Competitive intelligence, market research, and related fields are steeped in methodologies and theory, which forges a direct link to academia, as well as the public-sector intelligence community. To add that dimension to your practice, consider beginning with the following resources: Harvard Business Review Ideacast is a weekly audio podcast presented by guest presenters from various ...

Whenever we give a talk, getting information on private companies is the hottest topic. In this Webinar we walk through the top free and cheap resources for getting information on privately held competitors. Sign up here

It’s essential to know, in detail, how your product compares with the competition. But customer buying choice isn’t just about “speeds and feeds”, so product comparisons can’t just inventory differences, but must really highlight differences that matter. In this concise, 15 minute Webinar (Part I of a two part series), veteran competitive intelligence professionals will ...

HBR has a great article in this month’s magazine on a new approach to strategy development.  While the article borrows a bit too liberally from scenario planning approaches (Shoemaker, etc.) without giving credit where credit is due, the new approach does have one great hook. The authors point toward an approach that flows as follows: ...

Every competitive intelligence professional should find some time every week to identify and check in on organizations that match their objectives and provide helpful resources. Membership in a few is a good idea, but aside from that, resources that range from podcasts and training to conferences and networking events make them a vital part of ...

Competitive Intelligence projects seem to suffer from two types of problems – no data, or way too much. In the “way too much” category, you have to have ways to summarize the data to get any meaning from it. A cheap (free) and effective way to summarize a bunch of text is to use a ...

All our clients are interested in knowing how their products or services compare, often point for point, with the competition. There are quite a few reasons for this. First, if you’re going to claim you’re the “best” or “first” or “most complete,” you need to be able to defend that claim, and you can’t do ...

Have 15 minutes for a few quick tips? Check out our most recent CI Life webcast:  Finding Problems with the Competitor’s Product Archived version here.

Our next Webinar is scheduled. Here’s the abstract: “It’s essential to know, in detail, how your product compares with the competition. But customer buying choice isn’t just about “speeds and feeds”, so product comparisons can’t just inventory differences, but must really highlight differences that matter. In this concise, 15 minute Webinar (Part I of a ...

The word “innovation” appears so often in business literature that it’s like a talisman, as if the spirit of invention its own can drive a company to success. In reality, innovation is a powerful force, but like any force, it must be directed properly to make it useful.  Competitive intelligence plays an important role there, ...

Of all the books we recommend to our clients, trainees, and students, some of the most valuable are the ones that give a slightly new take on familiar subjects. They might introduce a novel concept or two as well, but most of the real “ah-ha” moments from the books on this list come in the ...

Did you miss today’s Webinar? Got 15 minutes? Check out the Memorex version.

Aqute Intelligence has updated their very well done Competitive Intelligence Industry Landscape map. Check it out.

Let me put that differently – do you really know how to find? For me personally, I don’t think I’ll ever be done learning about this field. But you know you’re on the right when Google recklessly accuses you of being a bot like you see below: And let me start with a challenge. Find ...

More than many business units, CI organizations need to define themselves. That’s largely because others in the organization may not have a clear understanding of what CI is and its potential value. The following techniques can help you create a strong role and identity for your CI organization: Prepare an elevator pitch to define your ...

It’s possible for a recently born CI organization to get trapped in a thankless, low-level support role. Fortunately, it’s also quite possible for it to define itself as a key player in setting strategy. That’s why you need to recognize factors such as these that can weaken the CI function: Chasing facts instead of doing ...

Link to post – http://www.dreamgrow.com/54-free-social-media-monitoring-tools-update-2012/ Some Examples: Nearby Tweets, Nutshell Mail,  Tweet Reach, Follower Wonk  

Anticipating Surprise by Cynthia Grabo is a book we recommend. It’s a fantastic read that very quickly highlights elements of various strategic warning frameworks in use by the military. The chapter on Indications and Warnings analysis is alone worth the price of admission. While the connections to business settings are implicit they can be readily ...

