SCIP09 Keynote Set!
August 19, 2008 by admin · Stored at:
We know that many of you who are following our progress for the SCIP09 annual conference taking place April 21-24, 2009 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers are very eager to hear who we’ve selected for our keynote speaker. It was a challenging decision this year and certainly one that we took very seriously. Aside from casting a wide net to find the best fit for our field, we spent considerable time reviewing the pros and cons of the last 5-6 keynotes, while also considering the many challenges all businesses are faced within this difficult economic climate.We’re excited to report we’ve found our person for the job! Michael Treacy, author of Double-Digit Growth and The Discipline of Market Leaders, will be with us on Thursday morning, April 23, 2009. With our conference theme of “Growth in Challenging Economic Times,” we’ve selected Treacy because of his applications of growth-oriented insights in any economic environment. Additionally, Treacy is willing to apply his work toward the practice of competitive intelligence and we feel that will leave all conference attendees with insights they can apply at their organizations - namely, driving continued growth in today’s challenging global macroeconomic environment.
Regarding our keynote selection, we requested feedback from several practitioners, vendors and other thought leaders in the CI industry. We’re energized by Treacy’s material and feel we’ve maximized our budget dollars to go up-market for a keynote presenter that will apply his work to our chosen field and give everyone insights into how they can leverage that insight immediately to drive growth within their own organizations. Derek Johnson, Ken Garrison, and Sandy Skipper will be interviewing Michael Treacy face-to-face on September 12, 2008.
We hope you’re equally as excited by our keynote selection and we welcome your constructive insights in terms of how we can make SCIP09 the best-ever annual conference!
Best Regards,
Derek Johnson
Program Chair
Derek.Johnson@AuroraWDC.com
We know that many of you who are following our progress for the SCIP09 annual conference taking place April 21-24, 2009 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers are very eager to hear who we’ve selected for our keynote speaker. It was a challenging decision this year and certainly one that we took very seriously. Aside from casting a wide net to find the best fit for our field, we spent considerable time reviewing the pros and cons of the last 5-6 keynotes, while also considering the many challenges all businesses are faced within this difficult economic climate.We’re excited to report we’ve found our person for the job! Michael Treacy, author of Double-Digit Growth and The Discipline of Market Leaders, will be with us on Thursday morning, April 23, 2009. With our conference theme of “Growth in Challenging Economic Times,” we’ve selected Treacy because of his applications of growth-oriented insights in any economic environment. Additionally, Treacy is willing to apply his work toward the practice of competitive intelligence and we feel that will leave all conference attendees with insights they can apply at their organizations - namely, driving continued growth in today’s challenging global macroeconomic environment.
Regarding our keynote selection, we requested feedback from several practitioners, vendors and other thought leaders in the CI industry. We’re energized by Treacy’s material and feel we’ve maximized our budget dollars to go up-market for a keynote presenter that will apply his work to our chosen field and give everyone insights into how they can leverage that insight immediately to drive growth within their own organizations. Derek Johnson, Ken Garrison, and Sandy Skipper will be interviewing Michael Treacy face-to-face on September 12, 2008.
We hope you’re equally as excited by our keynote selection and we welcome your constructive insights in terms of how we can make SCIP09 the best-ever annual conference!
Best Regards,
Derek Johnson
Program Chair
Derek.Johnson@AuroraWDC.com
Passion
August 8, 2008 by Ken Garrison · Stored at: In the most recent issue of the Competitive Intelligence Magazine, Joe Goldberg referred to passion in our organization.
I’ve spent the last twelve years of my working career in the association world and, like anyone who lives in that world; I can tell you that we see passion all the time. The passion can be for a cause or in the case of SCIP for a profession. We need that passion. We depend on that passion.
That passion is generally expressed publicly and privately in the form of volunteerism.
A volunteer is a person that donates something to the association. That something could come in the form of time; like those that serve on our board, advisory committees, or chapter leadership. That something could come in the form of knowledge; like those that have donated their time to present workshops or conference sessions, writing articles or chapters in the publications of the foundation. That something could come in the form of being a SCIP champion and supporting the organization. These are just some of the ways that people volunteer.
Like many small associations SCIP depends on this donation from Volunteers. We would not survive without it. We do not grow as an organization without our volunteers or our champions.
I’m often asked, “Why do they volunteer?” I think the best answer is usually, “They believe.” Volunteers believe in the goals and mission of the organization. Thus, they are willing to donate these important services to that organization.
The next question I usually get is, “What do they get out of it?” The answer to that is, “quite a bit,” both directly and indirectly. What volunteering allows them to do is focus on an area, a cause, or portion of the profession that is of interest to them. They can also gain valuable growth by being in positions of leadership and having an opportunity to work with other leaders. This is the type of professional development that an association can offer and give back for that valuable volunteerism.
Over the past several years, SCIP has worked, and continues to work, on these volunteer opportunities. Can some of you speak about your experiences, either in volunteering in general or in volunteering for SCIP specifically? If you do not know where to direct your volunteer time for the organization, please feel free to contact me.
Customer Feedback Questions
August 1, 2008 by Bonnie Hohhof · Stored at: A SCIP member is developing a survey for obtaining CI customer feedback for his corporate function and wanted to review surveys others have used. Not having actual survey samples available, I asked the SCIP Fellows to provide suggestions for survey questions.
Below are several responses:
Vernon Prior ( vernonprior@a1.com.au ):
Why was the information needed?
Did it help to make a decision, take action, or solve a problem?
Did it force competitors to change plans, strategies, or operations?
Did it help to make money or save time?
Did it reduce any adverse effects of competitors’ actions?
Were the results measurable and if so what are the figures?
Was it delivered on time?
