Mining Indeed for Competitor or Market Momentum

Indeed is a tool that we’ve come to rely on across a number of different projects.  While there are caveats in it’s use as with any tool, Indeed’s data set is quite capable of generating some interesting insights. For example take this simple query. title:cloud Job Trends Title:cloud jobs Someone looking at this in 2011 ...
Read More

Upcoming Webinar: Mining Job Postings for Competitor or Market Momentum

Register here. Abstract: Job Postings serve a single primary purpose. To generate a solid candidate for the position in question. Given this job postings can regularly provide insights as to what investments a competitor is going to make, how often companies are hiring to support the deployment of a new product they have acquired, and ...
Read More

Microsoft CEO to Retire in Next 12 Months

Steve Ballmer will be retiring as Microsoft CEO in the next 12 months. Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 as its 30th employee and has held the CEO reigns at Microsoft since January of 2000. Under Ballmer’s tenure, revenue grew from $25 billion to $75 billion, and the company is well diversified with continued strong ...
Read More

Competitive Intel Transcript – #35 – HUMINT inside the 4 walls

This is a transcript of the CI Life Podcast, Episode 35. If you’d rather listen to the podcast, click here. Sean:  Welcome to another episode of CI Life. In this episode, we’re going to tackle a subject that I think is really important, for basically every CI team that works inside a company. Especially a larger ...
Read More

Inbox Education Series: Mining Google Trends for Competitive Intelligence and Market Intelligence Insights

We’ve launched another Inbox Education Series. This time focused on how to effectively mine Google Trends for Competitive Intelligence or Market Intelligence insights. Each Inbox Education Series is focused on a set of questions that competitive intelligence and market intelligence professionals have on a regular basis. Over the span of a few weeks, each series ...
Read More

Success without Secrets

Is secrecy important to your business’s success?  I can say with some certainty, probably not, even if your business tries very hard to keep things secret.  And the reason is because outside of possibly some very high-level discussions and very early plans, “business secret” is practically an oxymoron. If your competitors don’t know what you’re ...
Read More

Recent Tweets – Rollup

“Android users are currently downloading 500-million more apps per month than Apple” http://t.co/3vBM01F8p8 Reeder, gReader & Other Popular Feed Reading Apps Partner With Feedly (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) http://t.co/2UOft9XTHo “5 Easily-Copied Traits of an Excellent Leader” http://t.co/b5XEPCW8HA “Google now maintains the following core elements of the Android OS outside of the actual operating system:” http://t.co/mA4qtVnThc You Have ...
Read More

Elicitation vs. Interviewing

This is a transcript of the CI Life Podcast, Episode 31. If you’d rather listen to the podcast, click here. Sean Campbell:  Welcome to another episode of CI Life. In this episode we’re going to drill down into a subject area that I think has caused a lot of confusion for folks over the years, ...
Read More

Tweet Rollup

Chicago Sun-Times trains reporters to shoot with iPhones after laying off all its photographers http://t.co/1LyYNP01yK “Don’t prep with your panelists.” http://t.co/QrAvBgEmC7 “Something Clearly Went Wrong At Apple” http://t.co/iWmX2h34eD “Windows 8.1 preview: many small tweaks make for a significant update (Tom Warren/The Verge)” http://t.co/damtqU9TBF  “Just as Microsoft cross-leveraged Windows and Office….Google is cross-leveraging search, Gmail, Maps, ...
Read More

History Didn’t Start in 2004 (aka Tracking Trends)

We’re huge fans of Google Trends. It’s just a wonderful tool to see if something is “big.” If it’s got momentum. If it’s growing or if it’s in decline. Consider the following:   This very accurately shows the history of Windows operating systems. Windows XP (red) was a huge success and stayed the dominant operating ...
Read More

Defending the Castle: Surviving Disruption

This is a transcript of the CI Life Podcast, Episode 30. If you’d rather listen to the podcast, click here. Sean Campbell: Welcome to another episode of CI Life. In this episode, we’re going to talk about a subject that is near and dear to our hearts, which we sometimes refer to with our clients ...
Read More

Benchmarking for Competitive Intelligence Insight Part 1:

