Crayon's Competitive Intelligence Spotlight is an interview series of chats with intelligence professionals to get a glimpse into their careers and gain unique insight into competitive strategy. In this edition of the Competitive Intelligence Spotlight Series, Paul Santilli, Worldwide OEM Industry Intelligence and Strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise talks about competitive strategy:

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines are expected to exchange large planes and long-haul flights for fewer and smaller planes. It has hastened the end of the largest passenger aeroplanes. There are 110 Airbus A380 planes and 356 Boeing 747 currently in service.

Ben Gilad, Founder, Academy of Competitive Intelligence wrote a message to his students at the Academy of Competitive Intelligence in February 2020 about what he calls the “trials and tribulations” of a CI practitioner.

Competitive intelligence (CI) remains a key business function and becoming increasingly effective as a tool to determine intelligence requirements, finding the right information and developing competitive insights.

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). 

“Higher fares, fewer routes, pre-flight health checks and less free food: The coronavirus pandemic is ushering in a new era of air travel” (Bloomberg, 2020).

Just because a company has invested in CI headcount, it does not necessarily mean that the organization has built an Intelligence Culture. Building a culture of competitive intelligence in your company can open the doors to greater (measurable, visible) impact across every department.

My eye caught this interesting article by Matthew Senger, SVP, Product Leadership, Innovation Measurement Nielsen which was published early 2019 on Competitive Intelligence and Innovation.  With the necessary reference I hereby let the article do the talking (Source: Nielsen.com):

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: