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Companies Collect Competitive Intelligence, but Don’t Use It

Harvard Business Review

In my work in competitive intelligence I have met many managers and executives who made major decisions involving billions of dollars of commitments with only scant attention to the likely reaction of competitors, the effect of potential disruptors, new approaches offered by startups and the impact of long-term industry trends.

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Use Your Sales Force’s Competitive Intelligence Wisely

Harvard Business Review

That competitive intelligence can not only help individual salespeople become more effective, it can also help your company make better strategic decisions. They might expect the salesperson who receives it to offer better terms, for example, or to provide greater levels of effort and commitment.

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Managing Risks Means Managing Arguments

Harvard Business Review

(This summary is from Wittgenstein's Poker , a book I've been reading): As far as falsification is concerned, he thought that statements involving stable propensities — such as, 'The die has a one in six chance of landing on six' — could be tested by looking at what happens in the long run. When that happens, everybody loses.

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The Future Is Scary. Creative Thinking Can Help.

Harvard Business Review

Only when they challenged their long-held assumption that “We are a search engine company” could they then come up with the “We want to know everything” notion which sparked projects such as Google Earth, Google Book Search, and Google Labs, along with further improvements to their fabled search engine.

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Cyber Security in the Internet of Things

Harvard Business Review

They tended to use the terms telematics and mobile resource management. What''s more, as systems built by different OEMs interact, there is infighting among them as to what constitutes sensitive or competitive intelligence.