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

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.

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.
 

Over the past couple of years you have come to know me as the founder and owner of Markintell.com, a regular speaker at SCIP and SCIA events, publisher of various intelligence related works and (some of you at least) a CI colleague and friend.

With a very recent career change I have decided to transfer Markintell.com into the hands of a very professional, traditional and well embedded CI solutions provider - Digimind. I was just not in the position to contribute enough anymore as my private live and career options shifted quite substantially (incl. relocation, new industry and job position).

Sad and nostalgic at first, both the personal changes and the new ownership for Markintell.com excite me now very much as you, the user, will be served much better from now on with valuable, frequent content and I can concentrate entirely on the new field.

As a member of the Board of Directors of SCIP I will still remain well connected with CI and continue to serve the global CI community. Especially within my function as SCIP’s Chairman of the International Advisory Committee (IAC).

Please feel free to follow me on the established business networks, contact me in any regard (both via www.thie.me) and receive my gratitude for having been an excellent audience to me on Markintell.com.

Finally, please continue to support the new owner of the site with ideas, suggestions, contributions and challenges to the site will continue to grow along your needs as CI professionals.

My best wishes for your future both personally and professionally, Jens Thieme (www.thie.me)

“Intelligence education is currently provided through a variety of programs, institutions, and degrees. This list focuses on those educational institutions that offer courses, certificates, certification and degrees in competitive intelligence or intelligence analysis as of September 2009. The primary criteria for inclusion is that the organization provides accredited intelligence training in information or analysis. Preference is given to organizations with an .edu designation (US) or are recognized institutions of higher education….” - writes Bonnie Hohof of SCIP in her summary.

This updated list will also be discussed at the Swiss Competitive Intelligence Association’s (SCIA) 2009 Education Day September 29 in Zurich.

Maybe this example can be picked up and further developed in other countries? Competitive Intelligence as a government supported entity reaching out to other economies shows clearly the growing importance of CI in Europe.

Keeping an edge in a competitive intelligence profession Session Speakers and Panel Discussion Participants:

On site:
Monika Giese (Switzerland), Toni Nagle (United Kingdom), Rainer Michaeli (Germany), Stefan Schuppisser (Switzerland)

TeleCon:
Alessandro Comai (Spain), Bonnie Hohof (US) and John Prescott (US)

Details and registration at the SCIA website.

Webinar Outline

• GIA MI Roadmap
  • 6 Key Success Factors for Intelligence
  • 5 Levels towards World Class Intelligence Operations
• Company Cases
  • Case Vopak: Building a Sophisticated Intelligence Operation with the Help of GIA’s World-Class MI Framework (René Loozen)
  • Case Ciba (Part of BASF): Taking an Existing Intelligence Operation to the Next Level (Jens Thieme)

White Paper Executive Summary

The World Class MI Framework created by Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA) has been developed to help organizations achieve three types of benefits from a systematic intelligence operation:

• Better and faster decisions
• Time and cost savings
• Organizational learning and new ideas

The World Class MI Framework builds on six Key Success Factors that an organization needs to develop in parallel in order to bring their MI operation to a level where it compares to the most advanced companies in the world. The Key Success Factors are defined as follows:

1. Intelligence Scope: Start from small and redefine the Scope along the way
2. Intelligence Process: Design and implement MI Processes that are integrated with decision making, i.e. Decision Point Intelligence
3. Intelligence Deliverables: Design and produce concrete MI Deliverables
4. Intelligence Tools: Adopt a specialized MI Tool that enables global sharing of intelligence
5. Intelligence Organization: Build a results-driven Organization with optimized resourcing
6. Intelligence Culture: Create an intelligence Culture in your organization

The World Class MI Framework further divides each six Key Success Factors of MI development into five levels of maturity, where the levels range from “Firefighters” (Level 1, the beginners), to “Futurists” (Level 5, the most advanced organizations with regards to the level and maturity of their intelligence activity). Ideally, all success factors will be developed in parallel, since they are highly inter-dependent.

However, most organizations find it easiest to first build up the “technical” MI capabilities, while the softer success factors such as MI organization and MI culture, often lag behind.

How the World Class MI Framework can be leveraged for successful MI development in practice is demonstrated in the end of the paper through two case examples, Vopak and Ciba (Part of BASF).

Find more details and direct downloads here.

While Markintell.com only allowed specially assigned category authors to contribute in several topic areas we have now changed the Markintell.com homepage into an open blog for everyone who wants to speak up about Competitive Intelligence, Market Research & Analysis, Knowledge Management and other related fields.

Registration is a snap and you can be on your way to show the global CI community what you have up your sleeve as a professional.

Once registered (allow up to a day to be approved) you can get started to post right on Markintell.com’s homepage blog. Assign a suitable catagory (or we will do this for you in case you forgot) so people can find your blog entries.

A couple of rules apply but that should not be much different from any other business website you contribute to.