Three Ways to Look in Every Oyster But Only Keep the Pearls When you’re benchmarking a product or service against a competitor, you need to cast a wide net to gather as much information as possible, but equally important, you need to keep the scope manageable. That paradox lies at the heart of the balancing ...
Read More

Weighted Ranking for Weighty Decisions in Competitive Intelligence Part 2:

Three Tests to Separate Opportunity from Folly Using weighted ranking for structured decision making requires the participants in the process to establish what factors make various outcomes better or worse choices. This list of criteria needs to be the same for every potential outcome, so in the case of choosing a new industry for a ...
Read More

Weighted Ranking for Weighty Decisions in Competitive Intelligence Part 1:

Three Guidelines for Choosing New Horizons Supporting sound business decisions is bread and butter for competitive intelligence professionals. A defensible, structured approach to that support builds credibility, improves the quality of the decisions themselves, and helps build consensus. Weighted ranking is a valuable approach to making structured decisions based on a large number of criteria: ...
Read More

In Search of Human (Competitive) Intelligence Part 4:

Three Pieces of Ethical High Ground to Protect at All Costs Ethics are important in all aspects of business, but particularly so in the case of competitive intelligence. The information you collect in a human intelligence effort tends to be sensitive in nature, and the methods you use to collect it can land you, or ...
Read More

In Search of Human (Competitive) Intelligence Part 3:

Three Ways to Bias Your Interviews (or Not) Each of us brings particular strengths to our work, framed by our experience and expertise. The darker, reverse side is also true: our predispositions can threaten our objectivity and therefore the accuracy of our research. In the case of human intelligence, the same is true of our ...
Read More

In Search of Human (Competitive) Intelligence Part 2:

Three Sources for Tips in the Search for Human Intelligence To learn from collective experience gained during the human intelligence process, you should keep notes about what works and what doesn’t to share with the rest of your organization. It is valuable to invest the effort to synthesize that information into a set of best ...
Read More

The “Competitive Intel” Episode 28 Transcript – Flyby on Wargaming

To understand what a competitor is likely to do, put yourself in their shoes. That’s the core idea of wargaming, a framework for setting strategy that dates back at least to Frederick the Great. Using a variety of approaches that range from thought experiments to computer modeling, teams answer the question, “if I had the ...
Read More

In Search of Human (Competitive) Intelligence Part 1:

Three Aspects of Identifying Humans Any human intelligence initiative begins with identifying a high-quality sample of people to interview. The first hurdle for some competitive intelligence professionals is to get comfortable with the idea of contacting a large group of people they don’t know, so managers should be aware of that fact as they assign ...
Read More

One of the Greatest CI Books of All Time

There are a lot of great CI books, but few are as tactical as John Nolan’s seminal “Confidential: Business Secrets – Getting Theirs, Keeping Yours”. This is “the book” on elicitation. Unfortunately, it’s been out of print for many years. I paid nearly $100 to get a used copy some time back. Well it’s on ...
Read More

Return of the Expanding Bookshelf Part 3:

Four Voices That Aren’t Right Under Your Nose Despite one’s best efforts, it is part of the human condition to become complacent with familiar tools, techniques, and perspectives. It is worthwhile for anyone to shake things up a little with a fresh perspective from outside the everyday, and that is especially true for competitive intelligence ...
Read More

Return of the Expanding Bookshelf Part 2:

Four Ways to Go Beyond the Five Forces Michael Porter has been a management visionary for so long that it can be hard to figure out a point of entry into his work; beyond understanding his Five Forces framework, there is a wealth of insight available. With a huge stack of books, papers, and lectures ...
Read More

The “Competitive Intel” Episode 27 Transcript – Value Chain Analysis

It is a basic truism that producing customer value in excess of your cost to provide it creates profit. Michael Porter helps unpack the deeper mechanics of this process with the value chain analysis framework in his book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. In theory, every step of a company’s activity should add ...
Read More

Return of the Expanding Bookshelf Part 1:

Three Sources for Toolsets on Your Utility Belt Incremental additions to the approaches you already use for competitive intelligence can make your efforts far more effective, as well as giving your organization new inspiration. As much as we are all intrigued by paradigm shifts, breakthrough techniques, and new analysis frameworks, those aren’t the stuff of ...
Read More

Get In Touch With A B2B Expert

LET'S TALK