Gain Cooperative Intelligence through ‘Being There’

Posted on September 11, 2009 by ellendnaylor

UlladeStricker

Cooperative Leadership

‘Being There’ is what I think of when I think ‘cooperative leadership’. Offer colleagues the opportunity to lean on you, and learn how to lean on them. We often forget to ask people for their help in our anxiety to please and be helpful. Be specific with your request for help. This allows the other person to quickly judge if s/he can help you or refer you to someone else.

People with strong social capital are often cooperative leaders whose expertise, connections, opinions and contributions are respected by others. Social capital is not earned by a job title, but rather through the earned respect of others. In competitive intelligence social capital is valued, when positioning and communicating with fellow employees, especially executives. Remember it takes time to build those relationships, and sometimes we’re impatient to get respect before we’ve earned it.

Ulla describes another cooperative leadership practice. Take a stand confidently and refuse to bend in the face of criticism or opposition. Cooperative leaders “just do it” without a safety net. Ulla shares her experience of convincing a manager of the need for a program at a local educational institute, which she then created. She “did it” because she thought it needed doing.

Cooperative Connection

Work constantly to strengthen your networks. Always ask yourself, “Who else should be part of this conversation?”  Remember that people who could benefit from your knowledge need to learn about your expertise. Communicate in person or electronically with your peers and managers at work or by presenting at relevant meetings, trade shows or through teaching. Share your discoveries, experiences and opinions electronically through websites, blogs, social media or formal publications.

I love how Ulla ends her article by suggesting that you make it a priority to undertake actions and responsibilities that are above and beyond the call of duty. You can do this because you have others to lean on.

Ulla de Stricker, 2007 chair of SLA’s Leadership and Management Division, is a Toronto-based information and knowledge management consultant. She speaks regularly about career-related matters and writes about information and knowledge management on her blog. Her book, Business Cases for Info Pros: Here’s Why, Here’s How, was published in 2008 by Information Today, Inc. Here is a list of her publications. Contact Ulla.

Filed under: Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, leadership | Comments Off on Gain Cooperative Intelligence through ‘Being There’

Looking at Security Issues in Social Media: What Doors Are You Leaving Open? (Webinar)

Posted on August 24, 2009 by ellendnaylor

In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, here is a free webinar that takes place tomorrow night, Aug. 25 on Second Life. While social networks can be a great way to gain competitive intelligence, your company is increasingly vulnerable to losing information through social networks that you would rather keep in-house.  This session is a lot like counterintelligence in competitive intelligence terms, which forces people to have those difficult discussions about what information must be kept secret and how to accomplish this!

If you’re not into Second Life, you’ll need to join the community.

What Doors Did You Leave Open? A look at security issues in social media

Speaker: Marcia (Marcy) Rodney, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
When: August 25, 2009 – 6 pm US Pacific Time/Second Life Time
Where: Info Island Auditorium, register at: Second Life URL Cost: Free

Social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are fabulous! However, be aware of what additional information may be leaking out about your organization through these same social networks! In this session, you’ll see real examples. Marcia will lead discussion on issues and best practices around security and privacy as well as how to find information when using these social network tools.

MarcyRodneyStraightHairAug09Marcia Rodney has been with Ball Aerospace & Technologies for more than six years, initially as senior analyst in library services reporting to strategic intelligence, and also supporting the scientific and engineering staff. She now works as an operations analyst, reporting to the Albuquerque office of Ball’s Systems Engineering Solutions business unit. Marcia both tracks and teaches social networking for her team. Prior to her work with Ball, Marcia worked in competitive intelligence at Qwest; supported technical research at Maxtor (now Seagate); worked at the Earth Sciences and Maps Libraries at CU-Boulder; and was a librarian for Communication Arts and a researcher at CBS News. As principal analyst for her own firm, RSL Research Group, she works on survey design and analysis, primarily in the library field, as well as supporting small business clients. Marcia is looking forward to more time on her bike and a different kind of searching.

