Strategic Considerations for a World in Flux

Erik Iwanski

Before COVID-19 transpired executives were concerned with their strategic assumptions and the results of getting them wrong.   A February 2020 Gartner study cited lack of confidence in strategic assumptions as the leading corporate risk among senior executives across a diverse set of industries and global geographies in Q4 2019. A strategic assumption can be defined as the unstated belief that something is likely to occur to enable an achievable strategic goal. Depending on the …

COVID-19 Impact on Pharma: A Q1 Earnings Narrative

Aditya Kelkar

The COVID-19 outbreak generated widespread concern over how pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medtech companies would cope with stringent national and regional lockdowns. Financial results from Q1 provide the first indicator of how this public health crisis will impact this industry and what the future may hold.  By early May, earnings for most of the significant players in the pharma industry had been announced, …

Connecting Information Silos

Heath Gross

Over the last several years there have been a number of interesting articles written about breaking down information silos, in fact, I have even used that term myself in the past. However, the more I work with clients attempting to overcome the information silo dilemma, I am convinced the emphasis should instead be on connecting information silos. Let’s face it, …

Six Degrees of Connection

Heath Gross

Improve the ROI and sustainability of competitive intelligence in your organization by linking CI to Strategy using six analytical tools. In order to increase the ROI, and thus the sustainability, of Competitive Intelligence (CI) within your organization, it is essential to link research with strategy.  While there is a growing dialogue concerning the need to increase the impact of CI …

Think Like the Competitor, Act Like the Competitor, Beat the Competitor

Heath Gross

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

Heath Gross

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 Indicator Analysis

Heath Gross

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

Heath Gross

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

Heath Gross

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 …