Ellen Naylor

Cooperative Intelligence: Kindness in Competitive Intelligence

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While competitive intelligence is not a kind business function, it is a necessary one, and we can be kind people when we bring cooperative intelligence practices into our work. Cooperative intelligence is kindness: you give without an expectation of something in return. People realize that you genuinely want to help them in their work. After all, competitive intelligence is a support function. You need to keep giving, and eventually those in your network of contacts will support you by sharing great tidbits on the competitive environment since your giving is infectious, and they just can’t help themselves. People are attracted to you by your good example of producing the goods they need and your giving attitude.

Reach out to people for the best & most real-time intelligence

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Many are too focused on what they can find from “big data,” the Internet and social media–which anyone can have access to who has time and money. If you want to learn what’s really happening, you need to talk to human beings on a regular basis, not just for competitive intelligence, but for anything in life that you care about.

How to Find Health Information for Veterans

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No matter how you feel about America’s presence in war, our veterans deserve support, particularly as they return to their families and work life after deployment. This blog takes some of the guess work out of research for great support resources for veterans and their families, particularly the Colorado University Health Sciences Library’s resource guide: http://ow.ly/nrm5V maintained by Dana Abbey.

Debra Fine & The Fine Art of Small Talk

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Small talk is an appetizer to any relationship. People like to do business with their friends. When you forget someone’s name, for example, be open and ask them graciously. This psychology of assuming the burden of someone else’s comfort is similar when you are on the telephone doing research or competitive intelligence. Make the other person feel you care, but also keep in mind that you might be catching them at a busy time.

How To Talk Like A Most Creative Person

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Conversation will always be a key to sprouting creativity. We need fellow human beings to help us develop our creative seeds. They also remind us about the marketplace of products, services and ideas that are out there–keep us from being blindsided. We all have biases and blinders. It’s human nature.

Conversational Intelligence

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Companies have business blind spots, and since they’re run by people: we also have blind spots. Two common blindspots are:

Assuming that others see what you see, feel what you feel, and think what you think
Thinking you understand and remember what others say, when you really only remember what you think about what they’ve said

One way to loosen up those blind spots is to engage in dialog with other people and listen, truly listen to what they’re saying. That’s behind many a successful marriage, business relationships, effective interviewers and successful researchers.

Elicitation with Enthusiasm

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I have been using elicitation techniques for many years, but not quite in the military intelligence way, which seems like using the other person in a more negative way. These techniques take advantage of human tendencies to complain, gossip, correct and inform, which certainly works. However, I like to capture the human desire to be happy.

Develop your competitive intelligence skills

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Developing Your Competitive Intelligence Skills is an introduction to competitive intelligence, which includes the definition of competitive intelligence, and 5 flavors of competitive intelligence: tactical, strategic, technical, counterintelligence and benchmarking. It also illustrates some analytic tools like SWOT, STEEP, BCG share of market matrix, and Adrian Slywotsky’s radar screen. This is a good introductory presentation for …

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How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

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Ellen Naylor‘s insight: A longer, but insightful read. There are two takeaways I appreciate: Mindfulness thinking and that ability to put distance between the problem you are solving once you feel stumped and can do not more. You might just do something totally unrelated to problem solving which you enjoy and relax. Then when you come …

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City Mayors: Mayors from Europe, The Americas, Asia and Africa

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Biographies of mayors from America, Europe, Asia and Africa Ellen Naylor’s insight: and much more… In a range of profiles of mayors from Asia, Africa, Europe and The Americas, City Mayors’ editors and freelance writers examine what makes an outstanding mayor. They also ask city leaders which of their policies and actions have been particularly …

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© 2026 Ellen Naylor