Is competitive intelligence dead? Yes. No. Depends.

Being in the competitive intelligence field for over 30 years now, I have seen the field grow and shrink, stall and plunge, and now revived. But not in a way most competitive intelligence experts see it.

In the early days (the roaring 80s) we still had some good classic Rock bands and we also had a newly born association in the competitive intelligence field with a few hundred die-hard fans and conferences that brought together 200-300 people.

In the 90s, most Fortune 500s created dedicated competitive intelligence roles in one or more of their business units, so the annual conference drew 2,500 people (San Diego, oh, San Diego..) but towards the late years Classic Rock died and was replaced by a group of gyrating dancers and classic intelligence roles were replaced by “research”. I knew the good old days were about to be over. When “classic” is replaced by a show, it means new generations prefer form (collecting more and more information) to substance (intelligence insight). Ominous sign.

In the 2000s, we witnessed a perverse phenomenon: the number of attendees in the main conference (by then no longer an independent association-controlled) dropped year after year, but then from nowhere, several other conferences popped up. None were drawing high quality speakers and the shrinking field supported a smaller and smaller number of attendees. They were probably all the same people (which Mark Chussil and I call Chronic Conference Hoppers in chapter 2 of our new book, The NEW Employee Manual). 

Today, I suspect there are more conferences than competitive intelligence dedicated roles. The same vendors go from one conference to another, hoping for revival. They write glowing descriptions on Linkedin. The number of attendees reached the low level of the 80s.

One newly appointed executive of a competitive intelligence software firm wrote recently on LinkedIn that he was happy for the first time in many years to meet people to whom he didn’t have to explain what competitive intelligence was. That said it all: we failed. And I include myself in the “we.” Recycling same tired models and same tired concepts, we keep talking to each other. Outside the shrinking group of competitive intelligence lifers, no one has heard about competitive intelligence.

Competitive Intelligence is dead.

Or is it? 

The other side of the coin

As the authority on training and certification in the field, we saw the ups and downs reflected in our own fortunes. Our attendance dropped in the last few years, our income with it, and we needed a new strategy. Even Porter admits good strategies can last no more than 15-20 years on average; ours endured for 20. Not bad.

We outlasted all our competitors who basically left the field of training new generations of competitive intelligence professionals. But dying more slowly was no consolation to me. So the question was: what is the trend that is killing our attendance?

The answer was: the decline of dedicated competitive intelligence roles and the changing nature of what competitive Intelligence actually meant.

So we changed our focus. Instead of focusing solely on dedicated competitive intelligence managers, we increased the percentage of attendees from part time competitive intelligence roles embedded in such jobs as Business Development, Marketing, Strategic Planning, R&D, and Product/Brand Management. They now account for 60% of our students. The vast majority of our students never heard of the association or competitive intelligence vendors. They want to build their own skill, not contracting vendors.

Instead of focusing on research which is just a nice term for piling on as much data as possible, we overhauled the curriculum to focus on developing strategic insights and then delivering them in such a way that they impact management (via the right communication and reporting). We never really focused on training human search engines (we leave it to the conferences) but now we just abandoned it. With so many automated information-pushing services, collection is redundant. Interpretation of the sea of data/information is what competitive intelligence is all about, not gathering useless minutia on competitors. We made it clear we train analysts not information archivists.

And lastly, our new direction away from research is reflected in an organizational change: Fuld and Co. is no longer part of the Academy. We were always “commercial” free by our own strict rules (enforced by our COO, Lynne Smith), but now we are truly free. We will vigorously pursue the new competitive intelligence model, the new competitive intelligence roles, and the new competitive-intelligence-as-a- managerial skill.

If strategy success is measured by performance (not always the case in the short run), our new strategy worked extremely well.

Rock is back?

While conferences continue to shrink, our core competitive intelligence CIP-I? and advanced competitive intelligence CIP-II? programs in New Orleans this coming June have the highest number of attendees in a decade. We are at almost full capacity which is such a delight to write. We may actually have to turn away last minute applicants. I don’t remember that since the 90s.

All I need now is a new Pink Floyd album and I am back to the happy days. Who said competitive intelligence is dead?

Ben Gilad is the proud president of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence (www.academyci.com)