Marcia Rodney is a long time friend whose is extremely knowledgeable and thorough. She absorbs information like a sponge, so I look forward to her wisdom as well as interacting in the Second Life virtual space!

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, LinkedIn, social networks, Twitter | Comments Off on Looking at Security Issues in Social Media: What Doors Are You Leaving Open? (Webinar)

Contrasting the Traits of Good Product Managers & Competitive Intelligence Managers

Posted on August 20, 2009 by ellendnaylor

Yesterday I listened to Barbara Tallent of LiveBinders deliver “Why are there so few good product managers: a CEO’s Perspective.” She has been both a CEO and product manager and had interviewed 6 CEOs to prepare for this webinar. As I listened, I couldn’t help but put on my competitive intelligence hat, as many of the traits that make a good product manager also make a good competitive intelligence manager. Yet the jobs are so different!

Product managers have all the responsibility for the product, yet none of the authority. The best product managers need to understand the customer’s world. Don’t filter customer’s input based on what you believe. A common question product managers ask executives is “what keeping you up at night?” to get focused on what the executive needs immediately. That is the same question I ask executives during the competitive intelligence needs analysis process, and for the same reasons.

Another big one was LISTEN. While you need to be an excellent communicator and deliver insightful and engaging presentations, you need to know when to stand back and listen.  That is a key competitive intelligence skill as well, and one of my key cooperative intelligence practices, since in any profession our communication too often is expressing our opinions without carefully listening to the other person.

Don’t let the appearance of process become more important than the outcome! Your career will advance once you prove yourself, just not today! Put the success of your product first and your career will follow!

Desirable traits for product managers include good communication, smart, articulate and dogged. I would add “curious” for a competitive intelligence professional since we do a lot of digging!

Here is what was different. While CEOs may be critical of product managers, they expect future leaders to have product management experience. Product management is more a career advancing position.  Product managers typically look to round out their background, so after a few years in the job are more apt to take jobs in marketing or development–somewhere new that moves them up the organization. Few competitive intelligence professionals have a progressive career path. And CEOs don’t look for leadership to have competitive intelligence experience!

Like product managers, competitive intelligence professionals rely on others in their company for support who do not report to them. Both jobs require that delicate balance of gaining cooperation from others by pushing the organization where it needs to go while being constructive and NOT creating an adversarial role with other people. Product managers focus on a product or service. Competitive intelligence professionals often do damage control and prevent companies from making the wrong moves and present opportunities for growth.

Competitive intelligence is a behind the scenes profession whereas product management is a visible position. Every company has product managers, and everyone knows what product management is. Many don’t know what competitive intelligence is, or who is spearheading the company’s initiative. In this weak economy many companies have laid off their competitive intelligence managers, so various employees in sales, marketing, product management, strategic planning, R&D and engineering are doing competitive intelligence as part of their job, and more companies are outsourcing competitive intelligence: they are not outsourcing product management!

Ryma provides free weekly webinars on topics of interest to product managers, open to anyone. If you miss a webinar, you can listen to it later as the sessions are taped and slides are included.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, cooperation, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, leadership | 2 Comments »

Collective Intelligence: Approaches to Find Stolen Art, “Urban Sunset”

Posted on August 13, 2009 by ellendnaylor

My husband, Rodgers is an oil painter of urban landscapes, countryside landscapes, French countryside, and coastal water scenes. He makes his living totally by selling original art work that he creates—no prints.

Over the last couple of weekends, we were in Chicago selling his artwork at outdoor art shows. The first show was a great success in downtown Chicago pretty close to the tall buildings. It took place in a city neighborhood where there are a good number of homeless people, and many people begging for money in these hard times.

Last weekend, we were at an outdoor art show in a prosperous Chicago suburb. It was beastly hot, and the crowds were thin and did not engage with my husband’s art. The show took place in a nice outdoor shopping mall. The art booths were set up in two long rows on either side of the road where cars would normally be parked for shoppers.  Customers could enter the booths either from the shop side or the road which separated the two rows of artist tents.

