Competitive Intelligence and Co-opetition Part 1: Three Ways Other Companies Can Be the Syrup on Your Waffle

Competitive relationships between companies are generally taken for granted. Competition is widely regarded as the beneficial bedrock of efficient markets, and it fits squarely into our general understanding of metaphors for business such as sports or military conflict. Still, it’s not hard to see how companies can benefit each other, intentionally or otherwise. The complementary ...
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Competitive Intelligence Analysis of Co-opetition Benefits and Hazards

As described in the book of the same name by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff, co-opetition is the concept of mutual benefit to one another by separate businesses. For example, a streaming service such as NetFlix might add value to Apple TV (since iTunes is download-only), and likewise, Apple TV might drive business to NetFlix. ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 20 Transcript – What is the Competitor’s Pricing?

Information about competitors’ pricing is a very common competitive intelligence request. This effort generally requires triangulation and assembly of data from multiple sources, although you might get lucky starting with open source intelligence from the Internet. You can start with a Google search of a competitor name and phrases such as “price list,” perhaps adding ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 19 Transcript – Understanding the Technology Adoption Lifecycle

As a product or technology matures, the profile of a “new customer” changes, from the fast movers always on the bleeding edge, to the mainstream majority, to those that want tried-and-true commodity solutions. The Technology Adoption Lifecycle can be used as a competitive intelligence framework to illuminate how sales strategies should address those groups. In ...
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Gathering Competitive Intelligence on Private Companies

Many competitive organizations that have relatively developed processes for investigating larger public companies have a difficult time getting information about small private ones. The digital footprints of private companies can be significantly different—filings with the SEC (or its equivalents outside the US) are not an option, and press coverage is often significantly sparser. The guidelines ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 17 Transcript – Researching Private Companies

Many competitive organizations that have relatively developed processes for investigating larger public companies have a difficult time getting information about small private ones. The digital footprints of private companies can be significantly different—filings with the SEC (or its equivalents outside the US) are not an option, and press coverage is often significantly sparser. The guidelines ...
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Disruptive Innovation as a Competitive Intelligence Framework Part III: Three Habits of Highly Disruptive Competitors

When a competitive intelligence organization gauges the potential impact of a disruptive innovation, the culture and related factors at the companies responsible for the innovation are an important source of insight. The following series of questions can help illuminate the likelihood that a specific competitor will develop and launch a disruptive innovation: 1.    Is the ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 16 Transcript – Analyzing the Co-opetition

As described in the book of the same name by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff, co-opetition is the concept of mutual benefit to one another by separate businesses. For example, a streaming service such as NetFlix might add value to Apple TV (since iTunes is download-only), and likewise, Apple TV might drive business to NetFlix. ...
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Disruptive Innovation as a Competitive Intelligence Framework Part II: Three Reasons an Innovation Might Not Move Mountains

Just as important as recognizing a disruptive innovation, you also need to be able to identify those innovations that are merely sustaining, meaning that they represent incremental shifts that are not likely to create deep-seated  changes in an industry. Affirmative answers to the following questions can help differentiate sustaining innovations, so you don’t mistake them ...
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Disruptive Innovation as a Competitive Intelligence Framework Part I: Three Ways to Predict When Your World is About to Change

It can seem like everywhere you look, someone is proclaiming that the latest buzzword will redefine the fabric of the universe. While cutting through the noise to identify truly disruptive innovations can be difficult, it’s an important task for competitive intelligence organizations. Affirmative answers to the following questions can be the foundations of the conclusion ...
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Disruptive Innovation as a Competitive Intelligence Framework

Clayton Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, is well known for its focus on fostering disruptive innovation. From a competitive intelligence standpoint, a secondary focus is at least as important—how to differentiate between a disruptive innovation and a sustaining one. Just as a substitute in Porter’s Five Forces is hard to identify but potentially game-changing, recognizing ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 15 Transcript – Hunting for Disruptive Innovation

Clayton Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, is well known for its focus on fostering disruptive innovation. From a competitive intelligence standpoint, a secondary focus is at least as important—how to differentiate between a disruptive innovation and a sustaining one. Just as a substitute in Porter’s Five Forces is hard to identify but potentially game-changing, recognizing ...
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Webinar Recording Available – Getting Information on Private Companies

If you’re looking for tips and tricks on getting information on private companies, check out the recording of our latest Webinar (note: there were some audio issues at the start, so skip a few minutes in) [mejsvideo src=”http://cascadeinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/CILife/webinars/CI Life Webinar Getting Information on Private Companies-20120926 1801-1.mp4″ width=”640″ height=”360″]
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Competitive Intelligence Analysis with Porter’s Five Forces Part 3: Three Metrics for Potential Buyer Havoc

Different industries can have radically different sets of buyers, ranging from a limited number of corporate customers to a wide-open consumer market. Moreover, the ways those customers relate to the product and the companies they are buying from can differ considerably. Porter’s Buyers force seeks to describe those characteristics, as in the following examples based ...
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Competitive Intelligence Analysis with Porter’s Five Forces Part 2: Three Supplier Factors that Build or Drain Profit

When looking at an industry, it’s helpful to look for common patterns. One place important patterns often emerge is among industry suppliers. These patterns can often illuminate where profit from value is being captured in an industry. Porter’s Suppliers force applied to the airline industry would consider factors such as the following: 1.    Does the ...
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Competitive Intelligence Analysis with Porter’s Five Forces Part 1: Three Types of Dynamics Among Competitors

Too often, we see companies examine their profitability and potential as if their company is the only player in their industry. In reality, characterizing the industry-specific dynamics among competitors is easily one of the most powerful tools available to reveal insights about the way profit is generated (or not generated). Consider the following contributors to ...
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Competitive Intelligence Analysis with Porter’s Five Forces

When we’re training companies, the topic of profit in an industry often comes up. There’s few better frameworks for understanding the factors that drive profit in a given industry than Porter’s five forces framework. In this article, we look at how these five forces can be used to reveal the nature of a market, using ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 14 Transcript – Porter’s Five Forces

Analyzing the factors that drive profit in a given industry, a powerful ability for a competitive intelligence organization, is the focus of Porter’s five forces framework. In this article, we look at how these five forces can be used to reveal the nature of a market, using the airline industry as an example. Force 1: ...
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High Sales and Low Love – the Story of the iPhone 5

What is someone to make of a phone (the iPhone 5) that has low love from the intelligentsia in tech: The iPhone 5 is completely amazing and utterly boring iPhone 5 – Disappointment, Lust, and Anger While at the same time this very same phone racked up 2 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours. Smashing the record held ...
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Competitive Intelligence Conquers Dread Toward Independent Influencers, Part 3: Three Ways to Harness the Disruption

After identifying a preliminary pool of independent influencers who have significant impact on the products or services sold by your company, the next step is to establish contact with them. Engaging with those individuals can help transform their disruptive influence into a source of insight: Consider expanding your initial pool of individual market influencers. For ...
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Battlecards Put Competitive Intelligence into the Sales Team’s Hands

One of the key places where competitive intelligence shows its practicality is through battlecards. By assembling key information such as value propositions, competitor pain points, and responses to likely customer objections in one place, battlecards give sales teams a competitive edge. Positioning sales to win demands that you avoid shortcuts to make sure these documents ...
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Influencers driving your Competitors Sales: 3 Paths to finding the Big Megaphones

In many companies, management regards analyzing the roles of individual influencers in the changing market landscape as the province of PR or marketing organizations. In reality, determining who the influencers are and the sphere of their impact is can be much better suited to the competitive intelligence role: Open source intelligence techniques can identify who ...
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