Drilling for Diamonds

Market leaders are always under pressure to meet high expectations. High visibility projects can come in many forms.

Klais, a world leader in organs produced the only bamboo curtain in the world.

Belfor, another world leader in fire and water damage removal, restored 100,000 books after a large fire at the University of Vienna and earned a high profile mitigating the damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Otto Bock - leaders in prostheses - created high visibility by providing a service for theirs and all competing brands at the Beijing Paraplegics.

High visibility projects are often high risk. That’s why when they come off; customers comprehend why you really are number one.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Chess expert Bruce Pandollfini makes the point in his book, Every move must have a puspose, Strategies from Chess and Life, (Hyperion 2003) “nothing should be played without first considering what the opponent has just done.”

In an ideal play, in marketing as in chess your moves should always do at least two things in convert: foil out opponents aims while fostering ours. “We cant do either properly  if we do only one, and both can be accomplished by first assessing what the other player has done.”

Yet, social scientists who observe chess players eyes note beginners usually restrict their eye scans to just their side of the board. by contrast, experienced players inspect both sides.

I have found the same in marketing, negotiation and sales. Beginners ignore theire competitors. yet seasoned professionals first look at their opponents moves then plan theirs.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Leading competitive intelligence consultant, Leonard Fuld believes FORTUNE 1,000 companies together spend over $500 million on competitive intelligence each year.

When I first wrote about Fulds pioneering work on competitive intelligence in a 1990 book on negotiation, competitive intelligence was a fledging industry. Today, many major companies appear to have special units devoted to gathering competitive intelligence.

The gathering of competitive intelligence is perfectly legal, if confined to analyzing public information.

Fuld predicts that the budget for competitive intelligence will balloon to $10 billion by 2010.

How much time and money are you spending on systematically gathering competitive intelligence? How much are your competitors spending on analyzing the information you release to the market place?

Popularity: 8% [?]