UrbanSunsetRodgyOn Saturday night we enjoyed a nice dinner with friends. The next morning, we noticed that our tent flap was open. It was a sick feeling and my husband’s painting, Urban Landscape, had been stolen. We were flabbergasted since this was a safe, upscale neighborhood, and the show promoter had hired security to patrol the show. How could such a large painting, 24” by 30” plus the frame be stolen and not detected! This painting does not roll up: it’s on a canvas!

So we learned that “safe” suburbs aren’t. It was ironic that we had no theft experience in the tougher Chicago city neighborhood, where there are people who have nothing, so might steal in desperation.

AIIP logoSo in a cooperative mode, I will share some of the sources that my AIIP family has provided. If you’re an information professional running your own business, this is a group you want to join. I immediately posted this theft on our group listserv, and the advice has flooded in. One member, an ex-police officer warned us that the local police might not be so responsive as this is a small crime compared to what officers deal with, so set the stage…as we still haven’t heard back from the police and need a case number to really pursue our case. However, we can check out Craig’s list and e-bay in case this piece is being sold. We can also post on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn…and find groups within who are art related.

People asked lots of good questions like: were other people’s art work stolen? Does the mall have security cameras? Has your husband posted this theft on his website? Did the art promoter or you have theft insurance?

Here are 3 good sources for finding lost art:

Art loss registry, Tineye a reverse image search engine, FBI’s National Stolen Art File

Mary Collette Wallace shared a post on “Who’s Copying Your Online Images” which was insightful.

Other sources are more city specific and include connecting with art dealers, pawn shops, art auction houses, art coops, and thinking about who would be likely to lay their hands on stolen art, even inadvertently.

We would love to recover this painting, but it’s probably not that likely, so I thought I would share this story with you to remind you to be careful, and to share some sources of intelligence for finding stolen art!

Filed under: AIIP, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, LinkedIn, social networks, Twitter | Comments Off on Collective Intelligence: Approaches to Find Stolen Art, “Urban Sunset”

Improve your Competitiveness: Learn about AIIP

Posted on July 10, 2009 by ellendnaylor

 

Chris Marcy Linda

Chris Marcy Linda

 

Marcy Phelps, CEO of  Phelps Research and AIIP (Association of Independent Information Professionals) President and Linda Rink CEO of Rink Consulting and Chair of AIIP’s Industry Relations Committee were interviewed by Chris Kenneally, Director of Author Relations for Copyright Clearance Center during SLA’s 2009 Annual Conference! In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, here are some facts about AIIP that Marcy and Linda shared.

I must disclose that I am a proud AIIP member, and that I get enough benefit from our electronic community sharing forum to justify the annual membership dues: never mind the local AIIP gatherings we have in Colorado, my home state or the annual AIIP conference–all rich repositories of connection and knowledge sharing.

Another great AIIP member benefit is that many electronic providers of information give us special benefits and discounted rates. This allows AIIP members to reach information that the average person doesn’t have access to. Another reason that information vendors give AIIPers those discounts is that the reach of AIIP is huge, not only our direct clients, but we have a publication, Connections which shares many tidbits of our trade.  Numerous members are authors of books, articles and blogs.

AIIP’s has 600 members in over 20 countries, information professionals who run our own businesses and support businesses which range from start-ups to Fortune 1000 companies. Some members specialize by industry, and one that seems particularly prominent is pharmaceuticals. While many AIIP members are researchers, we also have library consultants, writers, editors, and taxonomists. AIIPers do a lot more than simply find information: many members provide analysis to help clients make sense of the information, and provide ongoing updates.

Many people come to AIIP companies since they have not done their homework, nor do they know how to do their homework or if there is a niche for their business ideas. For example, they don’t know how large the market is for their product or haven’t developed a prospect list or industries to target for marketing. Everything that goes into writing and developing a business plan needs to be researched, and many people think they can just go online and dabble around and get it, and that’s not the case.

