SCIP Denver/Rocky Mtn Chapter Meeting Feb 19 2010

Posted on February 18, 2010 by ellendnaylor

In the spirit of cooperative intelligence I want to share the news about our SCIP Denver Rocky Mountain Meeting which takes place tomorrow.

I also want to thank Lynnette Woolery our Chairperson who has been leading our chapter for more than 5 years! She has worked in competitive intelligence for US West, Qwest, Ericsson and Xcel Energy. Now she heads Xcel Energy’s product development for alternative energy. Thank you Lynnette!

In a similar vein, thank you Tom Seward and Richard Caldwell for taking the reins to run our chapter now! I look forward to the programs that you’ll develop!

Here is the logistics for the meeting and Tom and Richard’s biographies.

Theme: Network & Discuss What Members Want from SCIP Meetings
Friday, February 19, 2010    11:30AM – 1:30PM
Qwest Building 1801 California Street
Conference Room 3, 13th Floor Denver, CO  80202

Tom Seward has over nine years of professional law library experience and over 15 years of research experience.  During this time he earned an MLIS from the University of Denver and a Paralegal Certificate from George Washington University.  In the last few years he has formally started focusing on competitive intelligence work, primarily in the service industries.  He works at Ballard Spahr, LLP.

Richard Caldwell is a 23-year Air Force Veteran.  His primary career field was Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance or C4ISR.  He currently works at Northrop Grumman working Competitive Intelligence for the Department of Defense customer set and doing market analysis for specific locations.  Rich has many ideas on how to grow our chapter via such things as a better use of networking tools and reaching out to local colleges and universities.

Registration Fees: (Box Lunch, Presentation and Networking Included)
SCIP Members:  $10.00
Non-Members:  $15.00

Registration

I regret that I won’t be there since I am still in Washington, DC, in the land of much snow! I wholeheartedly endorse our new leadership!

Filed under: Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, Denver, leadership, SCIP | Comments Off on SCIP Denver/Rocky Mtn Chapter Meeting Feb 19 2010

Introduction to Competitive Intelligence

Posted on October 19, 2009 by ellendnaylor

At a recent Denver joint SCIP and APMP chapter meeting, I was asked to put together some introductory slides about competitive intelligence to set the stage for the more sophisticated discussion around “Price to Win,” which is sophisticated analysis around bids/outcomes for major contracts, usually with huge government customers.

As I assembled my slides, I realized that very little has changed in the competitive intelligence (CI) process, while the execution of the collection phase of competitive intelligence has changed remarkably over the 20+ years I have been in the business with the advent of the Internet in all its iterations, e-mail, text messaging and more recently through social networks.  This also affects counterintelligence, since it is easier for your competitors—or anyone who is interested enough—to dig up information about your company that you consider proprietary. This information comes not only through electronic means, but through ex-employees, especially from all the downsizing in the last couple of years.

One common misconception is that competitive intelligence just focuses on the competition. Make no mistake competition is part of this: but you also want to take into account all the factors that affect the competitive marketplace such as economic conditions like the current unstable economy. In the US, the stock market has staged a quick recovery although the NYSE is still 4000 points below its peak in 2007. When you consider the stock market’s quick ascent after such a steady descent, you have to wonder how sustainable it is and how this will affect your customers, suppliers and competitors. Politics can affect the competitive marketplace. Were I in the US healthcare business, I would study all the ramifications of the proposed healthcare reform, and would conduct scenario planning exercises to prepare my company for change.

Here are 10 points to consider whether you’re starting or leading an established CI operation regardless of how you’re organized or what country you work in. These points are timeless: I put this list together in the early 1990s. While technology impacts our lives far more than it did then, human nature has not changed, and that’s what’s behind these steps.

