The Competitive Intelligence Slope of Enlightenment
“Some thoughts after 2 decades of Competitive Intelligence practice.”
When I joined the Competitive Leadership Team at Cisco back in 2001, we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. We were created by the executive leadership during the financial downturn of the 2000/2001 era. We were given a task, but not a methodology. And We built a very successful program through trial and error. One of the biggest I’ve seen. Since then I’ve seen many programs grow and fail. But something about today seems different.
I’d like to share with you some of the observations that I’ve observed and am observing in the Competitive Intelligence (CI) world.
- If CI were a family member, it would be a pre-teen.
- CI Methods don’t matter as much as you think, and CI Jargon matters even less.
- News still matters, about as much as when it was clipped from industry rags.
- Metrics were important then, and are more so now.
- Intelligence wasn’t a career before, but rather an additional duty. That’s changing.
The CI industry is in the Slope of Enlightenment and still has some maturing to do…
If anybody follows the Gartner Hype Cycle, I think the CI Market can be mapped against this model effectively; albeit on a multi-decade scale.
What I mean is that since the publications of Porter and Kahanar, in the period of the 1990s, everybody was doing Competitive Intelligence. The SCIP (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) conferences were filled with 1000s of attendees. This represented the “Peak of Inflated Expectations.” During the 2000s and more so in the 2010s we had a “trough of disillusionment,” again referencing the hype cycle. Largely due to individuals thinking that intelligence could be done with Google and a lot of broken promises from the early CI software companies. Where are we now? The CI Slope of Enlightenment.
The CI Slope of Enlightenment is a maturation of both the discipline itself and also the systems that are supporting the business process. I’m observing practitioners that are becoming experts in this area, reaching out to suppliers like us, and making specific requests. Those same individuals are moving from company to company, with better titles. CI companies like ours are being funded at a faster rate. Also, people are renewing software contracts. To date, we have experienced less than 7% non-renewals. This means that companies are adopting these practices and moving forward with them; and software vendor’s promises are beginning to be fulfilled.
What does this mean for you as the CI practitioner?
Safety. Security. A future.
It used to be a risk to bring a CI solution into a company. In fact, it used to be a risk to be assigned to be the competitive intelligence practitioner. I don’t think that’s the case anymore and if you’d like some help based on 20 years of best practices feel free to reach out to CompeteIQ.
Next week, we’ll expand on why the methods aren’t as important as you think, and that CI jargon is even less important.