Monday Morning Mojo

Competitive Intelligence: Essential to Innovation

Competitive intelligence is information about products, customers, competitors, the market and internal capabilities that support your ability to make strategic decisions. Effective innovation requires this kind of intelligence to make smart choices that take into account each of these areas.

I have been conducting competitive intelligence for my executive clients since 2000. I find it surprising that so many have little or no intelligence efforts in-house, let alone the ability to exploit this resource. It’s a stark absence. They cannot exercise their information, because they have none or what they have is haphazard, built upon conversation and hunches only. It is a sad state considering that a considerable amount of this valuable input is readily available for little or negligible cost.

Competitive intelligence done right provides valuable, legal, germane data. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an example of a competitive intelligence tool for the business masses. It provides readers with an edge in the marketplace. It does this by furnishing critical, publicly available news and information in a format that makes it easy to find relevant content.

If you read the WSJ you are several steps ahead of competitors who do not. To enable effective innovation you need your own private Wall Street Journal, customized to your organization, your clients, and your value proposition.

Intelligence aids innovation by checking your hunches, identifying weaknesses, targeting opportunities, providing market insight, and drawing valuable input from your customers.

Competitive intelligence is beneficial before, during, and after innovation takes place.
Good competitive intelligence is the basis for identifying opportunities for innovation. It is perhaps the single most powerful way to systematically uncover new profitable revenue streams and more efficient ways to serve your customers. It also makes undue risk visible for what otherwise may appear to be a good idea.

During an innovation initiative, robust intelligence can refine the quality of your work, keep you pointed in the right direction, and affirm or deny the value of the innovation in the marketplace. By directing the intelligence effort to address insights and ideas for performance improvement while you are in development or execution, you can even increase the amount of impact you innovation will have.

After you have launched an initiative, gathering intelligence is a valuable way to stay in touch with the realities of execution. Done smartly it can tighten your relationship to on-the-ground implementation, bringing you closer to customers and other critical stakeholders.

Competitive intelligence is intelligence that keeps you competitive... and it is essential to getting innovation right.

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