Competitiveness and Innovation
Still more ideas from the SCIP annual conference in Chicago… When I work with internal corporate practitioners of intelligence or research, one of my first recommendations is to run their operation as if it were a stand-alone business. That is, with clients (managerial decision-makers), suppliers (databases, contractors, etc.), and possibly even rivals of their own-both […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
Last week I went on vacation with my “lifemate” Ellen and the rest of my immediate family. We were on Cape Cod, MA, which is a pretty sophisticated area as far as vacation spots go, so I had assumed that there would be good Internet connections. Wrong. No Wi-Fi signals, only one bar (at best) […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
More ideas from the SCIP09 conference in Chicago… I’ve worked a lot during my career with business-to-business publishing and information services clients—and consider myself in that business as well. There are basically two business models for this kind of information—customized and syndicated. Customized information is that which is developed—often at great effort and expense—and which […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
Ideas from the SCIP09 Conference in Chicago… When I was in business school, my dean (William Donaldson—who earlier in his career had founded the brokerage firm Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette) had several homespun sayings that would guide those of us who knew him. One of these was “You have two ears and one mouth—you can’t […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
“The death of one company is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic.” Originally said of catastrophic human events, so it is too with “The Economy”. It’s too easy to get lost in the quantified abstractions of the aggregate, and thereby lose focus on the realities that drive individual business enterprises. If […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
Now the tough get going. The economy will come back—not because it decides to come back, but because we together make it come back. How long this will take to happen, no one can say for sure. This much is clear: silly season is over. Things like having not one, but two places on your […]
In my last post “Our radar has failed”, I offered the view that the current financial crisis is actually more than that—it’s a crisis in the ways we use information to make business decisions. We’ve obviously come to another “Where do we go from here?” moment. So, where DO we go from here? I’ve identified […]
Once again, our radar has failed. The current financial meltdown is much more than a serious financial crisis. It’s even more than a crisis of confidence. It’s no less than a fundamental abuse of information and its pivotal role in our economy. When our economy started in pre-historic times, we bartered for goods and services. […]
I recently conducted a KVC Workshop for intelligence producers at SCIP08’s international convention in San Diego. During the workshop I surveyed them about their biggest obstacles and problems in corporate intelligence. We’ve been collecting and analyzing this kind of data now for several years—I call it the Intelligence Points of Pain (IPoP) database. NEWS FLASH: Intelligence problems and challenges are remarkably […]
It was a weekday afternoon in the fall of 2007. Though sitting at my desk, I was speaking “virtually” with about a hundred other people around the world who share my interest in corporate intelligence. Specifically, I was midway through giving a live webinar (hosted by Aurora) on the Knowledge Value Chain®. A chat message […]
Here’s an excerpt from my chapter in the new book Starting a CI Function (SCIP 2008.) In each organization, the specific mission for intelligence, and the intelligence plan that supports that mission, will vary. However, a set of “information deficiencies” that is strikingly similar across many organizations, across all industries, remains. These include: There is […]
It’s here—the shiny (really!) new version 3.2 Knowledge Value Chain Workbook. Our thanks to the TKA team and partners who made this happen. Workbook designer John (“The Great”) Fantini and printer Craig (“On-Time”) Pace of Spectragraphic Inc. did yeoman service in getting this edition ready. Mike (“Pool Boy”) Powell made extensive editorial comments, as did […]