Home About Services Blog TOC References Contact
Apr
27

Useful Approximations in CI

Tom Hawes Competitive Intelligence Add your comment

car“I don’t need the exact figure. Just give me the ballpark number.”

This is how I sometimes do business when I am trying to buy a new car. When I am early on in deciding which car to buy, knowing that one of the candidates is about $25,000 and the other one is about $40,000 is enough information for me. The ballpark number is a useful approximation for my initial purpose. (Later I will bargain about the exact car and sales price.)

In competitive intelligence, we are often asked to assign a number to something a competitor is doing.

For instance, our management might want to know how much research and development money has been spent on the latest product from our competitor. This isn’t a number that most companies will report publicly. So what do we do? Give up? No, rather we fall back on the article of competitive intelligence faith that there is always an ethical way to give a good answer.

Read the rest of this entry

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
please wait...
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
analysis, analytical techniques, approximations, CI techniques, Competitive Intelligence, management, product marketing
  • Archives

    • November 2010 (1)
    • September 2010 (4)
    • August 2010 (1)
    • July 2010 (3)
    • June 2010 (1)
    • May 2010 (5)
    • April 2010 (5)
    • March 2010 (4)
    • February 2010 (4)
    • January 2010 (6)
    • December 2009 (2)
    • November 2009 (2)
    • October 2009 (7)
    • September 2009 (6)
    • August 2009 (11)
    • July 2009 (9)
    • June 2009 (12)
    • May 2009 (6)
    • April 2009 (4)
    • March 2009 (12)
    • February 2009 (5)
  • Categories

    • Competitive Intelligence (94)
    • Early Warning (6)
    • Maintenance (1)
    • Organizational Development (13)
    • Strategy Effectiveness (56)
  • Recent Posts

    • The Hard Sell – Strategy to an Experimenter
    • Can You Answer This Question?
    • Competitive Intelligence’s Just Do Its
    • You Know What It is Like When …
    • The Three Basic Competitive Intelligence Questions
  • Tag Cloud

    Academy of Competitive Intelligence alignment analysis analytical techniques Apple approximations behavioral modeling Branding business development business strategy case studies change CI techniques Competitive Intelligence consulting decision making Early Warning Ed Tufte effective presentations evaluation facilitation failure signs future focus gap analysis graphical facilitation ideas infrastructure Innography integrity job listings management Marketing Michael Porter product marketing professional competence SCIP senior management SMB strategy Strategy Effectiveness strategy evaluation strategy implementation survey SWOT trap question
Strategically Thinking · coogee theme · 2008
RSS Feed · WordPress · TOP