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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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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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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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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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 13 Transcript – Developing Battlecards for Sales Teams

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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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 12 Transcript – CI Communities you should know

For information about competitive intelligence as a discipline, the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) website is a great place to start. Its website provides a wealth of information resources, as well as opportunities for online networking and conferences. Beyond SCIP, we have a number of other favorite sources that we often recommend to our ...
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Annual Investigative Reporters & Editors Conference

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Sean@cascadeinsights.com Phone: 503.898.0004 www.cascadeinsights.com   Authors Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart to Speak at Annual Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference Portland, Oregon, June 12, 2012 – Campbell and Swigart will join the best in the business in a hands-on workshop and conference hosted by Investigative Reporters and & Editors held in ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 8 Transcript – Influencer Identification and Analysis

Market Influencers: Identification and Analysis Companies have dwindling direct influence over the public conversation about their products and services. At the same time independent influencers also drive buying decisions amongst audiences therefore identifying them and how they shape the market is a worthy and vital task for competitive intelligence organizations. The Rise of Influencers in ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 7 Transcript – Counter Competitive Intelligence

Turning CI Inward to Protect Your Company Competitive intelligence professionals typically spend their time and attention looking outward at other companies. Rarely do they turn that perspective around to identify the information they are revealing to the world at large about their own operations. The tools and techniques we use every day to gather intelligence ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 6 Transcript – Win / Loss for the Rest of Us

Improving Outcomes of Win-Loss Analysis No matter how you go about win-loss analysis, you are looking to get to the heart of the question, “Why are customers buying (or not buying) from company X?” Some fairly straightforward techniques from other areas of competitive intelligence practice can help make the process simpler and more successful. At ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 5 Transcript – Reporters and Competitive Intelligence

What Competitive Intelligence Can Learn from Investigative Reporters News reporters use an intriguing mix of tools that directly correlate to competitive intelligence work, particularly in terms of mining the web. In short, investigative reporters have deep expertise in gathering data from its hiding places and making sophisticated conclusions from it. The competitive intelligence field can ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 4 Transcript – Analysis of Competing Hypothesis and the Battle of Ideas

Making Intelligence Smarter: Analysis of Competing Hypotheses A portion of competitive intelligence work is simply gathering source information. However that information’s value depends in part on how well analysts can develop defensible conclusions from hypotheses that are often at odds with each other. Borrowing from public sector intelligence practice, the analysis of competing hypotheses (ACH) ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 2 Transcript – Ethics Applied

Questions of ethics are always a point of interest in competitive intelligence (CI), and workshops on this topic are a staple of industry conferences. Guidelines such as the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) Code of Ethics are a great start, as are legal or ethical guidelines established by your company or customers. Our discussion ...
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The “Competitive Intel” Episode 1 Transcript – CES and Trade Show Intelligence

Industry events are outstanding opportunities for gathering information from competitors, customers, partners, and distributors. There’s a gold mine there for the taking, in terms of how to develop and position your products and services in the marketplace. Still, that same hyper-focused nature of these events means you need a well organized approach to take full ...
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