Jeffrey Immelt’s Ideas on Renewing America’s Competitiveness

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Jeff Immelt, GE’s visionary and innovative Chairman & CEO 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
He concludes that as “Business leaders we are responsible for the competitiveness of our own country.” The US is at a competitive disadvantage globally since its private and public sectors are often at odds and do not cooperate like they do in most other countries in the world!

Todd Wille, Turnaround Leader Extraordinaire, A Cooperative Leader

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Read this remarkable turnaround success story about how Todd Wille’s cooperative leadership and management brought back the customers to Unify Corporation and boosted the morale of the workforce during a very difficult time when the company was under investigation from fraud, they were almost bankrupt, and it seemed like all they could do was fail! I applaud Todd Wille, winner of the 2008 turnaround executive award!

Develop Proactive Competitive Intelligence through Business Blindspot Analysis & Executive Personality Profiling

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I find it interesting to partner two analytical tools: business blindspots and executive personality profiling to predict where a company is going. 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 such as predicting company’s actions, including your competitors.

Intelligence 2.0: Creating New Business Models–SLA 2009

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Asymmetric information models are passé and information interpretation is NOW: the ability to understand and anticipate! 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. Innovation is most easily defined as productivity. Yet innovation is a sloppy process. Employees innovate best within a culture of “learning and growing from mistakes” rather than being punished for making mistakes. Learn how to articulate the truth in ways that management will listen (cooperative leadership).

Competitive Intelligence at SLA 2009 & Other Favorites

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Just 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.

Just How Social is Social Networking?

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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. 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. 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.

What’s the Future of SCIP and the Competitive Intelligence Profession?

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Competitive intelligence is not recognized enough to keep SCIP afloat on its own. Many companies include competitive intelligence as part of other business functions which are well defined: product planning, strategic planning, marketing, PR, sales, R&D, but CI really isn’t perceived as a discipline in many companies. SCIP also faces competition in CI from other associations and social networks. I hope SCIP turns on its marketing machine with urgency and reaches out to companies and individuals and educate them on the compelling value of conducting systematic CI. I hope that SCIP’s leadership is reading the CI Ning. There are so many good ideas posted, so SCIP has a great opportunity to listen and query these individuals more closely and engage them to be part of the solution.

Let’s Give SCIP a Second Chance

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Like many I was disturbed by the suddenness with which we were presented with this bad news: SCIP was facing such financial difficulty that an infusion of cash was expedient, and we better vote YES to keep SCIP in business. I think we all venefit the most by having one body to represent CI, so I hope that SCIP remains in business. We all win if SCIP moves forward and continues to support the competitive intelligence profession.

Let’s Hear it for Librarians in Competitive Intelligence!

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Many of us in CI are very good at digging up good insightful data and providing relevant analysis. We’re not so good at the human issues of connection and communication, which is where librarians run circles around many of us. Librarians get where their role is in the company, that it’s evolving and provide it with a spirit of service and giving. They also know what they don’t know and learn about it.

Competitive Intelligence Starts with Your Company

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Often in competitive intelligence we’re so busy looking externally at the competition and market conditions that we forget to consider how we can improve our own operation by investigating ourselves. Before I look at a company’s competitors, I always like to take a long look at the company which hired me. Their operation, including their management’s behavior and motivation, becomes my yardstick to consider as I learn about the competition.

© 2024 Ellen Naylor