Deloitte Shift Index Findings: Global Collaboration Will Improve Business Competitiveness

Posted on July 15, 2009 by ellendnaylor

The Deloitte Center for the Edge recently got my attention with its findings that competition is intensifying globally with a US return on assets dropping consistently across 15 different industries by 75% over the last 40 years!

DeloitteFirmPerformance1965-2008

Some other key findings: 

US competitive intensity has more than doubled during the last 40 years. The “topple rate” at which big companies lose their leadership positions, has more than doubled, suggesting that “winners” have increasingly precarious positions. Customers appear to be gaining and using power as reflected in increasing customer disloyalty. 

The exponentially advancing price/performance capability of computing, storage and bandwidth is driving an adoption rate for our new “digital infrastructure,” that is two to five times faster than previous infrastructures, such as electricity and telephone networks.

The Shift Index consists of 3 indices: Foundation, Flow and Impact, plus 25 other metrics that together quantify the stock, pace and implications for change. Given that competition is intensifying, here are some ways organizations might improve their performance.

1. Recognize the Foundation Wave: The business landscape has changed through the spread of the digital infrastructure and this has been reinforced by long term public policy that shifts towards economic liberalization. Changes in Foundations tend to reduce barriers to entry and movement, leading to a doubling of competitive intensity.

2. The Flow Wave looks at drivers of performance shaped by digital infrastructure. This wave looks at the flows of knowledge, capital, and talent enabled by foundational advances. Knowledge flows are the key to improving performance. This is a key area where many conventional businesses fail as they are too insular and have developed serious blindspots. This is the opposite of “Command and Control” leadership.

3. The Impact Wave comes last, as it will take time for companies to participate in and harness knowledge flows leading to improved performance and more innovation.

Successful firms will shift from what’s worked in the past, scalable efficiency to scalable learning. 

This is a huge shift for most large US companies, and many of them are failing due to their closed nature, lack of flexibility and poor use of technology to gallop past competitors and collaborate with suppliers, customers and many other sources to develop innovative products. 

Think Apple Computer when you think about a successful company by these “Shift Index” standards.  Apple has kept its entrepreneurial magic largely by reaching out and being innovative in product development, and using all the technology, including social networks to continue expanding its connection to knowledge. This is a company that knows its customer. It’s no coincidence that Apple customers enjoy the experience of using its products. Who doesn’t just love their iPhone!

The conclusions and details of this study go far beyond what I can cover in a blog.  Check it out. I think a lot of what it preaches is what good competitive intelligence has been preaching for YEARS.  Keep reaching out and connecting both internally and externally and build on the intelligence you gather. Stay connected with people through all the means technology allows you to reach them. Isn’t this the foundation of a good early warning system?

Filed under: Competitive Intelligence, competitiveness, connection, leadership, social networks | Comments Off on Deloitte Shift Index Findings: Global Collaboration Will Improve Business Competitiveness

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

How Corporate Recruiting Adds to a Competitive Intelligence Effort

Posted on July 6, 2009 by ellendnaylor

Please welcome this article by Dorothy Beach, MBA CIR PHR. We are colleagues through our interest in competitive intelligence. We met at a Dallas/Ft. Worth SCIP Chapter meeting, and I really value her insight into the recruiting world!

DorothyBeachCompetitive intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering valuable information about your firm’s direct and indirect competitors including strategies, plans, practices or people. Companies value CI and its opposite, counterintelligence or protection of assets, in varying degrees. Those that value CI and counterintelligence are more cooperative about its collection and protection across all functions of the company.

As a new R&D employee in the Healthcare Division at Procter & Gamble I realized that counterintelligence was essential but when I transferred to product development in the Food & Beverage Division, everyone was responsible for gathering CI, especially when we conducted consumer research in the field. Marketing-based companies are especially sensitive to competitive forces and highly value both CI and counterintelligence.

As a Recruiting Researcher and Sourcer, I observed there were usually more formal processes around counterintelligence than CI. Examples of HR counterintelligence are protecting the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) from hacks, using stringent password protection and masking Social Security numbers. CI rarely was an organized effort either before or after a new employee was hired. While exchanging information with recruiters when sourcing candidates for them, I realized that we gathered a lot of CI while speaking to prospective candidates that was not well captured or shared. Much of what we heard was recorded in Excel spreadsheets or in notes of an ATS or not at all. It is no wonder that CI was not appreciated enough to develop a formal CI process and reward system for its information.

