Home About Services Blog TOC References Contact
Apr
30

Competitive Intelligence in the News: Apple

Tom Hawes Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning, Strategy Effectiveness 1 comment

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.

Read the rest of this entry

Apple, CI techniques, Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning, strategy
Feb
22

Competitive Intelligence Signal-to-Noise

Tom Hawes Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning, Strategy Effectiveness Add your comment

Early in my career, I supported the computers that ran a machine shop factory. The factory was a large, open room filled with machinery of every sort designed to form, cut and polish metal fixtures. I remember things about that factory. One memory is of the smell of machine oil. Another memory was of the cleanliness of the aisles between the production machines. The primary memory, however, was of the sound. When the factory was running (most of the time), there were all kinds of sounds. Drills, cutters, polishers and packaging machines were operating at the same time. Though it was possible to carry on a conversation in the factory, it was not the best place to hear or communicate important messages. Of course, overhearing conversations was just about impossible.

There were ways to get around all of this noise.

  • You could take advantage of the times that the factory shut down. That removed all of the background noise. Unfortunately (if your goal was talking instead of production), this happened very infrequently.
  • If you knew exactly who to talk to, you could move close to them and speak loudly. If you were the listener, the right strategy was to focus on the speaker’s words while ignoring the barrage of other sounds.
  • If you wanted to “overhear” something, then the only recourse was to become involved in the conversation. That, of course, depended on the acquiescence of the other participants. Thus, you were unlikely to hear much of value accidently.

Conversely, some approaches would only make the problem worse.

  • You would not want a goal of hearing everything that was being said in the factory. That would simply complicate the problem of separating an important conversation from the background machine noise. Lack of focus was a sure way to hear nothing of value.
  • You would never want to amplify the sounds in the factory. Though this might increase the volume of the speaker’s voice, it would also increase the sounds from the machinery.
  • You would not want to encourage people to whisper. Obviously, this made it harder to hear since the level of noise would overwhelm the conversation

Both of these lists could go on and on. They illustrate the common problem that we have of separating the important from the unimportant. The difficulty arises because every important communication is surrounded by background (i.e., contextually unimportant) noise. The world (much like the factory) is full of noise. What we want to hear is typically competing with so much that is unimportant (or less important). Furthermore, sometimes we want to “overhear” or discern things not originally meant for us. The background noise makes that task especially hard.

Thus, we get to the fundamental task in competitive intelligence. That is, targeting the signals that we desire to hear, decreasing the “volume” of the background noise and, finally, interpreting the important signals correctly.

Read the rest of this entry

Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning, Strategy Effectiveness
Jan
04

Emergent Competitive Intelligence

Tom Hawes Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning, Strategy Effectiveness 2 comments

The archetypical strategy story goes something like this …

“A small gathering of senior leaders is convened at a secluded site. The atmosphere is serious. An important decision is needed. Everyone there knows the competitors. They are attacking. Some of their attacks have been beaten back. As for the others, well, that is why the meeting is so urgent. The leader stands to speak. We must counterattack. Our stockholders and employees depend on our decisions. The organization must be aligned around a common strategy. What is that strategy to be? So many actions, priorities and resources must be congruent with it. It is time to act. Here is what we are going to do.”

When this scenario (or one like it) occurs, some days or weeks later various parts of the organization get their new assignments. Sales must target new customers. Perhaps their incentive programs are adjusted to reflect the new priorities. Marketing must adapt the product line messages to feature new attributes of the augmented product. Engineering must invest in different technologies to support new product features. Meanwhile, competitive intelligence gets new marching orders to track and report on new competitors and markets.

This is top-down strategy development. Sometimes this works spectacularly well.

Read the rest of this entry

business strategy, Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning
Aug
17

Competitive Intelligence: Saloon Lessons

Tom Hawes Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning, Strategy Effectiveness Add your comment

SaloonOne hundred and twenty years ago the scene in the American West would have been familiar. The scorching air would have been thick and dusty. The only street through the town of rickety boarded buildings would be crowded with cowboys and their horses. The one refuge from the oppressive conditions was the local saloon. And that was where you found all manner of folks. The tired cowhands, the frontier entertainers and the bad guys would be there. Everyone knew that the bad guys always came to the saloon looking for trouble. It was not a place for the unprepared or naïve because they were easily recognized and exploited. Winning for the bad guys was dominating the saloon.

Still, there weren’t many options for places to go. It was a given that sooner or later the good guys went there too.

So you might imagine going there with a friend. Ah, your friend. The paragon of truth and justice. A cowboy that was strong and good. He represented all that right about the world and that is exactly what made him a target. Others (the bad guys) could not prosper when he was there and they knew it.

As a friend, how would you prepare him for the saloon so that he could walk out alive?

There are 5 things that you might do.

Read the rest of this entry

business strategy, Competitive Intelligence, Early Warning, senior management
« Previous Entries
  • 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

    alignment analysis analytical techniques Apple business strategy case studies change Chris Zook CI techniques Competitive Intelligence competitive priorities consulting decision making Early Warning effective presentations failure signs future focus gap analysis HP integrity leaks management Marketing Michael Porter news people product marketing professional competence SCIP senior management SMB strategic imperatives strategy strategy;report card;vision;change artist Strategy Effectiveness strategy evaluation strategy implementation substitutes success measures survey SWOT tactics tools trademarks trap question
Strategically Thinking · coogee theme · 2008
RSS Feed · WordPress · TOP