Pertinent to the copyright world: AIIP members follow a strict code of ethics, and one of the elements of the code is that we not only have to adhere to and follow copyright laws, but we need to teach others about it.

On a personal note, I specialize in primary research–that is finding and talking to people who “know” the answers to business issues my clients seek. Most AIIP colleagues are experts in electronic research, the necessary pre-requisite to primary research. They dig up awesome information and great contacts for me to follow-up with. My firm gives clients recommendations for action and digs up opportunities for additional revenue streams, which is particularly appreciated in this weak economy.

I feel fortunate to meet my AIIP colleagues in our electronic sharing forum and you can connect with us through our AIIP member directory, which is open source, and you can research and search for an information professional by name, industry expertise, location…

Thank you Chris Kenneally for giving Marcy and Linda this opportunity to share the good news about AIIP! Check out the podcast!

Filed under: AIIP, competitiveness, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, research | Comments Off on Improve your Competitiveness: Learn about AIIP

Todd Wille, Turnaround Leader Extraordinaire, A Cooperative Leader

Posted on June 26, 2009 by ellendnaylor

Todd Wille returned to his previous employer, Unify Corporation, a California-based application development, database and migration products company. The date was August 21, 2000 and Unify was in terrible shape.

The former CEO had committed securities fraud & the FBI was investigating.

Major international customers were taking their business elsewhere.

If current trends continued, the company would run out of cash in 90 days.

The stock had dropped from a high of $42 to $1. Employees were demoralized and afraid.

It is interesting to watch great managers rise to the occasion when events are so incredibly stacked against them. Todd adopted many cooperative intelligence practices as he delved into the company’s severe problems and seeked solutions with urgency!  Cooperative intelligence integrates leadership, connection and communication and so many of Todd’s decisions and actions blend these together.

Cooperative Leadership

Todd had to act with urgency since the company couldn’t even afford to pay legal fees to file for bankruptcy. He set his priorities to stop customer defections and earn the trust of his employees. He took immediate steps to regain customer’s trust and confidence and maintain the trust of his employees.

Cooperative Connection

First he appointed the head of customer service to be VP of sales. Who better to connect with customers since he already had earned their confidence and trust?

Second, Todd personally met with key customers and listened to their concerns.

Third, he insisted that product development connect with customers instead of just supporting old products, and use customer input to build new products.

Fourth, he connected with employees weekly during this difficult period.

Cooperative Communication

The VP of sales called, listened and reassured customers that the company was putting practices in place to save the company.

Todd listened to his customer’s concerns and acknowledged them publicly. He put himself in their shoes and mentioned if they changed vendors it could be a long, complicated process.

Todd communicated the absolute truth without filters in his weekly employee meetings with the entire company. Remarkably only 1 staffer left voluntarily during this difficult 18 month period.

A key moment was how Todd handled himself when a customer told him, in front of a large group of other customers, that he was uncomfortable, “signing a $100,000 contract for the following year” since he wasn’t sure Unify would still be in business the next year. Using the full array of cooperative intelligence skills – leadership, connection and communication–Todd answered, “You’re right to feel the way you do. But if you don’t sign your contract, I will be out of business, and your worry will become reality. Then your company will have to find another supplier for database development tools, and it will unfortunately be a long, complicated and potentially expensive process.” His customer agreed to stay with Unity right in front of the group; as did many other customers in time which brought in the badly needed cash flow to survive.

In the last three years, Unify has made 3 acquisitions that have tripled its size, added software tools and solutions and expanded its customer base, which now includes a who’s who of the most admired global companies.

The American Business Association named Todd Wille, CEO of Unify Corp, the best turnaround executive for 2008. Cooperative leadership works!

Read people’s comments on this great turnaround story in Marketing Profs.

Filed under: communication, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, leadership | 1 Comment »

Develop Proactive Competitive Intelligence through Business Blindspot Analysis & Executive Personality Profiling

Posted on June 22, 2009 by ellendnaylor

I attended SLA’s annual conference in DC last week where I was reminded about the slow death of print media as I walked around the exhibit hall and noted how much more information is imparted digitally.

