Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) [Hardcover]

Seena Sharp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 2009 | Series: Wiley

A practical introduction to the necessity of competitive intelligence for smarter business decisions-from a leading CI expert and speaker

In Competitive Intelligence Advantage, Seena Sharp, founder of one of the first Competitive Intelligence firms in the US, provides her expert analysis on the issues and benefits of CI for today's businesses. CI is critical for making smarter business decisions and reducing risks when formulating strategies, leading to more profits and fewer mistakes.

This is a practical guide that explains what CI is, why data is not intelligence, why competitor intelligence is a weak sibling to competitive intelligence, when to use it, how to find the most useful information and turn it into actual intelligence, and how to present findings in the most convincing manner. Importantly, Sharp argues that businesses would benefit from shifting their perspective on CI from viewing it as a cost to viewing it as an investment that saves money and provides immediate value.

• Author Seena Sharp is a noted CI expert who established Sharp Market Intelligence in 1979
• Addresses all the most common myths and misconceptions about CI
• Includes more than sixty examples of when to use CI
• Completely explains the ins and outs of CI, and why your company will act faster and more aggressively with CI

Competitive intelligence is a management tool that is misunderstood and underestimated, yet results in numerous benefits. If you are a senior level executive or operate a business-and you aren't tapping the power of CI to improve your decision making-you are missing a potent advantage.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Savvy business owners and managers must read Sharp's insightful book before making another big decision. The top expert in this field has written a compelling and extremely readable book for staying ahead of your competition."
—Jane Applegate, columnist and author of 201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business

"After reading this book, you will see your business differently, because you will see the work differently...a set of new opportunities to exploit."
—Steve Moya, consultant and former senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Humana, Inc.

"Seena Sharp has done it again! This incisive book clears through the clutter that encumbers so many others on competitive intelligence. And Seena's no-holds-barred style rings true as she pierces several myths surrounding vaunted business decision-making, and the holy grail of crunching business data."
—Paul Kinsinger, Professor of Business Intelligence, Thunderbird School of Global Management

"Seena Sharp has always provided her fellow professionals and clients a fresh and insightful perspective on competitive intelligence. This book fulfills those expectations."
—Jan Herring, advisor to intelligence professionals, Meritorious Award Recipient, Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals

"Seena's book provides the insight on competitive intelligence that all companies should embrace. The CI that Seena provided to our small manufacturing company directed a successful new product launch that would have otherwise failed."
—Brian Grabowski, CWP, a Division of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

In a challenging and constantly changing business environment, knowledge and foreknowledge about your business environment is crucial to smart decision-making and sound strategy. Competitive intelligence (CI) reveals the true state of your business, exposes the unknown, and shows you how to tackle current market conditions. It helps you recognize risks and new market opportunities earlier and act faster.

In Competitive Intelligence Advantage, Seena Sharp, founder of one of the first CI firms in the United States, provides her expert analysis on the immediate benefits of CI for today's businesses. She reveals why CI is critical for minimizing risks when formulating your business strategy.

Good CI delivers often surprising truths, gives you a heads-up on what's coming, and equips you with the knowledge to outmaneuver your toughest rivals. Using the accurate and objective knowledge good CI provides—particularly during unpredictable and turbulent times—you can gain control over the future of your business. The true power of CI lies in its ability to reveal what's happening outside your organization—to take off the blinders and show you the true competitive state of play.

Competitive Intelligence Advantage:

• Defines and refines the elements of quality CI

• Details why what you don't know will hurt you

• Equips you with techniques for detecting opportunities and seizing them

• Shows you when and why to use CI to your advantage

• Helps you understand and evaluate information sources

• Demystifies and debunks common myths about CI

Competitive intelligence is a robust management discipline that is often misunderstood and underestimated, yet always results in numerous benefits when used wisely. If you're a senior- level executive or organizational leader—and you aren't tapping the power of CI for an external perspective on your customers and the marketplace—you're giving your competitors the upper hand.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (October 19, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470293179
• ISBN-13: 978-0470293171
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #247,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Strategy & Competition

More About the Author

Seena Sharp has been recognized for her pragmatic and sophisticated approach to competitive intelligence and market due diligence which she details in Competitive Intelligence Advantage, the book that John Wiley publishers invited her to write.

Imagine making the smartest decision the first time - minus the second guessing and backtracking. Imagine increasing sales or gaining new customers, uncovered from CI that identifies what customers want - today, allowing you to deliver before your competitors even notices an opportunity. Imagine minimizing risk, even in today's uncertain and volatile economy.