1. Identify primary users
2. Focus on critical users’ needs
3. Fashion products to meet users’ needs
4. Be mindful of the company culture
5. Identify & build on infrastructure that supports CI
6. Organize & expand your people network constantly
7. Promote communication
8. Don’t implement automation before people
9. Checkpoint performance always
10. Stay focused

I didn’t include cooperative intelligence when I started my CI career since I was too focused on learning how to do competitive intelligence. Cooperative Intelligence focuses on good communication, solid connections, and being respected as a leader by providing good knowledge and insightful work. CI is more of a back office function: CEOs don’t look to hire people in their c-suite with CI experience. However, many areas within a company do rely on good competitive intelligence–which if communicated well and in a timely fashion–does lead people to respect the CI manager. You can be the greatest executor of competitive intelligence, but if you can’t communicate relevant information and analysis to the right people at the right time, it really doesn’t matter. This is the core of cooperative intelligence in the context of competitive intelligence—being so connected with your internal customers, that you know what to provide when—and get feedback from them, so you stay on target.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, Denver, Ellen Naylor, leadership, SCIP, social networks | 1 Comment »

Real-time Collaborative Architectural Modeling Enhances Complex Product Development

Posted on September 24, 2009 by ellendnaylor

Bryan Moser spoke to our Denver PDMA (Product development Management Association) chapter about the value of models such as the one his company, Global Project Design (GPD) developed  to forecast, optimize, allocate and measure coordination in complex product development projects. These models take into account different cultures, time zones, language barriers, and dispersed decision-making. They also incorporate engineering behavior among different cultures based on their typical interaction.

Today there is pressure to succeed in a dramatically concurrent fashion, which increases the risk of rework, quality and design. The thinning of the workforce affects production as does the loss of deep knowledge and connection from workers who have been laid off or who have retired. Another finding in these complex product development initiatives is that the cost of coordination is high and is on average 30%-35% of the time consumed.

Bryan walked us through the example of the Sikorsky S92 helicopter product development project. Their biggest concern was defending their intellectual property as they selected companies in various countries to work as an integrated team. The team was spread across the globe in countries such as Brazil, Taiwan, Spain, China and Japan, and included big company names such as Embraer of Brazil and Taiwan Aerospace, for example. Sikorsky USA was the decision-making company.

Sikorsky had predicted that it would take 5 years from product spec to prototype development. It took 9 years, and GPD’s model prediction was only off by 2 months from the actual time. Sikorsky hadn’t taken into account the dynamics that would add considerable time to product development, such as coordination, culture, language, time zones, and a lot of dead time that one team would experience if another was late in delivery, for example.

We can’t turn the clock back on product development since the expertise for various segments of complex product development is best served by a global team. However, putting on a nationalist hat, previously teams all worked for one company, in similar time zones and had strong connection and communication since they all spoke the same language, and could develop products more expeditiously from having worked together extensively over the years. This is lost in these complex product development projects where people who have never worked together, are thrust together to develop a product.

This real time collaborative model takes into account the various languages and points of view, and the time needed to build relationships with people who have never worked together before.

One of the key findings for these complex projects is that there is a fair amount of wasted time as work time averages:

~54% Direct Work
~30% Coordination
~16% Less Useful Time

The key takeaway is that coordination is often way underestimated in these complex product development projects across multiple countries. It’s better to run the model earlier in the process, so as to re-schedule or re-work pieces to reduce the less productive coordination time. GPD’s model is agent based on simulation models about how teams make choices and includes the last 30-40 years of research of behaviors in engineering work.

In conclusion, product development professionals face:

A decline in judgment based on experience alone. Traditional centralized and detailed plans ignore and misrepresent the complexity of projects.

Coordination – Interaction of teams to satisfy dependence across subsystems can be 35% of the effort, cost and duration of these development projects.

Choosing the best coordination architecture can lead to a 20% improvement in time/cost performance and will improve your competitiveness! Judgment through situation awareness is also gained.

Filed under: communication, competitiveness, connection, Denver, product development | Comments Off on Real-time Collaborative Architectural Modeling Enhances Complex Product Development

Are Associations Going the Way of Print Media?: Part II

Posted on September 22, 2009 by ellendnaylor

Association chapters, the grass roots of associations, are often the step-children in the association world since they don’t produce revenue, and many don’t even break even. I think that is particularly true using the traditional model, especially if the association centrally controls chapters versus letting them run themselves.