What It Is: SlideShare is a place where people can upload slide presentations on any topic. Information Provided: · Presentations that let you get up to speed quickly on trends or topics · Quick identification of Subject Matter Experts · Competitor positioning, , strengths, comparisons, partners, roadmaps, tactical and strategic plays, etc. Description: SlideShare does ...

What It Is: A place where employees can anonymously post various details about their company. Information Provided: Salaries for different roles within a company Pros and cons of working there “Advice to management” from the employee’s perspective Details about hiring interviews Description: Glassdoor (http://www.glassdoor.com) is a Web site that lets employees post a wealth of ...

We’ll be delivering a 1/2 day workshop for the Silicon Valley Product Management Association on December 4th. Register here – http://www.svpma.org/workshops.html High level outline below…. Workshop Summary Understanding your competitors’ next moves or knowing how well they are putting their current plans into effect can mean the difference between success and failure in your market. ...

Our book was just listed as one of the best Competitive Intelligence reads of 2009 and 2010 By Sean Campbell By Scott Swigart

What It Is: Yippy is a search engine that queries other search engines, then groups the results together in clusters. Information Provided: Automatic categorization of search results Parsing of results into logical groupings by content, search engine source, or top-level domain Ability to streamline search results, making them simpler to examine Description: Yippy gives users ...

New competitive intelligence tool to research company org charts: www.theofficialboard.com NationMaster.com – good statistics on countries, people, etc. – http://bit.ly/iydy NNDB Mapper – Visually connect the relationships between individuals – http://bit.ly/bKnD9 Journalist’s List of Databases – http://bit.ly/dmIaGs Happn.in – http://bit.ly/12SUDL – a way to find local tweets for your city Use LinkedIn’s new “Follow Company” ...

One great way you can get a better view into the health and business dealings of a non-profit organization is to review the Form 990 that non-profits have to file. For example, a review of 2008 filing for the American Marketing Association shows information such as the amount of money the organization made from membership ...

Using these queries from Google you can harvest information from LinkedIn’s “Company Pages” that match the following criteria:   Median Age of Company Employees from 40 to 50 years old “median age, * 40..45 years” site:linkedin.com/companies/*   Companies with a % of male employees from 20 to 30% “Male, * 20..30 %” site:linkedin.com/companies/*   Companies ...

Many people use LinkedIn as a digital CV and a way to virtually network, but you can utilize various aspects of LinkedIn to gather information about specific companies, such as: New Hires Recent Promotions Company Headquarters and Field Office Locations What company are new employees coming from, and what company do employees go to when ...

We’ll be giving our talk on “When worlds collide: Market Research meets Competitive Intelligence” at the MRA Conference in Las Vegas this week. http://www.slideshare.net/campsean/ when-worlds-collide-market-research-meets-ci-final

Our Quirks magazine article on using LinkedIn for IDI recruit in qualitative research projects is now live. http://bit.ly/9I5XBb By Sean Campbell By Scott Swigart

Some of our upcoming presentations include: Marketing Research Association’s – West Region Conference – March 3rd through the 5th. Portland PDMA – March 18th @ 5:30pm. Seattle PRSA – March 17th @ Noon.

Here are some of the comments from our recent seminar for Marketing Profs focused on – Going Beyond Google – Keeping an eye on your competition. – http://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/online-seminars/242 Slides here – http://www.slideshare.net/campsean/keeping-an-eye-on-the-competition-go-beyond-google “Finally, someone answers the question: how do we track the huge (and growing) volume of competitive business intelligence? Offers terrific advice, and great ...

We just posted a new presentation to slideshare entitled Accelerating Sales via Competitive Intelligence Practices. http://www.slideshare.net/campsean/accelerating-sales-via-competitive-intelligence-practices By Sean Campbell By Scott Swigart

We recently published to slideshare a presentation highlighting some of the techniques we use to track competitors on a Monthly, Weekly, and Daily basis. http://www.slideshare.net/campsean/competitor-tracking-daily-weekly-monthly By Sean Campbell By Scott Swigart