Once there is a high level management buy-in to develop a CI gathering process, start with a roadmap to include:

1.) Objectives or goals

2.) A scan of existing and needed resources

3.) An estimated budget for resources and training

4.) A way to record and communicate findings with a risk assessment

5.) Analytics to track progress

6.) A timeline for the roadmap which reassesses its effectiveness

Ideally this recruiting initiative should work cooperatively with the competitive intelligence employees in an information exchange. The process should be open to its evolution in the first launch and have a point of responsibility given to at least two people: a Recruiting Manager and their direct report. Some aspects of each step in the roadmap:

Step 1: A new program might need objectives or goals with some constraints. You can gather “real time” information across all company sources or just focus on the company’s closest competitors. The latter focus works if your company recruits heavily from competitors so there is representation of new hires from all functions

Sample objectives include answers to:

What influences the candidate choice of employer in this industry?

When we are turned down, where do the candidates go?

What recruiters at the competitor companies are stealing our talent?

What is the competition’s biggest impact on successful recruitment? Examples: website, field work, recruiting process, social media channels, job boards or other?

Is our salary and benefit package help or hinder recruitment?

Is the brand perception locally different from what is perceived elsewhere?

Step 2: Resource identification includes the development of formal new employee interviewing questions and additional informal candidate interviewing questions, resources to validate what is said such as financial databases, analyst reports (Gartner, IDC, Forrester) and social media monitoring and a process to acquire and record third party recruiter intelligence gathering.

Step 3: Calculate the budget to cover the expenses of an employee(s) covering this role and identify its responsibilities. Expenses can take the form of added recruiter bonuses for the intelligence that has impact, resources to validate findings, costs for communication platforms and training costs to launch the initiative to a team. Soft costs are the hours dedicated to implementing, executing and evaluating this job.

Step 4: Communication can be a platform such as a wiki for “real time” feeds or an eRoom for posts. More recent tools like Yammer.com, a Twitter-like blog communication internal to the company, can alert a researcher to validate a piece of intelligence and reissue to the staffing organization. Determinations of how long this information should be kept, where and in what form is part of assessing risk. Share it in a way that it cannot be changed (pdf) or downloaded (no PC peripheral policy) and share it broadly and as close to “real time” as possible. Access to this CI information between recruiting and competitive intelligence employees in other parts of the company would be ideal.

Step 5: Determine the analytics you need to track how the intelligence is used and what influence it has on decision-making. Examples of analytics are success in further recruitment, timing from first engagement of the candidate to their hire date, information that can or cannot be validated, and determination of what recruiting channels are most used. If intelligence can be validated it becomes more useful in strategic planning.

Step 6: Each quarter or half year, review what objectives were accomplished and broadly share. Make suggestions for improvement of CI and counterintelligence with an outcome of go/ no-go decision of resources for the initiative’s continuation and evolution.

Agencies using this roadmap can add value to their services to corporate clients with the added benefit of an arm’s length in its information gathering.

Dorothy Beach has been in research for her entire career, possesses an MBA in Marketing and is also certified in both Internet Recruiting (CIR) and Human Resources (PHR). Her blog, FrontEndRecruiting was created to showcase the latest trends, tools and techniques used by recruiters for the research phase of the recruiting cycle. More recently Dorothy has become a social media strategist for the Texas Recruiters Network. She can be found on LinkedIn and accepts all invitations to her extensive network using beach2000@gmail.com.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, LinkedIn, research, SCIP, Twitter | Comments Off on How Corporate Recruiting Adds to a Competitive Intelligence Effort

Jeffrey Immelt’s Ideas on Renewing America’s Competitiveness

Posted on July 2, 2009 by ellendnaylor

As we approach this Independence Day in America, my cooperative spirit pushes me to share Jeffrey Immelt’s ideas about how to renew America. Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE is one of America’s stewards of leadership and innovation and I highly recommend that you view his talk given in late June 09 at the Detroit Economic Club.

America has a myriad of economic problems, not the least of which is it has moved from a technology-driven manufacturing economy to one that is services oriented. We are known as a country where CEOs are viewed as short-term speculators, which has been re-enforced by our “leadership” in the financial global meltdown. There is something seriously wrong when “a mortgage broker is pulling down $5 million a year while a Ph.D. chemist is earning $100,000.”

Jeff thinks the US needs to create an industrial renewal as follows:

1. Invest in new technology

2. Win where it counts in Clean Energy and Affordable Healthcare

3. Become a country that’s good at manufacturing and exports

4. Embrace public/private partnerships

5. Encourage leaders that are also good citizens

During this recession, GE has not reduced its R&D expenditures, which are pegged at 6%, while the US average is only 2% of sales. In 2008, GE exported $19 billion and plans to increase exports each year. GE is partnering with local government to fix the US educational system by investing at inner city schools to improve math and science since only 4% in the US study engineering, which often produces innovators.

