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What is Competitive Intelligence - a brief guide

AWARE: UK competitive intelligence consultants offering competitor analysis and research services, competitive intelligence training & workshops and CI and marketing strategy consultancy.

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Tips & Ideas for Better Competitive Intelligence

Categorising Information

There are four types of information available to companies.

What we know we know	What we know we don't know
What we don't know we know	What we don't know we don't know

What We Know We know needs to be kept up-to-date and accurate. It is the easy bit of information collection. The danger is that we get it wrong- and take an incorrect viewpoint, or make an invalid assumption. This then becomes the What we don't know we don't know category.

What we know we don't know is also easy. This is often the focus of market research and competitive analysis - to find out what we know we don't know. (You can identify these elements from a CI Audit - which should define what information is known and what is unknown and should be known).

What we don't know we know is more interesting - as it means that we suffer from blindspots preventing us seeing what we should know. To remove these we have to be able to abandon subjectivity and view things completely objectively. Often an audit carried out by outside consultants such as AWARE will reveal some of these aspects.

What we don't know we don't know is perhaps the most important category - as this is where we can get hurt. This is the new innovation or product that will substitute and replace our product. Or the company from a different business area that decides to enter our market. Like the third category, it can also be the result of a blindspot. We think we know something - when in truth, we don't know it. The danger here is that one can make incorrect decisions or take wrong directions. (Note: AWARE can help you here also - as in our work, we often see anomalies or spot signs of forthcoming change, that might be missed if we were closer to the subject and blinded by our industry assumptions).

This model was devised by Williams Inference , a company specialising in inferential scanning, used in advising stockbrokers and fund managers. It was also described in a competitive intelligence context by Sheila Wright and David Picton in 1998 at the Wright, Sheila and Pickton, David.. (1998). Improved
competitive strategy through value added competitive
third Annual SCIP European Conference held in Berlin. The model as above is based on the Johari matrix developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingram. This looks at human potential - again as 4 types of knowledge"

What I know about myself What others know about me	What I know about myself What I've kept hidden from others
What I don't know about myself What others know about me	What I don't know about myself What others also don't know about me

The last What I don't know about myself and what others also don't know about me category is a person's hidden potential. It is the aim of a lot of training to reveal this so that the person can maximise their potential.

If you liked this tip, you can read more about the model as applied to competitive intelligence in the September/October 2006 issue of Competitive Intelligence magazine from the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

For more tips such as this visit the rest of our site for further ideas on competitive and marketing strategy. And if you need to obtain information on your competitors, check out AWARE's services pages to see how we can help you.

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Quick Tip: Questions

Quick Tip

A key competitive intelligence skill is the ability to distinguish what you do know from what you don't know. The effort is then to find out sources for the unknown information - as the great English writer, Dr Samuel Johnson said:

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Unfortunately even with the knowledge there can be problems. Lewis Branscomb - the US physicist and Harvard management professor once said:

People rarely distinguish among data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. But they are as different from each other and as interlocking as starch molecules, flour, bread, and the flavorful memory of a superb morning croissant.

The aim of competitive & marketing intelligence is to turn data into something that can lead to competitive advantage in the same way that your morning croissant or loaf of bread depends on flour and water interacting to make something that is more than just a mixture of the raw ingredients.

Books - Competitors (Fahey)

Recommended Book

Competitors (Fahey)
Competitors: Outwitting, Outmanoeuvring, and Outperforming
Liam Fahey
Buy UK £ or US$

Read our review of this book

Competitors shows you how to determine what you need to know about competitors, analyse competitor strategy, predict likely next moves and link this into your own operations, avoiding many errors associated with traditional approaches.
Liam Fahey is one of the leading new thinkers on Competitive Strategy and this book introduces Fahey's concept of "competitor learning", giving guidelines for identifying and analysing key competitor data to help gain strategic insights. An important book - that should sit on any CI analyst's bookshelf.

For more recommendations visit our book selection.

Competitive Intelligence Training

Do you need to
know more about
Competitive Intelligence?

We offer in-house Competitive Intelligence Training, customised to your requirements.
Find out about our training services today!

Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources

AWARE consultants are experts at discovering competitor information online and have developed a market-leading course on Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources. This course has been given as an in-house course to numerous companies across industries (IT, publishing, telecoms, chemicals....) and countries, as well as publicly at SCIP annual and European conferences, the London International Online Information Conferences and other similar events.

The workshop has received high praise for its unique approach to finding competitive intelligence on the Internet. The workshop - available as a half-day or full day in-house training course - teaches attendees how to find actionable competitive intelligence rather than just present a list of sources that quickly date. Like all AWARE's in-house training, the course can be customised to focus on industry or competitive area.

For more information on this workshop and how it can help you become a more effective Internet researcher check out our Competitive Intelligence Training and ask us about our courses on finding CI information.

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Our services in competitive intelligence research, competitor analysis and CI training will help you integrate and use competitive and marketing intelligence in your business, strategic and marketing planning processes. Whether you need research, advice or training, our mission is to support our clients so that they achieve their growth objectives.

For the best UK & European competitive intelligence and competitor analysis services, contact us today.

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Last page / site update: Wednesday, June 9, 2010