In today’s world the high cost of in-person chapter meetings has resulted in much lower attendance. Chapter leadership often runs in-person meetings using the same format in the same location year after year. We are certainly guilty of that in our Denver SCIP (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) chapter, which I really hadn’t thought about until I did the research to analyze the location of our members. About half of us work in Boulder and the Northern Denver suburbs, so are not keen on trekking into Denver where we hold our meetings. We have never hosted a Boulder meeting, and then again none of our Boulder members has volunteered to host. They probably didn’t realize that half of us are there!

Recently a few of us put our heads together to start adapting our chapter meeting venue to the reality of today’s dispersed and busy workforce. We are co-hosting a meeting with the Denver APMP (Association of Proposal Management Professionals) chapter on Sept. 25 at 3 p.m. where people will have 3 choices for connection:

1. In person business meeting: 3:00 – 4:30 pm
Ballard Spahr, LLP
1225 17th Street, Suite 2300 Denver, CO  80202
Directions:  http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl
Cost:  $10 (pay on-site or register through SCIP)

2. Webinar Business Meeting: 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Dimdim Webinar: RSVP apmp.colorado@gmail.com, and include name, SCIP/APMP member or guest and David Shipley will email you instructions from Dimdim.
Cost: None

3. Social Meeting: 4:40 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. (or later…)
Location: Prime Bar
1515 Arapahoe Street Denver, CO  80202
(One block away from Ballard Spahr) RSVP: renaylor at wispertel.net
Cost: You pay for your drinks & snacks

The presentation “From CI to the Opportunity: Practical Steps to Winning!”
addresses the competitive intelligence (CI) process and how to use CI to get to the “First Place”—that is winning more business!

Folks are invited to attend any of these venues. If you don’t have time for the meeting, you can meet us at Prime Bar. We are hoping to engage our members by giving them more choices for connection, and the additional cross-pollination between SCIP and APMP members. Just in case you’re interested, here is the detail for things like registration, speakers, etc.

So what are you doing to engage participation and cooperation among your membership at the local association level? We’re considering a LinkedIn Group, a Ning group, or starting a Denver chapter within the already existing CI Ning group. We will Tweet on Twitter about our local meetings under #denverci. Our virtual space will provide 24/7 communication and we will help our members find work through job postings there too.

In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, I am forming a Denver group around intelligence collaboration to include people who are not full-time CI practitioners. For example your job might be in product management, sales, marketing, forecasting, strategic planning or mining information, but intelligence collection and analysis is part of your job. If you’re interested, please contact me at renaylor at wispertel.net and I’ll include you in our future events.

BTW, this is similar to the intelligence collaboration instigated by futurist Eric Garland  on our CI Ning which I invite you to join.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, Denver, leadership, LinkedIn, research, SCIP, Twitter | Comments Off on Are Associations Going the Way of Print Media?: Part II

Key Insights to Be a Better Leader in Today’s World

Posted on September 18, 2009 by ellendnaylor

leadershippanelists2009DenIn the spirit of cooperative intelligence I am sharing my takeaways from this workshop on leadership sponsored by Denver-based Sustainable Business Group, a leadership and management consulting firm led by Herb Rubenstein.

Wayne Nelson, Chief Strategist at Anderson Professional Systems Group kicked off the meeting with a discussion about emotional intelligence, telling us the 5 components of emotional intelligence: self awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill from Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence.

What I found even more interesting was his discussion about 6 leadership styles:

Coercive – Tight control over things. “Do what I tell you.”
Authoritative – Build the vision. “Get people to follow where you need to go.”
Affiliative – Promote harmony, cooperation. “Puts people first, tasks second.”
Democratic – Builds on group consensus. “So what do you think?”
Pacesetting – Intent on setting high performance standards. “Do as I do it.”
Coaching – Develop the team or individual for the future. “Try this: How can I support you?”

We all have a tendency towards a particular leadership style.  A good manager is flexible and uses the right style to be effective at the appropriate time. It’s also good to employ people whose styles you lack to keep balance in the workplace.