Would it have made any difference if the information had not been provided?
Ellen Naylor ( ellen@thebisource.com ):
1. What was the decision or action you made as a result of what we provided?
2. Did the analysis/data satisfy the needs for the decision or action you were taking?
3. If so, how?
4. If not or if you could have used more data/analysis, what could we have provided that would have been better?
5. Are there any ROI implications for what you were enabled to do based on what we provided? (e.g. move ahead with a new product or not move ahead with the wrong product that would have cost lots of money or make a sale).
In general, I think it’s best to call your clients after major projects, since people are being surveyed electronically to death these days. It’s much faster and shows more commitment from you than another electronic survey.
Michael Sandman ( msandman@fuld.com ):
We tend to focus on decisions and deliverables. For example:
What decisions did you make differently as a result of the intelligence we provided?
What was the value to the business of those decisions (either in dollar terms or in terms of success)
What kinds of decisions will you be making in the future, and what kinds of intelligence will help you make those decisions?
How well did the deliverable (presentation, reports newsletter) fit your needs?
How could it be improved? (Format, length, content…)
How do you define CI?
Curious about what a person would see if they searched Google for the definition of competitive intelligence, I came up with the usual 1M+ results. Below, in order of appearance, are the top 10 definitions. Which do you agree with? What definition does your organization use?
Bonnie Hohhof
1. A necessary, ethical business discipline for decision making based on understanding the competitive environment. (scip.org)
2. A systematic and ethical programme for gathering, analysing, and managing any combination of Data, Information, and Knowledge concerning the Business environment in which a company operates that, when acted upon, will confer a significant Competitive advantage or enable sound decisions to be made. Its primary role is Strategic early warning. (Vernon Prior, Language of CI.scip.org)
3. A process that transforms disaggregated information into relevant, accurate and usable strategic knowledge about competitors, position, performance, capabilities and intentions. (Glossary, SensaCom.com)
4. The systematic gathering of open information when collated and analyzed provides a better understanding of a competitor firm’s structure, culture, behavior, capabilities, and weaknesses. (glossary, fbig.ca)
5. The action of gathering, analyzing, and applying information about products, domain constituents, customers, and competitors for the short term and long term planning needs of an organization. (wikipedia.com)
6. The purposeful and coordinated monitoring of your competitor(s), wherever and whoever they may be, within a specific marketplace. (aurorawdc.com)
7. the gathering of information about a business’ competitors to make one’s own business more competitive, the kind of market research designed and carried out to find and keep a business’ market share. (about.com)
8. A process which includes three basic sub-processes: collecting information, analysis to turn information into intelligence, and dissemination of intelligence to identified intelligence customers inside the business. (emp-is.com)
9. A process - using legal and ethical means - for discovering, developing, and delivering timely, relevant intelligence needed by decision makers wanting to make their organizations more competitive (worksys.com)
10. Continuous process of monitoring a firm’s industry or market to identify current and future competitors, their current and announced activities, how their actions will affect the firm, and how to respond. (businessdictionary.com)
LinkedIn and Social Networking
Have you joined the SCIP LinkedIn group yet? If not, you might be missing out from what we’re seeing. We’re pretty excited that more than 800 SCIP members have joined the SCIP LinkedIn group (visit this link to find out more about the group). The feedback we’ve had has been very positive with a few people even saying that the LinkedIn group was a factor in them renewing their membership.
I’m still getting the handle on social networking myself so I’d like to ask for comments in two areas. First, can those that have already joined the LinkedIn group articulate the real value for other members who might not understand LinkedIn.
Secondly, staff and volunteer committees are evaluating networking opportunities offered by SCIP and how to address new opportunities presented by web 2.0 and social networking. For instance, we’re considering posting video of past award recipients to YouTube to promote visibility. Are there other social networking groups where SCIP should have a presence (maybe Orkut?)?
Welcome
So you’ve found your way to “The Voice.” Welcome. We have been working diligently to address social networking and your web 2.0 experience with SCIP and this blog is the newest feature in that area. Have you noticed the other work we’ve been doing in this area?
The LinkedIn group has worked out very well. Already more than a quarter of SCIP members have chosen to join the LinkedIn group and are using the advanced networking features that go along with that platform.
The discussion forums have seen some very interesting threads started but there haven’t been as many conversations as we had expected. We’re going to go back to the web task force to get their feedback on why that is. One thing we believe after conversations with members is that we may have given people too many options. We may need to scale back the number of forums to one and not have them so categorized. I’d like your feedback on that idea.
Did you catch the “I’d like your feedback.” Many of the tools and features we’ve implemented over the past several months enhance your ability to communicate with other members or visitors to scip.org. What was missing was a way for you to add SCIP into that communication. SCIP needed a way to be able to “talk” with our audience in a different way than we had done in the past. We needed a way to start a new type of conversation. That’s why we decided to call this blog “The Voice.” It’s our chance to have a different type of conversation and “speak” with you.
And I invite you to begin that conversation with me here. What can we do at SCIP that will help you in your work and career? I’d also ask that you tell us what we are doing well that you value at SCIP so your fellows members and the SCIP staff can see what you value about SCIP.
I’m not a blogger. I had a fair level of anxiety about doing a blog before I decided that it was something that SCIP needed. I’m learning much of this technology on the go as the SCIP staff does a great job of helping me use it effectively. However, like many things in life, this blog will only be as valuable as what goes into it.
From time to time, I’ll come here to address different topics within SCIP. We’re also going to have staff and volunteers blog about topics of which they are knowledgeable. Take advantage of this. Join this conversation.
I’m going to start slowly and ask a single question again. Why aren’t you using the discussion forums more? Share your thoughts using the comments link at the beginning of this post.