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.