how most companies conduct competitive intelligence …
Anatomy of CI – Part 1
Over the years there have been numerous comparisons between organizations and organisms, as they share many fundamental similarities, namely: Organisms are essentially ‘living’ systems that depend on the external environment to meet their needs Organizations are made up of interconnected sub systems that must work together to adapt, grow and thrive If you think of your organization as an organism, …
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