Jennifer Churchill of Opus Leadership Group focused on talent retention.

She suggests 3 key areas to promote talent retention:
1. Senior Management must be involved (acquisition/retention of top talent)
2. Conduct a gap analysis of your company’s talent to find what’s missing
3. Strong leaders attract and retain strong talent (management by example)
So know yourself and the kind of leader you are.

Kevin Asbjörnson, Founder and Principal Performing Artist of Inspire! Imagine! Innovate!  brought a global aspect to leadership. Music is a global language and inspires whole person leadership by getting us to use the right side of our brain and connect both sides of the brain to bring leadership balance and passion. One take-away for me was that Empathy is the foundation of emotional intelligence regardless of your culture. I had thought it was Self-Awareness. As a behind the scenes primary researcher I am an ‘off the chart’ empath, and don’t think of myself as a leader. I look forward to hearing and experiencing Kevin’s piano performance around leadership. Somehow we didn’t have room for a Yamaha at our session!

Inevitably, the topic of social networks came up in the context of emotional intelligence as people reach out for connection in cyberspace. I have the idea that social networks have taken off since the workplace has become lonely. Gone are the days when a product team meets in the company cafeteria. We work remotely from each other all too often with a lack of leadership and weak connection. We have this human need to connect and cooperate and help each other out. This is increasingly achieved through connections made via social networks!

I liked the saying that Herb shared with us, “Nobody cares what you know until they know you care.” That’s good to keep in mind when you’re connecting, whether through the old fashioned ways of in-person meetings, telephone and email; or the various forms of social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Keep that communication two-way and listen!

Filed under: communication, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, Denver, emotional intelligence, leadership, LinkedIn, research, social networks, Twitter | Comments Off on Key Insights to Be a Better Leader in Today’s World

2014 Update: Books on Analytic Tools for Competitive Intelligence

Posted on March 20, 2009 by ellendnaylor

This is a 2014 update of new and updated books on competitive intelligence tools and techniques from a 2009 blog.

Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods by Craig S. Fleisher and Babette E. Bensoussan, 2007.

Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition by Craig S. Fleisher and Babette Bensoussan, 2002.

These above two books have not been updated, and are classic reference material and describe competitive intelligence analytic tools in great detail. These are written for the academic market as well as competitive intelligence, marketing and strategy professionals. There is no repetition of tools between the two books with about 50 in total. The authors also provide their assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. I have a copy of each book, since I use analytic tools when they help me tell the story of my research, interviewing or win loss analysis findings.

There are three more books on analytic tools and techniques which are a shorter and simpler read.  Analysis Without Paralysis was updated in 2012 and The Analysts’s Cookbook, Volume 2 was published in 2011.

Analysis Without Paralysis: 12 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions by Babette E. Bensoussan and Craig S. Fleisher, Second Edition, 2012

The Analyst’s Cookbook by Kristan J. Wheaton, Emily E. Mosco and Diane E. Chido, 2006. (Mercyhurst University) (paperback only)

The Analyst’s Cookbook, Volume 2 edited by Nicole Pillar and Dominic Vallone, 2011. (Mercyhurst University) (Kindle only)

Analysis Without Paralysis is a great book to have your boss read or someone who would like a simpler explanation of competitive intelligence tools and techniques without as much depth as Babette and Craig’s previous two books. In addition to updating techniques, the second edition has included 2 more techniques than the original did in 2006.

The Analyst’s Cookbook is another favorite since it is easy to read and understand. Kris Wheaton, leading author, teaches competitive intelligence at one of America’s foremost competitive intelligence colleges, Mercyhurst. They breathe competitive intelligence for a living and it shows as they clearly describe 16 analytic tools in 164 pages. Mercyhurst students published a volume 2 to their Analyst’s Cookbook series in 2011, available only in Kindle format.

Connect on LinkedIn  Connect on Twitter

Filed under: competitive analysis, Competitive Intelligence, Cooperative Intelligence, Denver, Ellen Naylor, interview, research, win loss analysis | 3 Comments »

« Previous Page