And now get started and have fun, registration is here:

http://www.markintell.com/register-with-markintell/

SCIP’s merger with the Frost & Sullivan Institute is in line with our organizational strategy, and will create financial security, maintain and grow membership value, and expand the visibility of competitive intelligence to a wider range of corporate senior management. This merger will not change any services you currently receive as a member and will allow you to gain additional membership benefits in the future.SCIP, as an institution and brand, will remain an autonomous, member-driven society.

UPDATE May 15

Memebership vote complete: the vote was 692 in favor of the merger and 43 opposed.

Key Merger Facts

The SCIP Board of Directors asks for your support and approval of the merger with the Frost & Sullivan Institute for the following key reasons:

• This merger provides the Society with such valuable opportunities for increased membership growth, visibility, and service expansion that it would have justified acceptance on its own merits, notwithstanding the existing financial situation.
• The merger provides for the continuation of the SCIP organization and brand as the non-profit organization devoted to providing membership value and enhancing competitive intelligence as a profession.
• The merger benefits all of our membership constituencies, as it provides resources to grow the membership and stabilize the Society’s finances. Long term financial sustainability will also support the development of enhanced membership benefits.
• The merger allows your Society to continue autonomous operation, led by a membership-elected Board of Directors. SCIP will benefit from the insight and experience of the two additional board members representing the Frost & Sullivan Institute: David Frigstad, Chief Executive Officer and Wyman Bravard, Chairman of the Board.
• The merger will allow your Society to avoid the economic and structural stresses facing other non-profit associations. Most of the 86,054 non-profits in the U.S. are being forced to reexamine their financial structure and investments, and are contracting services, cancelling meetings, considering cessation of operations, or seeking alternative ways (including mergers) to maintain their operations. In a recent poll of CEO’s of non profits 90% were expecting change of some magnitude in the next year.

SCIP Member Benefits

The merger of SCIP and the Frost & Sullivan Institute will maintain the current services you receive as a member and improve your membership value in the following ways:

• For CI practitioner members, the merger will help create a clearer career path for you within your organization, enhance CI’s visibility and reach within C suite executives, and provide improved and enhanced membership networking, education, and access to services.
• For the CI vendor and consultant members, in addition to continuing the policy of welcoming participation in SCIP’s events on an equal basis, the merger will create enhanced awareness of CI within companies and additional membership interaction opportunities.
• For academic members, the merger will create an environment where your contributions to the profession will continue to be encouraged and supported. The accelerated development of certification will increase competitive intelligence’s visibility to current and future managers. The merger will also provide additional venues to support your research interests and content development globally.
• For members based outside the U.S., the merger will enhance your ability to benefit from Society membership by providing improved local and regional support, content accessibility, networking abilities, and expanded international regional events.
• For all members, the merger will provide additional volunteer opportunities as the Society expands its membership, activities, and services globally.
• For all members, the merger will allow the overall staff structure and expertise to remain in place; including Ken Garrison functioning as the organization’s CEO.

Merger Support of Strategic Plans Goals and Strategies

1. Competitive Intelligence Profession. The merger will:

• Increase the marketing and advocacy capability for CI by providing access to an expanded global constituency. This broadens SCIP’s membership reach immediately.
• Implement and deliver SCIP certification courses to improve the identification of competitive intelligence as a valuable discipline in corporations. This process will be accelerated immediately after the merger is finalized.
• Enhancing corporate decision maker recognition of competitive intelligence as an essential resource. The merger provides increased visibility to C-suite managers at 20,000 corporations globally. A strong standing of the CI profession within their corporate environments is the most viable, most powerful and sustainable growth factor for all stakeholders and constituencies.

2. Competitive Intelligence Professionals. The merger will enhance best in class career development opportunities throughout the world by:

• Providing members with increased access to career-expanding education and developmental opportunities in related disciplines.
• Creating a marketing base to expand the competitive intelligence network outside of traditional markets and reach new vertical and horizontal groups immediately.
• Expanding current educational offerings in North America, Europe and in 2010 Asia. This includes additional opportunities for face-to-face meetings and electronic delivery of education and information on more efficient platforms with a dramatically larger base of network participants.
• Enhanced membership support to develop information, networking and communication opportunities via the merged resources, formats, and capabilities.

3. Organizational Governance. The merger provides synergistic opportunities to increase the Society’s effectiveness through:

• Implementing a shared services structure to reduce the overall cost of operations.
• Establishing financial stability that provides for membership growth and builds financial reserves.
• Developing new revenue streams from related service opportunities, which would be unavailable without this merger.

SCIP’s Board of Directors as noted below is unanimously in favor of this merger.

Martha Gleason, Chair of the Board
Eduardo Flores Bermudez, Vice Chair of the Board
Scott Leeb, Secretary-Treasurer
Joe Goldberg, Immediate Past Chair
Ken Garrison, Chief Executive Officer
Adrian Alvarez, Director
Erik Glitman, Director
Paulo Franklin de Abreu, Director
Kelsey Hare, Director
Jens Thieme, Director
Flynt Tuller, Director

Please find updates on the SCIP member vote and the merger progress at scip.org.