January 2010, it is time for good resolutions! One of these might be to share best practices with your peers and learn what is happening at the moment in the competitive intelligence world. To help you achieve that goal, Markintell has updated the event section of the web site with 10 CI events to watch out for. We have picked up only the major ones. Please feel free to add others for the benefit of the Markintell community! Find below -and also in the events section of Markintell Website- the 10 selected events: 

January 2010

• When: 10-13 Jan 2010
• Organizer: Frost & Sullivan
• Event: 17th Annual Competitive Intelligence 2010: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. Strategic Competitive Insights to Propel Profit and Growth
• Location: Richmond
• Country: Canada
• Link: http://www.tsnn.com/profile.asp?EventID=19262&CatID=30&partner=techweb

• When: Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 January 2010
• Organizer: VIB Pharma
• Event: Competitive Intelligence in Pharma
• Location: Nice
• Country: France
• Link: http://www.ciinpharma-events.com/

 February 2010:

• When: Friday 26 February 2010
• Organizer: Prediction Market Cluster
• Event: Collective Intelligence Summit: Leading Enterprise Social Media and Prediction Markets
• Location: Seattle
• Country: USA
• Link: http://pmcluster.com/Prediction%20Markets/SEA10.htm

 March 2010:

• When: March 9-12, 2010
• Organizer: SCIP
• Event: SCIP 2010 International Conference
• Location: Washington DC
• Country: USA
• Link: http://www.scip.org/content.cfm?itemnumber=9065

• When: March 17th & 18th, 2010
• Organizer: Reed Expositions
• Event: Documation 2010
• Location: Paris
• Country: France
• Link: http://www.documation.fr/site/GB,C1361,I1093.htm

 September 2010:

• When: September 21-22, 2010
• Organizer: Pharma CI
• Event: Pharma CI Conference & Exhibition
• Location: Sheraton Parsippany Hotel, New Jersey
• Country: USA
• Link: http://www.pharmaciconference.com/

 October 2010:

• When: fall of 2010
• Organizer: SCIP
• Event: Asian CI Summit
• Location: Kula Lumpur
• Country: Malaysia
• Link: http://www.scipblog.org/?p=47

 November 2010:

• When: November 16-18, 2010
• Organizer: KM World
• Event: KM World 2010
• Location: Renaissance Hotel, Washington DC
• Country: USA
• Link: http://kmworldblog.com/2009/11/kmw2010-in-dc-nov-16-18/

 Fall of 2010:

•  When: fall of 2010
• Organizer: SCIP
• Event: Latin American CI Summit
• Location: not defined
• Country: not defined
• Link: http://www.scipblog.org/?p=47

• When: fall of 2010
• Organizer: SCIP
• Event: European CI Summit
• Location: not defined
• Country: not defined
• Link: http://www.scipblog.org/?p=47



While discussing in the alleys of KM World (San Jose, CA, 11/17-19) , I noticed the gap between knowledge managers and competitive intelligence practitioners is shrinking.

Indeed knowledge managers definitely have an inward view about their function although they seem to agree outside data or web data would benefit their company knowledge repository. As a matter of fact, many knowledge managers I discussed with, know intelligence practitioners within their firm and have been discussing some solutions to aggregate outside data with internal data.

I noticed a similar shift couple of years ago when few business intelligence managers mentioned they consider competitive intelligence as a part of their discipline.

As a result, the intelligence vocabulary gets richer although a little fuzzier. Maybe you’ve noticed some expressions including sales intelligence, biotech intelligence, technical intelligence, customer intelligence not to mention market intelligence.

What is your opinion on that topic, how do you define your discipline today and how do you envision it will evolve over time?

Chris.

We had a really nice time at SCIP Amsterdam last week. The SCIP team and Joseph Rodenberg  did a  fantastic job, inviting some of the most impressive speakers in the field of CI and providing all practitioners a unique chance to network and know each other. The event took place at the hotel Krasnapolski, located right in the center of the city. The event had around 200 participants from around the globe.

The first keynote speaker, Stephane Garelli, Director of the world competitiveness center, gave a well documented opening speech using his unique voice and a good sense of humour  to present the way the economic world is evolving and what the future holds. It was a fascinating moment for the audience. We had a break from our day jobs to be engaged  and have a better understanding of the current financial crisis and the impact the developed ,emerging markets and of the developing countries.Garelli mentioned the mandatory increase  in taxes on both individuals and the corporate world. The impact of the Asian boom on our daily consumptions habits, for example the production of one kilo of meat requires 15,000 litres of water? With an explosion of the Asian demand for meat in the next 20 years, it is likely that governments from the developed countries will need to regulate their own consumption to avoid water shortage.

Peter Richardson, Nokia’s Head of Strategic Intelligence, gave a very good presentation about market intelligence activities within his company. Peter explained that the main issue for companies like Nokia is not to identify the common trends concerning consumer’s habits, but really to forecast the pace at which they will impact our daily lives. The major trends like web social medias or tactile interfaces have been identified very early.However, Nokia did not understand how fast they would penetrate the market and how radically they change consumer’s behaviour. It is a difficult challenge, for leading brands, to anticipate the radical changes brought by new players breaking the usual market rules i.e. Apple with iphone, Google with web based apps.

Another speaker I enjoyed was Joost Drieman, Cisco’s Market and Business Intelligence Europe director. Joost Drieman is a brilliant professional with incredible communication skills. What captured my attention was his“don’t look at the competition” message. He explained it is much more important to understand consumer’s needs in order to create new markets than monitoring the daily moves of the competition. He stated that Cisco became a world leader, by focusing on customer satisfaction and providing innovative ideas, instead of copying existing ones. There’s a discussion about this subject going on Ning CI platform (see here), don’t hesitate to express your viewpoint on this subject matter. Joost Drieman provided information on how he manages his team, assisting them to become an internal McKinsey. MI people are asked to avoid basic answers to incoming demands, but rather provide valuable insight and high-level analysis, sometimes leading to unanswered problems. “Don’t just be good, be excellent” is the rallying cry of M. Drieman, who definitely sets the standard of market intelligence at the highest level.

A lot of valuable speakers brought their ideas to the table, like Daphne TOMLINSON from Siemens Building technologies CI team, Arik JOHNSON from Aurora WDC or Christian FREY from SIKA. It’s real food for thought for all CI and MI practitioners. Congratulations to all of them who decided to share their best practices. If you want to suggest a city for the next SCIP Europe meeting, please send an email to the Scip team.

We can’t wait for the next highly informative, educative and entertaining forum.
I will leave you with great words of Alvin Toffler : The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.