Ex-colleague Dan McHugh has started a blog on competitive intelligence. Dan is doing his level best to convince the uninitiated that CI is not about breaking into offices at night and stealing corporate secrets (and any used underwear left lying around) but using your brain and legally obtained info.
Whether Dan has stolen underwear as part of his job or not (and, hey, haven't we all been in that situation at one time or another?), I do like his suggestion for an application that is a mix of social networking and business analytics. For me this ties in with Brad Hinton's post on KM & Research. In smaller organisations (and some bigger ones too), the research function gets landed with competitive intelligence. Typically, researchers are well-trained in information sources such as company reports, market information, statistics, etc but lack a means to manage expert networks that might have critical, non-documented insights. The last 10 years has seen great strides in the organisational & technical approaches to leverage these but how many are currently in play?
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2 comments:
Matt, while I'll never tell you about my noctural activities, I appreciate the kind words!
I'll add another SG$0.02 into th emix by stating that as a CI specialist you have to be very aware that you can be branded as a "spook" if you go down the social itelligence gathering road. That is, programatically trying to gain information from people outside your company.
Social networking works so much better as a pull strategy. Where you're the "trusted advisor" and people come to you with infomration willingly because (and here's hoping) you manage to come up with some insight that adds business value.
So no spy cameras, phones in shoes for this little black duck - but Matt if you can sort me out with a dashing female nuclear scientist I'll promise to give up my underwear stealing ways!
Dan - To put your comment another way, there is an important difference between being a matchmaker & a pimp (and not just in the choice of car & clothing). The voluntary model certainly sounds more effective.
We don't have too many nuclear scientists here in Oz (hot chicks or otherwise) but I will keep an eye out...
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