State of Competitive Intelligence

Get the full report at the link. For a long time was part of my work at the enterprise.

2019 State of Competitive Intelligence

The Latest Best Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities in the Market and Competitive Intelligence Field

In an increasingly crowded marketplace, how are companies getting intelligence on their competitors, customers, and thought leaders? Crayon's State of Competitive Intelligence report dives into exactly that—to share the best practices, challenges, and opportunities in the field of market and competitive intelligence.

Download the full report to browse 50+ pages, 45+ graphs, and hundreds of statistics on market and competitive intelligence.  .... " 

CIA Releases Operational Board Games

Intriguing.   How useful these might be is unclear.  I recall seeing a board-style game with supposed espionage related origins that utilized game theory.   We edited some of the player parameters to get something that might be useful for real-life business.    It was suggested that the game could be used to set operational and strategic approaches for competitive activity. 

CIA’s in-house board games can now be yours thanks to FOIA request
After SXSW 2017 reveal, CIA releases buckets of marked-up board game design notes.  By Sam Machkovech  in ArsTechnica

Last year, the CIA used a South By Southwest festival event to reveal one of its weirdest training exercises: a series of globe-trotting, espionage-filled board games. If you're wondering why we're circling back to this news almost exactly one year later, we have four letters for you: FOIA.

A series of Freedom of Information Act requests, filed last June by Southern California tech entrepreneur Doug Palmer, finally bore fruit last week. The CIA has now released rules, art, and design documents for the two board games we played at last year's SXSW.  .... " 

Game Theory and Competitive Strategy

A favorite topic for corporate strategy considerations, but as we discovered, somewhat hard to apply in realistic circumstances.   Especially for competitive interactions. Fairly non-technical view.

In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium   In Quanta Magazine.
In 1950, John Nash — the mathematician later featured in the book and film “A Beautiful Mind” — wrote a two-page paper that transformed the theory of economics. His crucial, yet utterly simple, idea was that any competitive game has a notion of equilibrium: a collection of strategies, one for each player, such that no player can win more by unilaterally switching to a different strategy.

Nash’s equilibrium concept, which earned him a Nobel Prize in economics in 1994, offers a unified framework for understanding strategic behavior not only in economics but also in psychology, evolutionary biology and a host of other fields. Its influence on economic theory “is comparable to that of the discovery of the DNA double helix in the biological sciences,” wrote Roger Myerson of the University of Chicago, another economics Nobelist.

When players are at equilibrium, no one has a reason to stray. But how do players get to equilibrium in the first place? In contrast with, say, a ball rolling downhill and coming to rest in a valley, there is no obvious force guiding game players toward a Nash equilibrium.  .... " 

Game Theory in Practice

A apace we worked in, especially to understand and react to models of competitive activity.  In practice usually means getting good understanding of how these models work with available data.

In the Economist  (May require subscription)
Game theory in practice
Computing: Software that models human behaviour can make forecasts, outfox rivals and transform negotiations  .... "

New Products for a CPG Giant

I no longer work for consumer product CPG Giant Procter & Gamble.    I did analytics and competitive analysis innovation work for them for years.  I still have quite a few readers there,  I still own some of their stock,  so this post is particularly aimed at them.    Your global competitors are doing some interesting things to develop new product ideas.   See the article linked to below:

Lysol owner and Indiegogo team up to find the next... Lysol
Crowdfund a new health product and you might be discovered by a major chemical company. ... " 

Unilever Foundry Program with Competitors

More background from CPG giant Unilever on how they handle interactions with startups.   here about their Foundry interactions.   Note in particular their connection to competitive companies.  Volume of connection is impressive.

" ... After using its Foundry program to link with marketing-tech startups its first 18 months, Unilever is expanding the scope to reach potentially competitive companies in its own categories for joint projects. 