I taught a couple of courses on competitive intelligence analytical tools. In the spirit of cooperative intelligence I will share two analytical tools and how using them together can be empowering: business blindspots and executive personality profiling to predict where a company is going, and will use these tools to illustrate the slow death of print media.

In business blindspots, you seek to uncover the biases of your company, competitors or co-workers and recognize that you have them too. We all have blind spots based on our experience in life! When you combine this with executive personality profiling, you can come up with some insightful conclusions.

Here’s one that surprised me. I have been a Wall Street Journal subscriber of both the print and on-line editions for many years. News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch acquired The Wall Street Journal in Dec. 2007. He has revamped the paper to vie more directly against the New York Times in content. In fact I even get almost the identical on-line news alerts from both papers within minutes of each other.

Here’s News Corporation’s blindspot: they thought I would pay over $400 per year for the print version of The Wall Street Journal when I paid $199 last time which included on-line access. Maybe they thought business people wouldn’t notice since their companies pay for their subscription. Like many I watch how I spend my money in these tentative economic times. I let my subscription lapse.

At a time when on-line media is gaining on print media, and we have a recession The Wall Street Journal raised its price! I couldn’t believe it and wondered what weed they were smoking…that is until recently when I got an invitation to subscribe to both the print and on-line versions of The Wall Street Journal for $149 per year. Presumably they had lost some market share with their inflated rates, and not just to digital media!

If you research & analyze Murdoch’s personality and leadership, you would expect him to intend to improve the profitability of The Wall Street Journal since it has not been contributing to Dow Jones’ profitability in recent times. However, you would also learn that Murdoch is a savvy businessman and is into his media investments for the long-term.

When I decided to discontinue my subscription, I strongly suspected that I would get a better deal, and I did. If I didn’t I wasn’t going to read The Wall Street Journal since I do read the New York Times on-line. I wonder how many subscribers walked like I did and didn’t renew even at the lower rates since they were so incensed by The Wall Street Journal’s doubling of its rate in one year when many of our 401K accounts have been reduced to 201K status!

This is a very simple example in my life, but you can often predict company’s actions, including your competitors by analyzing their leadership and uncovering their business blindspots. Happy Summer!

Filed under: Competitive Intelligence, Cooperative Intelligence, leadership, research | Comments Off on Develop Proactive Competitive Intelligence through Business Blindspot Analysis & Executive Personality Profiling

Intelligence 2.0: Creating New Business Models–SLA 2009

Posted on June 18, 2009 by ellendnaylor

SLA’s Competitive Intelligence division’s breakfast featured visionary speaker, Arik Johnson, CEO of Aurora WDC, based in Chippewa Falls, WI, home of Seymour Cray, founder of Cray Research.

Asymmetric information models are passé and information interpretation is NOW: the ability to understand and anticipate! The open source world and resultant information glut makes analytics and interpretation all the more important. This practice will help you make decisions more quickly than the competition.

Arik shared three trends in Intelligence:

1. Human capital and collaboration – (this is a lot like cooperative intelligence that I preach)!

2. Corporate Governance Oversight – it’s a priority to ensure the reliability of earnings forecasts, yet difficult to predict the unexpected

3. Disruptive & Value Innovation – predict the outcome of competitive battles by anticipating product/strategy dynamics

During his talk Arik had us all squirming as he posited that many of the models and processes that we use to collect competitive intelligence and conduct our various forms of analysis–including voice of the customer and market research–do not lead to innovation. So often these processes concentrate on what customers “want” rather than what they “need,” and they don’t know what they need.

He feels that “fear based” CI concepts like Porters 5 Forces are not as effective as they were developed during the Cold War when it was “us versus them.” He notes that KITs, KIQs and the CI cycle are incomplete for much the same reason: fear based.

Success breads complacency. In the same vein continuous product improvement is too gradual and companies don’t take enough risk in product development. Many companies are crippled by their culture and slowness to adapt to market shifts or create change!

