Article by Benjamin Gilad As a former business professor at a major university, I always considered strategy to be the most challenging task facing managers. While implementation can be challenging, it’s simply the allocation of resources most efficiently and effectively to execute a strategy. It’s the strategy that determines whether or not the product or service can achieve a temporary or long-lasting competitive advantage in the market. Competitive advantage boils down to a unique competitive product positioning that draws enough customers to generate net gain over total costs. Simple and ..read more

Article by Benjamin Gilad A recent post on LinkedIn brilliantly described with a few visuals the different realities of what a CI professional actually does. It leads beautifully into this Skeptical Analyst’s post about a recent ad for a senior CI manager for a (very) large software company, part of an even larger legendary parent. Below are excerpts. My commentary is in Italic. “…[the] Customer Engagement and Market Insights team is looking for a Senior Competitive Intelligence Manager to join us. In this role, you’ll help us make data-driven decisions through the use and analysis of targete ..read more

By Benjamin Gilad If someone told you they were very happy they moved to a new place that has low wages, cramped living space, high rent, draconian health policy (two years of lockdown), people are chronically late, and shopping options are very limited, what would you think? All else being equal, you’d think that the statement of happiness is paradoxical. If it weren’t, we’d see a wave of immigrants crossing the mostly open US border in the other direction. Perhaps there is a different theory (narrative) that more accurately describes the true thinking of that person. It’s hard to admit you w ..read more

Enhancing US Army SOF Transitions During Unconventional Warfare By Leonard Casiple, PSYOP/SF, Gary Harrington, USMC/SF/CIA and Benjamin Gilad, PhD Introduction The three tribes of US Army Special Operations (Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations) operate in ambiguous environments that escape the predictability of a fixed architecture. Although few in numbers, “advantages [,] … are not a numerical superiority, but include intangible factors such as morale, security, speed, surprise, and level of training” (Special Forces Detachment Mission Planning Guide, 2020). “As master ..read more

Article by Benjamin Gilad Culture eats strategy for breakfast is a famous cliché suggesting that the best strategies fail because culture prevents their successful implementation. It is also cited by CEOs in one survey as the number one reason for failure to reach goals. Maybe it’s true or maybe the strategy to begin with was good only in the CEOs’ eyes as they overlooked the competition. Intelligence, however, eats both culture and strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner and asks for more. The myth of “objective” intelligence How’s that possible? Whatever the culture, whichever is the strate ..read more

Article by Ben Gilad I just delivered our first “Foundation of a CI Analyst” webishop in April. Boy, it was fun. At least I had fun. I am never sure, even after 30 years, if my “students” have as much fun as I do. I consider myself very lucky in one respect: not only do I love what I do, but I know some customers gain some value from some me. I would love to say I earned their respect with hard work, but I never worked hard in my entire life, except a week at the end of May 1982 and I don’t even remember why, but I remember the determination not to repeat that horror. Instead, my assumption i ..read more

Article by Ben Gilad I just finished running another analysis module for ACI via Zoom (Feb. 2021). I love that I don’t have to travel. For a teacher, though, who loves teaching (I know, it’s ironic, isn’t it; A fisherman loves fish? A teacher loves teaching?), Zoom is slow death. I use the Socratic method of making people get to the solutions themselves and Zoom makes it impractical. In face-to-face classrooms, I can feel the crowd. I can do my job’s two parts well: One, identify stars. Mentor them for years to come until they make VPs and go through lobotomy. Second, bring out the shy, reluct ..read more

Article by Ben Gilad and Cam Mackey The title posits a question which some competitive intelligence practitioners may regard as spurious. Many don’t get to ride an elevator with their CEOs. Others will regard anything said in 30 seconds at best a sound bite, not intelligence. But this is a wrong perspective. If you can’t catch the attention of a user in 30 seconds, you can’t catch it in an hour of Power Point slides with 1,000 boring, extremely detailed bullets. So what would you say to your CEO? We, Ben and Cam are two CEOs of small organizations. Just because we are small, however, doesn ..read more

The competitive intelligence revolution began in the 1980s but remains as important as ever. Companies face enormous challenges today, from the novel coronavirus to climate change to the shifting attitudes of young people towards capitalism. It is natural therefore for their leaders to pay close attention to these big strategic issues. But in the process, some leaders may have lost sight of a much closer-to-home challenge: their competition. Full article here: – https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2020/03/are-executives-blindsided-by-competition/   The post Are Executives Blindsided by Com ..read more

With all the noise afflicting managers, it is hard to do online surveys these days. So ACI took a break after 2015. But then as ACI’s strategy gradually shifted, we wanted to see if we were on the right track. No, that’s bollock. Of course we are. Do you think I can have blindspots?!? But I believe deeply in being two steps ahead of everyone else. That means surveying the one remaining and most important issue facing competitive intelligence today: impact. It has been the Academy’s vision to get CI to have the most impact. If we don’t do it, no one else would. We have over 2000 highly train ..read more