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

AWARE News

Association Belge de Documentation / Belgische Vereniging voor Documentatie INFORUM2009

Arthur Weiss, AWARE's managing partner led a session focusing on social networking and how this can be used to enhance marketing intelligence at ABD-BVD's Inforum2009: It's all about people conference at the end of April, 2009. The lecture showed how marketing and competitive intelligence professionals can use social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and others as part of their portfolio of research tools.

For more information on these lectures and how we can help you become a more effective business researcher ask us about our courses on finding CI information.

WS Radio Interview

Arthur Weiss was interviewed by Paul Helm, the president of Strategic Research Network, as part of the InfoPro show on WS Radio - The worldwide leader in Internet talk.

Listen to the whole interview or in separate parts (around 10-15 minutes each)

• Introduction - AWARE''s background and projects
• Competitor Analysis - a brief guide
• Upcoming industry conferences and associations
• Competitive Intelligence Books.

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.

Recommended Book

Co-opetition : 1. a revolutionary mindset that redefines competition and cooperation; 2. the game theory strategy that's changing the game of business
Adam M Brandenburger & Barry J Nalebuff
Buy UK £ or US$

Read our review of this book

For more recommendations visit our book selection.

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