"Quick success" in Competitive Intelligence?

Newcomers to CI roles are often advised to get a "quick success" to gain credibility with decision makers. While this is an excellent advice in a typical corporate culture of "action now", it is addictive. Later, this practice translates into fascination with AI’s promise to quicken the "CI cycle." Search is quicker, “analysis” (or whatever goes as “analysis”) is quicker, and delivery to the right users is much quicker with AI (and AI-based platforms).

All true, except, CI has nothing to do with speed or efficiency.

At the core of this powerful pull is a confusion between research projects and competitive intelligence. Projects have deadlines. Intelligence doesn’t.?

The research trap

AI can be useful in speeding up the processing of gigantic loads of data, but the bottleneck (so to speak) is human insight of value to decision makers. Human insight about competing more effectively is unpredictable. It’s based on talent and intuition (experience), and the right focus on strategic changes in an evolving market.

Human insight about competing smarter is fundamentally unpredicable.

Since AI can’t quicken the insight derivation itself, real intelligence isn’t quick at all.

Competitive insight needs time to develop, gathering perspectives as it makes its way through objections and counter-views. It must have people reflecting on it, and dissecting it, and the analyst must build a coalition of supporters before he or she presents it to the top.

When novices are seduced by the promise of quick wins with AI, they are laying the ground for becoming a conduit for information not a providers of intelligence. ?That puts them at risk of redundancy. The trend to flatten the organization is as old as the desire for a flat stomach and comes in bouts of involuntary convulsions and mere information/research jobs are at risk. Real analysts, on the other hand, survive.

There is a sense of revival for the art and science of real competition analysts as AI brings anxiety at the top. And it has nothing to do with speed or AI/platforms.

Read the sad story below.

Since AI can’t quicken the insight derivation itself, real intelligence isn’t quick at all.

is good, but

Two hundred years ago, a town in England made the mistake of straightening a meandering river known as Swindale Beck to make it flow faster. This is a perfect analogy to the AI hype swindling (or Swindaling?) novice CI practitioners – mostly millennials - of their careers. ?

When the river was “wiggling”, a whole ecosystem thrived around it, as salmon and trout were able to spawn and grow in slower pools. When it was straightened, it became a “sad canal” with muddy water from sediments and no life. Now, the town is “rewiggling” the river. "We now have vegetation in the river, where young fish can shelter. There are gravel banks, deep pools and riffles — shallow, turbulent parts of the river where the water draws in oxygen. It all benefits the whole food chain."

Think of the Swindale Beck straightening folly as the push by some vendors and conference organizers to “speed up” intelligence by bringing AI wholesale into CI without actually understanding what CI is and how AI should be used in it. ??

The direct route is not always the shortest one

In a previous article, born out of the tragedy of the October 7th early warning failure in Israel, I showcased the difference between sending in the information and actually ensuring the users, especially top executives, understand its significance, discuss its essence, and internalize its implications. Those pushing AI (typically out of a desire to sell something around it), fail to understand the significance of that statement.

Do not confuse true competitive insight with "research" no matter how good and comprehensive the reaseach is and how it answers a quick question from a user.

Sending competitor information quickly is good, but claiming it is competitive insight ensures one thing: more pressure to deliver “answers” on tight deadlines. This discounts the value of the CI practitioner. It trivializes the term "insight."

A CI novice who focuses solely on quick bits of info useful for sales and marketing may feel comfotable with this information task, but without the hard work of alwasy looking for strategic contribution to the managerial perspective (i.e., early warning or an intriguing different angle on how to beat the competition), the practitioner risks digging his or her career into a hole. ??

A vendor will gladly sell you the shovel. Don’t be fooled.

Thee is no future in a role focusing on directing info traffic.?

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Alternative perspective

You: Hey Siri, what is CI?

AI: ?A tax haven in the Caribbean, called Cayman Island.

You: No, I mean in business.

AI: Did you mean Continuous Integration?

You: No, a field, a corporate role, a job description.

AI: Commissariat à l'Information du Canada.

You: oh, F... you.

AI: FU, Fatih University is a higher education institute in Istanbul, Turkey. Is that what you are looking for?

You: No! You are killing me!

AI: Connecting to "You Are Killing Me" on Netflix. ??

Despite all the tightening of the collective belts at corporate, our CIP-I? program this week is at capacity. We must be doing something right. #competitiveintelligence #strategy #AI

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