The move comes as Unilever opens a U.S. branch of the London-based Foundry, which quickly has grown into one of the bigger corporate efforts to reach out to startups. The program so far has vetted 4,000 startups, of which 80 have done pilot projects with Unilever brands and 40 have scaled into broader assignments. In total, Unilever has spent $15 million with startups under the program – up from $6 million when the company last cited a number at Cannes in June.After using its Foundry program to link with marketing-tech startups its first 18 months, Unilever is expanding the scope to reach potentially competitive companies in its own categories for joint projects.  ... " 

Service Sector Productivity

Productivity and competitiveness.  In McKinsey.   " ... Service-sector productivity largely determines a nation’s ability to compete in today’s global economy. An analysis of the comparative productivity levels of several leading countries provides insights into the factors that make a difference. ... " 

Smart Connected Products Killing Industries

Have heard this before, not universally true.  Especially when you have to move atoms vs bits. Or apply scarce resources.   Like in all transportation industries to date.  Other examples too.  Still a useful caution when forecasting the future of any industry.   In Wired.  Boosting innovation yes, but not making the innovations necessarily successful.  Clearly often changing the nature of competition.

Diagrams to Represent Competitors

New way to create infographics about your competitors.  The well known petal diagram.   " ....   The Petal Diagram drives your business model canvas ... What the chart is saying is, “we think our customers will come from these markets.”  That’s handy if you’re using a Lean Startup methodology because the Petal Chart helps you identify your first potential customer segments on the business model canvas. ... ".  

Competing Rapidly With Web Intelligence

Last month I gave a talk to a large company that is actively looking for new ways to compete. They have long been seen as a lower cost, but less innovative service provider.  How does a company like this understand their competitive space?  And in particular, how do they understand how that space is evolving over time?    An article from Recorded Future that addresses this dilemma.   How do you rapidly adapt in your domain?  What public and private information can be leveraged to make you as agile as possible.  Gain critical insights from web intelligence, combine that with your own internal sensory data, and drive to key changes in your methods.

CID Topic Analyst

Brought to my attention, and demonstrated to me today, a product called CID Topic Analyst  A means to semantically analyze text and classify its structure for applications like competitive analysis.

Tibco and Teradata and Real Time Event streams

TIBCO and Teradata Enable CIOs to Extract Actionable Insights From Real-Time Event Streams to Deliver the Two-Second Advantage

Event Processing within the Teradata(R) Unified Data Architecture(TM) enables analytics for any user - to discover insights and put into real-time action.
  ...  announced TIBCO Spotfire® event analytics as a key component of the Teradata Unified Data Architecture™ (UDA). This inclusion of TIBCO real-time event processing and analytics will enable some of the world's largest enterprises to capture the full value of big data by simultaneously analyzing historical data (data at rest) and real-time events (data in motion). The Unified Data Architecture combines powerful technologies to provide closed-loop processing of big data by facilitating the collection, analysis, and modeling of real-time event streams. The insights extracted from the architecture enables business leaders to anticipate future events and take immediate automated action, providing them with the two-second advantage®. ... 

The value of the Teradata UDA to customers is the ability to leverage the tight integration of Teradata data warehousing, Teradata Aster discovery platforms, and Apache™ Hadoop. This workload-specific architecture enables business users to gain competitive advantage through deeper insights from any data source. Now, combined with the Spotfire analytics platform, data scientists and business analysts can harness the best-in-class analytic capabilities of the Teradata and Teradata Aster engines and convert their discoveries into a guided operational application for line-of-business decision-makers. ... " 

Social Big Data

Gib Bassett provides a note by Mark Zielinski on the value of big data social data.   " ... Since late 2011, the market research industry and market research technology in general has been very focused on the coming rise of “big data”, and what that can mean for professionals in market research.  There has been all sorts of speculation about how the analysis of organic data and passive data “floating around” out there, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Facebook traffic could change the way we work very soon.  Companies looking to stay competitive can’t keep doing the same tired old things – they need to keep their ear to the trends, be resourceful, and come up with creative ideas. ... " 

Capital Economic Research

This site was recently brought to my attention.  The economist Ronald Mariutto's approach to solving enterprise problems.  " ... Founded by a PhD trained economist who had been a consultant for The Nielsen Company analyzing Procter & Gamble, Catalina, Target, WalMart, Kroger and competitive CPG manufacturers, as well as performed management consulting work for a Private Equity firm, he was inspired to bring together a team of marketing analytics experts, economists, and psychologists with the mission of innovating the next generation of integrated custom analytic business solutions to drive unprecedented value to mid-market and global organizations through novel data analysis methods and change management.  ... ".    Exploring collaboration.