That's the immediate advantage of competitive intelligence - making the best decisions the first time and maximizing opportunities, resulting in success and growth.

Competitive Intelligence Advantage is built on her 30+ years of experience with Fortune 500 and lesser-known firms (throughout the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa), including B2B, B2C, non-profits, and educational institutions.
Sharp Market Intelligence, one of the first CI companies in the US, provides strategic and difficult to find information and intelligence to growing companies that are entering a new market, expanding their line, developing new clients, or engaged in M&A. They use CI to reveal market drivers, opportunities, unknown customers, substitute and emerging competitors, external competitive forces, alternative uses, threats, and trends.

Request SharpInsights, a concise free monthly e-bulletin which relays real-world global examples of keeping up with today's reality. New companies fill gaps that existing businesses fail to notice - ideas that can be adapted by your firm.

Seena is a popular, pragmatic, and provocative speaker who delivers insights on the "right" information for the best decisions. She received the Fellows Award from her professional association (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) and was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the Association for Strategic Planning, where she frequently speaks about the benefit (growth) of due diligence when creating strategy. She earned her master's degree in mathematics from New York University while employed in New York City (BBDO Advertising, Equitable Life, Elgin National Industries, more) prior to moving to Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Possible Starting Point for Executives & Students, October 20, 2009

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) (Hardcover)

This book is a gem. It is a rare book that I would recommend equally to senior executives and students thinking about a career path, but this is such a book. I agreed to review this book for the publisher and received a free copy. I've known the author since the early 1990's when the U.S. Government first tried to learn how to do commercial intelligence, calling it Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). They still don't get it, for the same reason most executives don't get it: arrogance, ignorance, and a complacency that comes from having too much money and not enough accountability.

Before laying down my notes, let me first place this book squarely in the top twelve books in English. This is the one I would recommend to anyone as a starter, followed by:
Ben Gilad, Blindspots (Infonortics, UK), order online from them directly
Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies
Measuring the Effectiveness of Competitive Intelligence: Assessing & Communicating CI's Value to Your Organization
Super Searchers Do Business
Super Searchers on Competitive Intelligence: The Online and Offline Secrets of Top CI Researchers (Super Searchers series)
Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods
Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional
The New Competitor Intelligence: The Complete Resource for Finding, Analyzing, and Using Information about Your Competitors
Keeping Abreast of Science and Technology: Technical Intelligence for Business
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

The last are mine, as with all my books free online at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog. There are MANY books in this field, some listed at the back of this book. For me it boils down to culture, structure, sources, and process. CULTURE: from the CEO to the Chief Content Officer or Chief Knowledge Officer, do the bottom-line bosses understand that Competitive Intelligence is worth at least 20% of their gross in new revenue or avoidance of lost revenue? STRUCTURE: Is there at least a six person CI shop with a direct report relationship to the CEO or no less than one down from the CEO? SOURCES: Does the CI staff have a budget for serious research including out-sourcing of special studies and integration of appropriate processing power? PROCESS: Is the CI staff integrated into both the day to day decision-making as well as the strategic forward thinking? Nothing is dumber than "this is what we've decided to do, tell us about the path."

Now my notes on this book, which fully satisfies as an overview of the above and as an introduction to the broader literature.

1. External matters. It has been a long time in coming, but both the commercial intelligence industry (which is emergent from the scattered competitive intelligence industry) and the key customers including law firms are starting to realize that the customer's future needs, unstated needs, and the totality of the external environment are vastly more vital than internal data mining also badly known as Business Intelligence. One shipping executive told me they learned the hard way that in one particular African country with a strong textile industry, the regulatory and corruption context was so bad that the fashion cycle was OVER before they could get the finished goods out of the country. Never assume anything and forget the past.

2. Truth matters. The author is very polite on this point, one that the U.S. Government at the political and senior executive level still does not appreciate. I am totally enchanted by the early quote from the chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, "When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it." That one quote made this book worthwhile for me.

3. Executive short-falls. I like to quote Ben Gilad, who along with this author and Jan Herring and Dick Klavans and Babette Bensoussan are among my most respected colleagues: writing in BLINDSPOTS: replacing myths, beliefs, and assumptions with market realities (Infonortics UK 1996): "Top managers' information is invariably either biased, subjecive, filtered or late." Also from Gilad: "Using intelligence correctly requires a fundamental change in the way top executives make decisions." The author does a devastatingly elegant job of putting executive naivete in its place early on, the same section serving as a "lay of the land" for any aspiring commercial intelligence practitioner.

