Pop quiz – What does a soldier spend most of his time doing?

Someone might correctly point out that a soldier’s job is to defend his or her country by being ready to fight. So, do they spend most of their time fighting? In most armies, the answer is “no,” even when their country is at war. Soldiers spend most of their time waiting, practicing and preparing for the (relatively) brief times that they are in combat.

Military leaders know this, of course, and therefore create activities, training, simulations and duties to occupy the downtime between combat circumstances. Thus, when combat does occur, their troops are well prepared to win.

What about competitive intelligence professionals? What do you spend most of your time doing?

Many might guess that you and I are constantly engaged in projects for internal (or, for consultants, external) clients. That might be true for some people but my experience is that there can be significant downtime for most. By “downtime,” I mean that there is time when there is not a specific pressing project or task to complete. Maybe the management focus is on another issue or leaders are reacting to other problems. This time is a breathing spell that may be short or long. However, we know that it will end, perhaps abruptly when a new request for urgent competitive intelligence arrives.

How can the time between competitive intelligence projects be used productively?

(I have a short survey at http://jthawes.limequery.com/17155/lang-en on Competitive Intelligence Monitoring. Please add your opinion.)

I think that there are five R’s to remember to make this time useful.

ReThink Marketing

I met someone recently that is a successful marketing consultant. Her website has a graphic that asks the simple question:  Why do you need a marketing consultant? She goes on to give ten reasons why someone might be wise to engage with her to further their business. It all makes perfect sense and it prompts me to ask (and answer) a similar question for competitive intelligence. Why should someone bother with competitive intelligence? Why invest time, energy and resources to commission someone internally or externally to work on competitive intelligence? What reasons might make sense to someone that had to approve the budget?

There could be many reasons given. Many would be contextual. For example, in your firm, competitive intelligence might be important because of a person, a specific incident or the history of the company. Still, there are some very common and powerful reasons what any company would benefit from competitive intelligence.

Here are my top five reasons.

As they say in the Lion King, it is all about “the circle of life.” Things begin with a new idea. A few of those ideas result in compelling products. For a small minority of those products, the right people come together to create a valuable proposition for customers. With customers in hand, the company grows and prospers. One day, competitors begin to envy the company’s success. Meanwhile, the competitive environment gets tough. What will the company do? Can it adapt and continue to be successful. Some companies do and go on to bigger and better things. However, all too often, some “die.” Swallowed up by another, stronger company that extracts what is valuable from the dying company.

So, we mourn the passing of Palm- subsumed into the HP technology behemoth. How did this happen? What are the implications for HP? How does it affect others? Competitive intelligence plays a role in answering such questions.

HP’s Palm Plans May Leave Microsoft Out in the Cold

There are many reasons to acquire a company. It could be that the target company has many desirable customers, unique access to certain market segments or a valuable brand in a specific customer demographic. Who tracks such things about competitors or potential acquisitions? Apparently, HP does. (Asset Tracking, Four Corners Analysis, Intellectual Property Evaluations)

It is no surprise that competitive intelligence issues and activities regularly show up in business news. After all, intelligent and motivated professionals everywhere are furiously competing to win. To the untrained eye, it may seem that companies’ activities are disjointed or nonsensical (and sometimes they are). However, to someone trained in competitive intelligence, there are stories behind the public moves. From those stories, emerge motivations, strategies and opportunities.

For example, take the recent New York Times article, “Apple Buys Intrinsity, a Maker of Fast Chips” at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/technology/28apple.html, about Apple. Apple, flush with cash and the serial hits of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, purchased a chip design company. What does this mean? How does it fit with previous Apple moves? How does it confirm or change Apple’s perceived strategy? What might their next move be?

These questions are fundamental questions for someone competing with Apple and the core domain of competitive intelligence professionals.