IBM and Social Analytics : Kenexa

This is quite a buy.  We took a look at IBM's offerings in social technology nearly a decade ago.  Their early efforts included intelligent directories that could consolidate internal intelligence.  I was impressed by their early work for social in the enterprise, and now they are doing quite a bit more.  The integration of their  systems is worth watching.

" ... IBM further solidified its commitment to Big Data with the buyout of Kenexa Corp., a developer of social analysis software for use in human resources decision making. The $1.3 billion acquisition bolsters Big Blue's competitive standing among rivals Oracle and SAP, and, according to the company, will serve as a platform for the development of more enterprise social media applications ... "

Finance from Wolfram

And a finance platform from Wolfram Research.  Perhaps an unlikely connection but the possibilities are good.  I like the process-workflow connection;  " ... Algorithmic agility has come center stage in finance. Yet finance tools are often outmoded—failing to use modern, smart computation from other fields. Wolfram Finance Platform injects ultimate computation into finance workflows—increasing your competitiveness in areas as diverse as option pricing, risk analysis, enterprise system development, and interactive reporting. ... " 

IBM Announces Completion of DemandTec Acquisition

Announced today.  The integration of the DT abilities into IBM's Smarter Commerce effort makes much sense.  Looking forward to see the details of how it will all integrate together.   I have followed DT here since their first presentation to our innovation center in 1999:

" ... IBM Smarter Commerce on Cloud gives companies broader insights about customer merchandising and pricing preferences to better market, sell and deliver their products and services," said Craig Hayman, General Manager of Industry Solutions at IBM. "With IBM and DemandTec, marketing and sales executives in retail, CPG and other industries will be able to deliver the best prices and product mix based on consumer buying trends."

DemandTec delivers cloud-based analytics software to help organizations improve their price, promotion, and product mix within the broad context of enterprise commerce: retail, business-to-consumer, and consumer goods. As a result, companies can spot trends and shopper insights to make better price, promotion, and assortment decisions that increase revenue and profitability. By gaining a quick analysis of consumer trends, for example, a category manager at a consumer products company can collaborate with the retailer to understand price elasticity and set a more competitive price point.... "

Analytics Magazine

The latest Analytics Magazine from Informs. Full of useful articles including:  The Value of Business Analytics, Strategic Data Management Yields Competitive Advantage, Corporate mobile software-as-a Service Forecast, Predictive Analytics Project Delivers Millions of Course Records for analysis ...   and much more.   Always informative, practical information.   Will follow with additional links.

Competitive Intel as a Natural Extension to Business Intelligence

This is what I did for some years in the enterprise.   To understand the competition you also need to know your own company.  Rarely done well though, and not with the same tools.  This article discusses it further.  " ... For many companies, competitive intelligence (CI) is vital in order to improve their visibility in the market and to increase their market share. Competitive intelligence is “the systematic, ongoing, legal collection and analysis of Information about competitors, similar products, market trends, branches, new patents and technologies and new customer expectations....“

2011 the Year for Semantic Technology

Good overview article on the opportunities for semantic technologies this year.  " ...  Semantic technology will increasingly be recognized as a tool that helps provide early identification and analysis of consumer sentiment, purchasing trends, market deals and competitive information. Moving forward, monitoring social media-focused comments and conversations will be a core part of any business. By uncovering information in its true context and form, organizations will be able to strategize, analyze and make smarter predictions ... "