In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, I would like to share a competitive intelligence case study initiative that my colleague Tom Hawes is leading.

He saw a need for more sharing in the field of competitive intelligence. In many cases people don’t share since well it’s the competition after all, who might be reading or listening to what I share. So he decided to create case studies for people to comment on. The first example is a story in a competitive intelligence manager’s life where he has to organize and prepare a presentation for his executive management about how a competing company is ramping up its R&D initiative. The story goes on for six days and takes a person from getting the assignment, doing a needs analysis, getting the information, making the final presentation, and dealing with people issues and communication.

The idea behind the case study format is to draw people out of their shells to discuss how they would approach the issues that this CI manager faces. It is thought that people will more readily share what they know and how they do competitive intelligence, if we’re talking about a hypothetical situation rather than their company’s particular issues.

Tom has gone to a lot of trouble to professionalize this case study approach by even creating a website for these cases. Tom is also creating additional cases to draw people in. I agreed to comment on the 6-day case study, and offered a cooperative intelligence perspective to my comments. Arik Johnson and August Jackson also offered their comments for the 6-day case study.

There are three ways you can contribute to this initiative to improve communication among competitive intelligence folks:

Read and respond to the case studies and commentaries that are posted. Volunteer to write a case study. Volunteer to be an expert commentator and share your problem-solving ideas.

PS If you’re a SCIP member, look for these case studies in the next 3 Competitive Intelligence Magazines!