Innovation is most easily defined as productivity. Yet innovation is a sloppy process. Employees innovate most readily within a culture of “learning and growing from mistakes” rather than being punished for making mistakes. According to Larry Keeley, 96% of innovative attempts fail. You need errors to innovate, lots of them!

Here are a couple of tippers from Disruptive Innovation Theory that Arik shared:

Look at different performance measures: where do you see non-consumption? Be willing to put up with less good performance in order to find growth opportunities. Learn how to articulate the truth in ways that management will listen (cooperative leadership).

Arik outlined 5 great practices to encourage innovation (RECON):

1. Risk – Learn how to protect your core (cashflow) while creating anew

2. Efficiency- Be ruthless: when assets become sunk costs, sell them or divest that business

3. Customers – Don’t be too dependent on your best customer’s input. They will tell you why the product was good enough yesterday. You are looking at tomorrow!

4. Outlook – Typically market is research is outdated…only one in seven products survives for one year. Develop based on customers’ needs which they are not great at articulating.

5. Novelty – Differentiation is key. Create less imitable values, products etc. Kill “good” ideas to focus on the GREAT ideas.

For more details about using Innovation in business development, Arik recommends Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change  by Clayton Christensen.

Filed under: Competitive Intelligence, Cooperative Intelligence, leadership, research | 2 Comments »

Competitive Intelligence at SLA 2009 & Other Favorites

Posted on June 11, 2009 by ellendnaylor

SLA2009SeeYouJust before SCIP09, we shared a list of 10 things we wanted to do while at the conference, so in the spirit of cooperative intelligence, I’ll share the talks in the Competitive Intelligence Track and some of my favorites at SLA2009, which takes place in the Washington, DC Convention Center June 14 – 17.

Pre-conference workshops will be conducted on June 12 – 14. I am giving two all-day workshops which are part of SLA’s Click University program towards the Competitive Intelligence Certificates Program. CI Analysis: Intermediate Frameworks is on June 12, and Management Analysis for Competitive Intelligence is held on June 13. These classes cover CI analytical tools and techniques and include case study learning.

Here are Competitive Intelligence Track sessions and some others I recommend!

Saturday: June 13

Mary Ellen Bates will lead a seminar “Publish or Perish: Producing Fabulous e-Newsletters,” 1 – 5 p.m., June 13.

Sunday: June 14

Mary Ellen Bates leads a full-day workshop on “Build Your CI Skills Parts 1 & 2.” Attendees can elect to attend the full day or either half day, and this is part of the Competitive Intelligence Track. My colleague, Jennifer Swanson will lead the Click University CI Certificate Program (CIC07): “Human Source Collection–Research Beyond Published Sources,” an all day session. Jill Hurst-Wahl will co-instruct “Ten Things in One Day: Applying Social Tools to Your Library,” an all day workshop. Colin Powell, 65th Secretary of State, will give the SLA’s keynote address from 5:15 – 7:15 pm.

Monday: 15 June

Mary Ellen Bates will present “Painless (No, really!) Negotiating” from 9 – 10:30 am. “Expert Databases: Leveraging for Success” is led by panelists, Catherine Monte, Monica Ertel, and Medha Devare, from 9 – 10:30 am, part of the Competitive Intelligence Track. Claudia Clayton and Toni Wilson will present “Skills for the Effective CI Practitioner” from 1:30 – 3 pm, part of the Competitive Intelligence Track. August Jackson will present “Cast a Wide Research Net, Save Time with Really Simple Syndication (RSS)” from 1:30 – 3:30 pm. Jill Hurst-Wahl will be a panelist at “SLA Hot Topic: Wikis, Tweets, and Blogs, Oh My!” from 1:30 – 3 pm. Marcy Phelps will lead “Power Networking for Info Pros” from 1:30 – 3 pm

Tuesday: 16 June

Arik Johnson will be the featured speaker at the Competitive Intelligence Division’s Breakfast meeting from 7 – 8:30 am. Roberta Shaffer will present “Competitive Intelligence and the Government Librarian” from 9:30 – 11 am, part of the Competitive Intelligence Track. Mary Ellen Bates will present “Lies, Damned Lies, and Annual Reports: Reading and Interpreting Company Financials” from 11:30 am – 1 pm, part of the Competitive Intelligence Track. Ulla de Stricker will present “The Consultant’s Toolkit: Discovery in the Round” from 11:30 am – 1 pm. Jennifer Swanson and I (Ellen Naylor) will answer questions at “CI Clinic: The Prescription for Your CI Needs” from 1:30 – 3 p.m.

