A while back, I was softly singing a song when a teenager nearby overheard me. The song was one from the 70’s named “Signs“. The chorus is “Sign Sign everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind, Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign”. The teenager was amazed that I knew the song which mystified me. Then I found out that another group had remade the song in the last few years. The teenager (probably like I did when I was his age) assumed that everything is new. My experience is that few things are new but that many are rediscovered.

One thing that is true in competitive intelligence (CI) is that signs are everywhere. Contrary to the image of a spy sleuthing through trash or bugging phones, an ethical CI professional is swamped with publically available information. The question is rarely about the quantity of information but how to identify and interpret the valuable information.

For example, suppose you want to know if a company might be wanting extend a product line. Maybe they have a couple of products in the line which are not threatening to your business but any extension would begin to encroach into markets that you valued.

There are several things to do.

• First, make sure that you know all of their current products. Then, sort them into product lines. Create a timeline for each product line so that you know the rate of new product introductions.  Usually a company will make all of this information easily available on their website.

• Second, assign values to product lines. This can be a qualitative evaluation. The intent is to understand how important the product line is to the company.  Part of the valuation is also how important the product line is to you.

• Third, research how the company trademarks the product names. This is a straightforward exercise of querying the database at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Sometimes companies will trademark names in advance of the actual product introductions.

• Fourth, where intellectual property is involved, research the patent position of the company. It is often helpful to use a tool such as the one from Innography to organize and facilitate the search. The goal is to get indicators (“signs”) of where the company is investing its R&D resources since that often points to the types of new products that will be introduced.

• Fifth, look at the company’s partnerships and investments. Many times a company needs help to complete a product. Every time that they engage with another company, they are seeking some benefit. Tracking the relationships and the likely value of the relationship will give clues to the company’s future directions.

There are many more ways to see the signs. They are everywhere.