A US-based competitive Intelligence company Crayon says its study into the Competitive Intelligence practices among US business show that the large majority are investing in Competitive Intelligence. Its report 2020 State of Competitive Intelligence puts this figure at 94%.

What are the clear blips on the radar when we look ahead at the year 2020: Competitive Intelligence colleague Arun Jethmalani ran a few of these blips on his blog valuenotes.biz in December 2019 and I paraphrase:

The American magazine and multi-platform publisher The Atlantic published an analysis on 31 December of the US National Intelligence Council report  titled “Mapping the Global Future,” is an eerie and illuminating read with 2020 now upon us.

Trendwatching published its list of top innovation in food and beverage for 2019 and it truly put a smile on my face.

Here is an interesting and thought-provoking article on big data and social credit systems as we see manifesting in China. China says a social scoring system is useful in managing is large population but globally this has triggered concerns and questions around the ethics of big data.

Joseph Deitch on Fast Company writes a though piece on our personal biases. It is most relevant for a number of reasons including the fact that bias is often a blindspot when engaging in Competitive Insights and Analysis clouding our findings. This blindspot holds a potential threat to a company’s bottom-line. I hereby publish his piece (see citation below). 

Uniqueness. Personalisation. Authenticity. Honest, Value, Special. Different. Simple. Quick. Those are words we relate to the new consumer drivers. Enter technology and delivering personalised service this becomes possible and economically viable.

Trendwatching published its list of top innovation in financial services for 2019 and it truly put a smile on my face.

In October 2019, the BBC made its news site available via the TOR network, free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. The TOR browser is privacy-focused software used to access the dark web (those many layers of the internet that cannot be found using a search engine).

Businesses and industries are constantly changing. Without stating the obvious this is also true for the movie theatres. One blogger said, “the industry needs to rethink what a cinema experience is…and it isn’t about how comfy the seats are.”