Wed: 17 June

Mary Ellen Bates will present “Creating Groupies: How to Add Value, Make Yourself Irreplaceable & Beat the Pants Off Google” from 8:30 – 10 am. Marcy Phelps will present “I’m Not Cheap, Just Cost-Conscious: Market Research to Fit Your Budget” from 8:30 – 10 am. “Incorporating CI into Your Services: Real Life Examples from Legal Info Pros” is led by panelists Tim McAllister, Greg Lambert, and J.O. Wallace from 8:30 – 10 am, part of the Competitive Intelligence Track.

I know there are some wonderful talks I haven’t included here in my list, but check out SLA’s conference agenda for all the details!

Filed under: competitive analysis, Competitive Intelligence, Cooperative Intelligence, SCIP | Comments Off on Competitive Intelligence at SLA 2009 & Other Favorites

Just How Social is Social Networking?

Posted on June 4, 2009 by ellendnaylor

I am writing an article on Cooperative Intelligence geared to Information Professionals, and it got me to thinking about how social, social networking is. I will focus mostly on LinkedIn and Twitter for now.

In most cases on LinkedIn, it’s a loose connection, and you’ll never hear from that person again unless they want to sell you something, fill jobs or find a job. I notice many people who ask me to connect on LinkedIn end their invitation with, “Let me know how I can help you,” but they don’t tell me what they do, and they haven’t looked at what I do. So it feels kind of phony to me.  However, since I am a LION on LinkedIn, I guess I attract this kind of behavior. I also get a lot of spam from my 1st connections on Linked In, and some don’t provide an option for me to “unsubscribe”.

I just read that 90% of Twitter traffic comes from 10% of the users: this tells me that most of the communication is automated, so how personal can it be? Yet I do connect with many of my pals and meet new people who share my interests on Twitter and we do engage through tweets, albeit with the 140 character limitation. I have found some great people through # searching under relevant categories for what I do such as competitive intelligence, product development and market research. I stay in touch with some of my pals in competitive intelligence, information professionals, and product managers who prefer to communicate via tweets. We shared learnings at SCIP’s 2009 conference in Chicago, and Tweet-ups are increasingly popular.

I like to weave cooperative intelligence into my social networking practices. Cooperative intelligence assumes that you are a giving person without strings attached and that you don’t just give to get. This is often not true on social networks. Many of those who want me to follow them on Twitter, who have huge followings, are selling something that sounds like it’s too good to be true or sell something so awful or irrelevant to what I care about that I am not interested!

The pendulum is swinging back to more traditional marketing for me since I still get more business from word of mouth marketing and referrals from existing customers and friends. Where I do find social networks worthwhile is to find people who might be interested in my services who know someone I know. LinkedIn and Twitter are great places to find people who will talk to you when you need information, which is how I make my living, but I don’t have to “live” on these networks for this to work.

The most relevant social network for competitive intelligence professionals is the CI Ning. I check that out most week days and enjoy the stimulating conversations, the connections and learning.  I believe more people practice cooperative intelligence since the sharing is continuous, and people are not flagrantly in the marketing mode. I imagine this is true for social networks where people share a common discipline, rather than the more generic social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

What are you noticing as social networking is becoming more commonplace? Have you changed your marketing habits lately?

Filed under: Competitive Intelligence, Cooperative Intelligence, LinkedIn, research, SCIP, social networks, Twitter | Comments Off on Just How Social is Social Networking?

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