4. Definitions and Scope. The middle of the book is great on definitions and strong in comparing market research with competitive intelligence on multiple levels. In Figure 3.1 on Page 38 th author lists the following as being essential elements of any comprehensive endeavor (I put them in alpha order) Culture; Customers; Demographics; Distributors; Economy; Government and Industry Regulations; Other Industries; Prospects; Substitutes; Suppliers; Technology; AND Competitors. I will never forget the head of the French steel industry lamenting in 1993 that after spending a ton of money on studying all other national steel industries, they got cut off at the knees because they failed to realize plastic would be a substitute for automobile parts including underside parts.

5. Data, Information, and Intelligence. The author does a very fine job, the best I have seen by anyone else, distinguishing among data (pieces), information (a generic collage) and intelligence (actionable answers for specific executives making specific decisions). I like the general discussion of know versus don't know, today versus tomorrow, and the integration of assumptions (question them), changes (recognize them), and strategies (have at least one). I especially like the author's emphasis on encouraging dissent and re-evaluating soup to nuts every single year.

6. Creating or Employing a CI Capability. This portion of the book is intended to be an overview and it does a fine job there. The author also reviews sources and puts Google in its place, but fails to mention that advanced search (not what Google offers, but understanding its actual code language and using it to create subsets within subsets) offsets some of Google's shortfalls. The author properly notes that "it's not about software," and provides proper emphasis on the human aspect of intelligence, something I address in comprehensive manner with my Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy at the Public Intelligence Blog.

7. Applications. Chapter 7 details more than a dozen applications of CI, with over 70 examples of how and when to use CI.

8. Myths and Advantages. The book ends with a chapter on the 13 myths of CI followed by another on the 15 advantages of CI, and as tempted as I am to list them here, I will simply note that they also make the book worthy of purchase in and of themselves.

This book has been endorsed by Cyndi Allgaier, Babette Bensousson, and Jan Herring, whom I know to be among the top dozen English-language practitioners, and while I am focused more on creating a World Brain with embedded EarthGame that brings all eight tribes of intelligence together (Academic, Civil Society, Commercial, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, and Non-Governmental), I believe this book to be the new leader, the new best in class offering for anyone thinking about "getting a grip" on reality so as to survive.

The author has done all of us a great service in producing something that is easy to read, up to date, and a great starting point for anyone from the CEO of Exxon (poor fellow) to a student at any community college wondering about being a Chief Sustainability Officer versus being a Chief Knowledge Officer--NEWS FLASH: you cannot be one without the other, do both.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Analytic Insights, November 13, 2009

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Retired Reader (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) (Hardcover)

There are a number of books on the subject of what is called "competitive intelligence" that appear to offer the same sort of advice to commercial enterprises. Perhaps all are equally good. This book however seems to have some particularly important insights that are applicable both to the private and public sectors of intelligence production.

Sharp makes a vitally important distinction between data, information, and intelligence. Now of course it can be argued that intelligence is simply processed information and Sharp would probably not disagree with this statement. She would point out that the transformation of information into intelligence normally involves sophisticated research and analysis as well as considerable commitment on the part of the analyst. Competitive Intelligence (CI) is very much a holistic approach to intelligence gathering and production. Properly developed CI can provide an outline guide for risk mitigation, research and development, production cycles and marketing strategy. Sharp makes a particularly telling point on the role of information systems in the production of CI: she argues that while information systems can be repositories and organizers of data and information relevant to any enterprise, it takes human cognition to transform this into CI. Sharp correctly recognizes that for the foreseeable future computer processing cannot yet simulate all human cognitive processes so human analysis is still a necessary part of producing CI.

Sharp appears to have developed an effective and easy to understand technique to create a viable CI program in any enterprise. Along the way she has developed some good insights that are equally applicable to the world of secret intelligence. This is a book that provides a very clear and useful explanation of CI and how to establish an effective CI program.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable for small businesses, November 29, 2009

By 

Paul R. Edwards "Paul and Sarah Edwards" (Frazier Park, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) (Hardcover)

For a small business person who does his or her own business research, Chapter 9 alone makes this book worthwhile. Identifying and evaluating several dozen sources of information provides a ticket to being able to find critical information. I also liked the myth-busting chapter because from puncturing the notion that everything worth knowing can be found using Google to the false belief that you can't research private companies. Using this book, a small business person can get an advantage in making critical choices and decisions.