Competitive Intelligence 2.0

by Bill Rice on December 1, 2009

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Whether you are in corporate strategy, marketing, sales, or public relations competitive intelligence is critical to your objectives. Why are so few formalizing the process? I’m not sure, but that smells like opportunity.

Competitive Intelligence 2.0

There was a point in time when competitive intelligence was all about getting information. A major part of the job was collecting–gathering industry periodicals, SEC filings, conference presentations, organizational charts, maybe even a stray memorandum or two.

Now, all of this is a simple Google search away. Maybe throw in a Google Alert here and there and some Twitter searches.

Pretty soon you are flooded with stuff!

New problem: sifting, analyzing, and synthesizing all this data. Competitive intelligence is increasingly about analyzing information.

How do we solve this problem?

Finding Significance

I think you have to first focus on popping out significance. In general, I believe significance is simply quantity and velocity.

In social media I translate that into these simple metrics:

  • Top talkers
  • Top topics
  • Top keywords
  • Trending (velocity) for each

Although there maybe important intelligence below the level of significance, it is like a "tree falling in the woods"–if no one is around, does it matter? It might. More on that later.

Monitoring for the Expected

The second component of any good competitive intelligence strategy is to set-up monitoring for the expected.

There are certain trends, people, and businesses you expect to find in the market. They are currently influencing customers and industry leaders.

In addition, there are things you are doing or you know competitors are doing that you should be monitoring for market reaction.

The objective of this component of your competitive intelligence monitoring is defensive—watching competitors, customers, and markets react to inputs.

Looking for the Missing Links

Here is where we start earning our money—finding the "secret” stuff.

A serious competitive intelligence program will reveal hidden opportunities and subtle trends that are mysteriously moving the market—missing links. Like the missing link concept in biology, there are often movements or evolutions in the market that seem to be jumps in the innovation S-curve.

This is best captured in the concept of creative destruction. And the quandary it puts us in is analyzed in Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma (affiliate link).

Capturing this moments means a more sophisticated approach to competitive intelligence. You need to look for bleed edge technologies and businesses. They are often inefficient and may not even look viable, but in the age of social media they can get traction and attention fast.

This leads us to the second key to trend spotting—watching the trend spotters.

Every industry has a small group of folks that are always in the know. Not only are they inclined to point out needed innovation, but also promising up and comers. These trend spotter also tend to have a large presence and audience in the social media and blogging space—meaning they could easily thrust a new innovation or competitor into viability.

You want to be the first to see this move. Everyone else (including your competitors) will be wondering what they missed (“the missing link”) six months later. Meanwhile, you’ll have the jump on everyone else.

Vetting Sources

The final important components of competitive intelligence 2.0 is properly vetting your online sources.

It’s incredibly hard to discern credibility on the Web. A professional looking website is not always confirmation of valid or trustworthy information.

Like any good intelligence operation, it’s important to build a network of vetted sources before you need them. Again, social media can be a big asset in this process.

This is a simple vetting framework:

  1. Identify who people trust, follow, and respect
  2. Find these influencers’ home base/hub
  3. Inventory who they link to and reference regularly
  4. Add all these folks to your monitoring
  5. Continue to build the network in this manner
  6. If necessary and appropriate engage directly to build trust

Competitive intelligence 2.0 is a lot more than searching through online resources. Creating an effective intelligence capability to support your business and sales efforts is about leveraging an increasingly open and social Web to quickly reveal opportunity.

Are you using competitive intelligence in your business? Are you actively monitoring the websites, blogs, and social media for opportunities? What are some of the tools you are using to monitor these online sources.

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Tagged as: Competitive Intelligence, monitoring, Sales, Social Media

  • Bill,

    Interesting article. I can agree that sifting information for significance can be of little more advantage than ignoring the source.

    I still feel searching the web for CI is akin to exploring new lands on a map. Vetting would just improve the appearance of the map.

    At Connotia, we find the success is achieved by customizing the solutions for clients. Simply put - Ask what questions need to be answered, seek not only available data but also missing pieces of information, and then sift the relevant from irrelevant. I always try to remember the story of six blind men and the elephant.
  • I agree with you that customizing for each client is critical. No one is going to know their business, industry, and relevance of the information better than they will. When I was in the intelligence business we had "area experts" that trained for years to understand the nuances of language, culture, politics, and environment. Unfortunately, the private sector doesn't have the resources to replicate that model and offer an afford price--so we rely on close collaboration with the customer.

    I depart with you significantly on vetting the sources though. It is critical to understand the credibility, access, and motivations of many of your sources. It will prevent you from serving up information that makes you look incompetent or waste your client's time and resources. Even worse sending them down a strategic path based on a competitors deception.
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