Christophe Deschamps's Library tagged méthodologie → View Popular

You always have to talk about competitive threats in terms of the opportunity they present. For example, if there is the potential for a bigger competitor to come out with a cheaper substitute for one of our products, would there be case for us to re-think our pricing strategy?
I’m here to influence others. I don’t make or sell products right now, and my currency is how well I can influence others to change the direction of product roadmaps, marketing programs, and other tactics, in order to adjust to the competitive environment.
24 more annotations...
- The best way to do that is to be optimistic, provide a fact-based analysis and case for change, and let stakeholders know how they can be successful in spite of the competitive threat.
- People find it reassuring that I’ve done their job and that I’m familiar with the day-to-day challenges they face, and they know I am not just some new-hire MBA without real experience, trying to tell them how to do their job.
- On the other hand, if you can tell them the history of the pieces that you are putting together, how the situation has changed, and show them for example that a competitor has hired people and invested a bunch of money into something, you can build a more compelling case for them.
- That kind of approach breaks through a lot of the emotional part of denial. It works better and faster in some cases than others, but I would liken it to a lawyer arguing in front a judge, making sure they have a fact-based case.
- You’re also alluding there to the fact that a competitor can’t do something really major without leaving some sort of a trail. Evidence shows up somewhere, whether it’s session abstracts, job postings, blogs, or wherever.
- A basic technique we use in scenario planning is to switch roles and pretend to be a competitor, saying, “How are we going to compete against Adobe?”
- There’s a lot of public record information available, and over time I’ve assembled an RSS feed that must include 90-plus blogs now, that I’ve identified as credible and timely that I can extract information about our competitors from.
- I certainly look at analyst reports on a regular basis
- I’m a regular attendee at competitive trade shows and conferences,
- Generally, for things like high-level strategic direction, a combination of primary resources are probably best. In this case, I ‘m defining “primary” as sitting through the entire eight-hour analyst day for a competitor, which they tend to webcast these days.
- For things like comparative product analysis or other really detailed stuff, a secondary resource is a good start, and then I tend to benchmark with our own folks here, just to make sure that I’m not missing something at the detail level.
- We do a number of deep dives each year on specific companies, and we’ve established a body of that content over time. As we’ve matured we have concentrated on fine-tuning that knowledge base.
- In addition to public record resources, I have also developed a broad network of people at different companies over time that I can reach out to for clarification and general direction.
- I mentioned that I read a lot of blogs from folks that publish for trade publications, and so on. I have established working relationships with some of those folks, and it’s great to have them to bounce ideas off of, because they obviously follow these companies very closely and often have additional insight.
- Learning how to use the right keywords along with specific filetypes is a really powerful way to get insights about competitive activity.
- Any CI practice should have someone with the skills to analyze long-term trends in financial information. I also have access to most of the products that compete with what we’re interested in and try to understand them as best I can.
- I also sign up for a lot of pre-beta, pre-alpha, and closed-beta experiences with new products and services.
- Organizations that have a centralized CI practice sometimes tend to use that practice as a sort of magic encyclopedia where they can feed in questions or needs and get answers out. That makes the CI practitioners feel a little bit like wizards and the other people in the company don’t really know how CI works.
- The danger there is that people in the organization may not realize how they might be leaking information, because they don’t really know industry CI practices.
- In Adobe’s case, we have a Corporate Communications group who is responsible for managing our public-facing engagements. They provide training to speakers about where the appropriate boundaries are for disclosure for all kinds of public events, conferences, press and analyst meetings, and so on.
- In high tech there is some benefit to being open about one’s business direction … customers can plan upgrade cycles more efficiently, analysts can model financial expectations more accurately, and developers can evaluate platform choices more effectively, for instance. Of course, as you said, competitors are watching too, and this must be taken into account.
- If you can’t get it directly from the company, there is often somebody who’s modeled it, thought about it, and forecast it.
- Especially in high tech, there is a huge industry of just watching the industry itself.
- We’ve also talked to a fair number of people that tell us they are more or less asked to be the librarians for CI. My own two cents is that I think there are a lot of people interested in building the overall legitimacy of CI as a discipline that is, for instance, taught in college programs.

1 - 20 of 38 Next ›

Showing 20▼ items per page

Selected Tags

méthodologie

Related Tags

Top Contributors

Click in to find related links.

Groups interested in méthodol...

Boostzone Institute

Members (14)

bookmarks (107)
Immerso

Members (6)

bookmarks (217)
ppa6015a09

Members (27)

bookmarks (137)

Related Lists on Diigo

Recherche et veille documentaire

Méthodologie de recherche e...

Items: 6 | Visits: 8

Created by: DA SILVA Maria
Travail universitaire

Méthodes et outils pour les...

Items: 2 | Visits: 1

Created by: GreGDurablement Macqu

Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »

Join Diigo

Christophe Deschamps's Library tagged méthodologie → View Popular

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Sponsored Links

Top Contributors

Groups interested in méthodol...