Leader published businesss advice from the trenches. Competitiveness and knowledge of strong and weak points are recurrent aspects. For the full report click here: http://www.leader.co.za/article.aspx?s=1&f=1&a=6705

“Arguments are often why family-owned businesses don’t make it to the second generation."

"Stuttafords had a great business model." "They created a wonderful experience. But things have changed."

Samuel Carter wrote a post on LinkedIn stating that the top skill for an insight specialist is not statistics but a strong ability to communicate. Poor communication is a far more common reason why research fails to turn into insight, than poor statistical underpinning.

Dr Ben Gilad Faculty at ACI invited readers of his blog to share the following trends in Competitive Intelligence. Dr Gilad says he is a negative person but now for the first time in many years he is optimistic about CI.

The UN’s 13th Annual Fragile States Index (FSI), was launched on 15 May 2017 at the UN’s Foundation in Washington DC. The Fragile States Index highlights current trends in social, economic and political pressures that affect all states, but can strain some beyond their capacity to cope.

Bloomberg published a list of the top jobs going into the future (to 2024). It ranked occupations by the percentage increase projected from 2014 to 2024. The new jobs and those that are expected to show the biggest employment growth are mainly in health care:

I love Babette’s writings. Her latest post on LinkedIn looks at the management of Competitive Intelligence and how to overcome certain challenges. She touches upon the reasons why some Competitive Units fail or fail to flourish and one of the top reasons is that they were never intelligence units to begin with; they were data collecting teams.

A recent piece on Linkedin, by an intelligence manager at the Johnson & Johnson Company in Switzerland, exposes unwittingly why pharma is ranked number one in spending on competitive information and among the last on the effective use of intelligence.

People born between 1980 and 2000 (Millennials) are distinguishable from earlier generations for a number of traits. Kate Snyder, head of anthropology at Instant Grass International, delved into what makes this consumer group tick.

Economic progress for women has stalled due to barriers that remain of which one of the foremost is "a lack of equal opportunity and challenges to combining work and family. Today, women are making big changes to when, and whether, they have children and there is a decline in the rate of labour participation for women in the US between the ages 25-54.