Back once again with the fantastic Pam Atherton on A Closer Look Radio, Eric ties together the disparate topics of locavore restaurants, revolution in Egypt, and fake government shutdowns to what it all means for YOU and your business.
Back once again with the fantastic Pam Atherton on A Closer Look Radio, Eric ties together the disparate topics of locavore restaurants, revolution in Egypt, and fake government shutdowns to what it all means for YOU and your business.
Culture is a huge issue in competitive intelligence. It all comes down to whether your organization can handle good news AND bad news, or just the happy “We’re number one!” sunshine reports. If a corporate culture can’t maturely deal with both positive and negative information, real intelligence is nearly impossible.
This is probably worst in America. In the words of former Senator Adlai Stevenson “You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal. For, in the vernacular, we Americans are suckers for good news.” In all but the most sophisticated companies, good news goes up the chain and earns a pat on the head, while if you try to pass along negative information about your competitive position, people may say that you’re “not a team player.”
That said, get a load of Nokia’s new CEO in a memo to his company about the competition in the smartphone market!
“The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.“
What? A CEO saying to the entire company that they are headed in the wrong direction and honestly assessing the position of their competitors in public? These are the Finnish, a wary and shrewd people historically surrounded by aggressive empires and bitter cold. Their skeptical nature is what led them to get into cell phones at the end of the Cold War, realizing that the end of the USSR could mean the end of their business – and they acted boldly to make new investments.
Want more? Check out the brutal honesty:
- “…there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.”
- “They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.”
- “Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.”
- “We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.”
- “…Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements…”
- “Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem.”
- “We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally. Nokia, our platform is burning.”
Now tell me, does a culture of competitive intelligence come from the top, or what?
With a rapidly changing world, more and more organizations are hiring dedicated analysts to understand what’s next. Intelligence professionals are a hot commodity for both companies and governments in the years to come. That’s why the Competitive Futures Podcast is turning to our friend and colleague Tim Wood Powell, the CEO of New York City’s The Knowledge Agency, to tell us about the past and future of this most important discipline.
In this insightful interview, Tim tells us:
* Why Teddy Roosevelt’s antitrust laws made competitive intelligence necessary
* How most quantative management is “predicting the past”
* Why modern intelligence is a question of data vs. analysis
* The ways intelligence professionals are often at odds with senior management
* That getting beyond competitors is the next level of competitive analysis
With forty years of intelligence and decision making, Tim has insightful ideas about where the whole profession is headed. Enjoy.
In this episode of the Competitive Futures Podcast, we interview Paul Denlinger of China Vortex, an author, investor, and executive advisor who specializes in U.S. – China commercial activity. He’s a rare bird indeed, completely fluent in Mandarin and English and totally familiar with the executive leadership mentality of both countries. In this episode, he gives the audience some forecasts about China that you (unfortunately) just won’t be hearing in other media:
All of this, plus invaluable insight about how the Chinese mentality on the future differs considerably from that in the West.
We hope you enjoy listening to this interview as much as we did making it.
Does anybody need economists?
This is the subject of a fascinating polemic raised by our colleague Gregor MacDonald. He notes, in an incredible understatement, “economists don’t ‘do’ energy.” They are content to set Keynes and Hayek in a never-ending cage match over monetarism versus free markets, while petroleum dwindles, Boomers retire, technology flattens work hierarchies – while real things are actually happening.
Some of the debate is set off by the paper embedded below by a Federal Reserve Bank economist. As the title indicates, he doesn’t think much of the input of non-specialists. We then have a similar question for his profession – how is it that we all participate in economic activity, and only you feel qualified to comment on it? And while we’re on the subject, why didn’t you predict an absurdly obvious bubble and subsequent crash?
Some things are too difficult for the laity to understand. Most of the hard sciences are really impossible to comprehend to outsiders, and news reports on their breakthroughs are often comically misunderstood. But is economics a hard science? Isn’t it a social science based around people trading things? Can we discuss our economy without the need for technocrats of this sort?
This is the official trend blog of Competitive Futures, a management consultancy that provides trend research and analysis for business and government around the world. Here, we update you on interesting trends we see as part of our work for our clients.
For managing partner Eric Garland's new author and speaker blog, please consult and bookmark http://www.ericgarland.co