GE has two great initiatives to stimulate innovative product development: “eco-imagination” and “health-imagination”. Eco-imagination focuses on alternative, clean energy development and renewable energy products as well as making better use of traditional energy sources. One initiative is a GE + Duke energy coal degasification plant project. America is like the Saudi Arabia of coal supply! Through innovations in health research, GE will launch hundreds of new products in the next few years to reduce the cost of healthcare, particularly in areas like infant care and mammography.

GE invests $1B per year in training. One way this has paid off is that their educated locomotive teams reduced the time it takes to manufacture a locomotive from 100 days to 20. Jeff’s talk is full of these examples of “can do”, which I think is missing from America’s fabric in these tough times.

GE practices what it preaches: it changes with the global demand for its products. Over 50% of what GE produces today didn’t exist 10 years ago. GE will introduce more new products during this recession than any time in its history.

Big business needs to fund small businesses to invent and in the supply chain to compete globally. He states that as “Business leaders we are responsible for the competitiveness of our own country.” This comes from a free marketer and Republican. I wish more of our country’s leadership felt this way. The US is at a competitive disadvantage globally since the private and public sectors are often at odds and do not cooperate like they do in most other countries in the world! The US needs to welcome government as a catalyst for leadership and change. Look at all the creativity and innovation that came from NIH and NASA over the years. The government can be creative and foster cooperation!

I’ll conclude by sharing that Jeff is practicing what he preaches: GE is investing $100 million to develop a manufacturing lab near Visteon Center in the Detroit metro. This will provide 1200 professional jobs to start. Jobs will focus in three areas of innovation: advanced manufacturing technology including applications in aviation and energy products; software applications such as the smart grid; and a training program for information technology. GE is working with the public sector in Detroit and drawing talent from MI universities, in addition to the local work force.

I hope more of America’s leadership adopts Jeff Immelt’s attitudes and practices so America can once again feel proud. US competitiveness will only improve as we become a more self confident society. America’s consumer spending is not going to pull us out of this recession: this alone is not sustainable! America’s business investment in technology, innovation and value-added manufacturing will.

Filed under: competitiveness, cooperation, cooperative, creativity, leadership | Comments Off on Jeffrey Immelt’s Ideas on Renewing America’s Competitiveness

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 »

Creative Librarians in Competitive Intelligence: SLA 2009

Posted on June 15, 2009 by ellendnaylor

I taught two Click University competitive intelligence certificate programs at SLA 2009: intermediate and management CI analytical tools and techniques. My students had a cooperative spirit, great curiosity and a strong desire to learn. This is my favorite kind of student.

One student group devised a creative use of the Radar Screen 360 degree analytical tool. I learned about this tool through Adrian Slywotsky’s Value Migration book, where competitors are placed around a dart board in accordance with how competitive they are relative to your company. Your company is the bull’s eye and your key competitors are placed in the inner rings of the dartboard, where as outliers or potential competitors might be placed towards the outer rings and even outside the entire dartboard.

We were analyzing an executive in the hotel industry, in an attempt to predict what his next move might be. Would he buy the hotel next door or not? The case told us his life story, including his personality all the way from his childhood to the present as a middle aged man. We were provided with his history of buying and managing hotels, including his keen ability as a financial manager, his tendency to micromanage, his habit of reinvesting earnings back into the business, and his drive to grow and take risk in the entrepreneurial spirit.  The first step this team took was to use the Radar Screen to show us how this executive perceived his hotel business relative to the competition.

RadarScreenSLAPersonality

They broke the radar screen into quadrants which depicted customer service, attention to detail, financial stability, and risk taker/entrepreneur. What a brilliant use of the Radar Screen as a psychological tool! They concluded he was an INTJ on the Myers Brigg Scale. He was extremely well organized, independent and a classic entrepreneur who experienced growth through risk taking, by extending himself to buy or rebuild hotels. From this analysis we could see that he had a robust ego and that he thought he did everything well, if not better than the competition. The hotel group’s financial results underscored that he was a savvy, smart businessman.

From this analysis we could study the executive’s decision-making patterns to date, and figure that as an entrepreneur with no hobbies, he was likely to continue his habit of extending himself financially and buying the hotel next door. He didn’t know how to operate any other way: there was nothing that seemed to provide enough impetus in his life to change this behavior.

This team was right: the executive did buy the hotel next door even though it meant extending his and his wife’s work life by several more years. He didn’t know how to stop this cycle, and perhaps wasn’t ready to make changes towards retirement at age 49, while his wife had quit her law practice in a step towards retirement.

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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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