In the fast-paced world of international business, competitive intelligence is necessary for the daily survival of small firms and national economies alike. In Competitive Intelligence and Senior Management, veteran consultant Joseph H. A. M. Rodenberg argues that business leaders should devote more of their time and attention to seeking out and interpreting information about competitors. This instructive volume offers tools that will help senior managers to increase their firms' competitiveness, carry out successful mergers and acquisitions, and avoid surprise attacks from corporate raiders and private equity firms.
A practical introduction to the necessity of competitive intelligence for smarter business decisions-from a leading CI expert and speaker In Competitive Intelligence Advantage, Seena Sharp, founder of one of the first Competitive Intelligence firms in the US, provides her expert analysis on the issues and benefits of CI for today's businesses. CI is critical for making smarter business decisions and reducing risks when formulating strategies, leading to more profits and fewer mistakes. This is a practical guide that explains what CI is, why data is not intelligence, why competitor intelligence is a weak sibling to competitive intelligence, when to use it, how to find the most useful information and turn it into actual intelligence, and how to present findings in the most convincing manner. Importantly, Sharp argues that businesses would benefit from shifting their perspective on CI from viewing it as a cost to viewing it as an investment that saves money and provides immediate value. Author Seena Sharp is a noted CI expert who established Sharp Market Intelligence in 1979 Addresses all the most common myths and misconceptions about CI Includes more than sixty examples of when to use CI Completely explains the ins and outs of CI, and why your company will act faster and more aggressively with CI Competitive intelligence is a management tool that is misunderstood and underestimated, yet results in numerous benefits. If you are a senior level executive or operate a business-and you aren't tapping the power of CI to improve your decision making-you are missing a potent advantage.
In the first book designed for businesses of all sizes and managers at every level, Larry Kahaner explains the increasingly vital practice of competitive intelligence and how American companies can use it for success. With a wealth of case studies, Kahaner shows How to profile your competitors' executives to unmask their decision-making processes The line between legal and illegal or unethical activities How to protect your own company against your competitors' intelligence operations COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE is a practical guide to turning raw information into priceless knowledge and winning business strategy.
For specialists and nonspecialists alike, this perceptive selection of the newest and up and coming tools and techniques of competitive intelligence, offering a well balanced combination of theory and practice. It shows how advances in computers and technology have accelerated progress in CI management, and the ways in which CI has affected (and been affected by) all major business functions and processes. It explores applications to organizations of various sizes and types, in both the public and private sectors. Editors Fleisher and Blenkhorn link leading-edge research in CI to advances in current practice, and balance pragmatic against conceptual concerns. Analysts, strategists and organizational decision makers at higher levels will find the book especially valuable, as they seek to make sense of the business environment and assess their organizations' evolving, dynamic places in it. The pace of change in today's global, competitive economy is greater than at any time in recorded history. Thus, as never before, companies need better tools for business and competitive analysis. The book surveys applications of CI that are critical to business processes, such as mergers and acquisitions, and to evolving industries, such as biotechnology. They focus on how push and pull Internet technologies affect data gathering and analysis and how CI can be managerially assessed using multiple evaluative approaches, unavailable until now in the public domain. They then turn to the future, and lay out some startling yet plausible viewpoints on what the next frontiers of competitive intelligence will be and how organizations can and must ready themselves for them.
This book is essential reading for any manager who has to make competitive decisions — decisions which affect the competitive success of a corporation or business unit. The book is unique in that it is based on detailed research spanning a decade of dramatic competitive change. Thanks to the internet, globalization, technological and demographic change, the velocity of competition is increasing and competitive decisions have to be made faster. The book, however, shows that many senior managers are unprepared and unable to meet quite common competitive challenges even half the time. Moreover, many firms have developed cultures where people do not trust each other with information critical to competitive success. Employees can spend more time competing with one another for the bonus pool than dealing with the real competitive forces.This book will equip managers with the intelligence and knowledge they need to make good competitive decisions at all levels of the organization.
Acquiring new market share whilst retaining existing share is what most businesses strive for, Competitive Intelligence helps position your business to maximise profitability
There is very little material available that provides practical, hands-on assistance for the CI professional who is providing CI to one client—his or her employer—and who constitutes the largest single group of CI practitioners in existence. This book meets that need by serving as a desk reference for CI managers to help them understand their own circumstances and determine what works best for them. Competitive intelligence (CI) is now becoming a mature profession. With that maturation comes the need to develop and understand the how's and why's of managing CI, as distinguished from understanding how CI works. There is very little material available that provides practical, hands-on assistance for the CI professional who is providing CI to one client—his or her employer—and who constitutes the largest single group of CI practitioners in existence. This book meets that need by serving as a desk reference for CI managers to help them understand their own circumstances and determine what works best for them. In addition to providing hints on diagnosing individual situations, many forms and checklists that the manager can use immediately are included.
Companies which are active in Competitive Intelligence (CI) face the problem of accessing the employees ́ knowledge for specific inquiries. Most of the knowledge and of the intelligence already exists within the company – however, it is not available for the CI-department. This study finds a solution for the problem by taking a view on the inner organization of CI- and knowledge management. It creates a reference framework of strategic knowledge management called the “Knowledge House” and gives the employees a context they can orientate towards. The objective is to actively anchor the strategic cultivation of knowledge in the company which promotes knowledge sharing. Beyond this strategic approach, knowledge sharing from the employees ́ view is outlined. In addition, it is also outlined what preconditions – which go beyond the organizations ́ influence – have to be set to make the employees work in a knowledge sharing- promoting environment.
Two of the most prolific and challenging authorities on the topic of competitive intelligence (CI) reflect on and respond to the changes in the field over the last decade. The authors point out that CI users have to change what they are doing, show why they are doing it, and provide ways of doing it. Their book reviews the problems in the development of CI since the 1980s, discusses the impact of the Internet and the rise in use of other secondary sources, and draws from and provides access to the growing body of CI information, knowledge, and literature. Combining a scholarly approach with hands-on advice, McGonagle and Vella have written the first work to guide CI professionals through the emerging literature of their field. Among the important changes in the field the authors cover are: the radical changes in on line database searching and ways in which the Internet has fundamentally modified how we think of accessing data. Their book explores and reports the major body of work from the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, now that more businesses worldwide are using competitive intelligence and either writing about their experiences with it, or joining in new benchmarking studies. The result is newer information on what really works, what doesn't work, and who is doing what with it. The book is thus a starting point for people new to the field of CI as well as a resource to help experienced professionals do their jobs better.
