The Secret Language of Competitive Intelligence: How to See Through and Stay Ahead of Business Disruptions, Distortions, Rumors, and Smoke Screens

THE ART OF SMART . . . how not to get blindsided by the competition

Your key competitor has a cost advantage and you can’t for the life of you figure out why or how.

• A new technology or competitor is on the horizon that will completely upset the applecart in your business
as Google is now doing in advertising and Wal-Mart has done in retailing.

• You think a key competitor may drastically drop prices or perhaps roll out a significant new product. What can you do to ascertain what their major moves will be?

Competitive intelligence, the ability to see through or stay ahead of your competition, is the unspoken, hidden key to success. It is the means to knowing a customer’s strategic thinking, a rival’s cost structure when making a bid, or a competitor’s new product plans. Much as in a game of chess, you must think many moves ahead of your rivals—exactly the advantage competitive intelligence can give you.

Leonard Fuld provides the tools to cut through the smoke screens and rumors that distort reality and shows:

• How to avoid becoming your own worst enemy by removing blinders that can hide a competitor’s threatening moves

• How to see your competitor’s vulnerability and take advantage of the easily exploitable opportunities it presents

• How to run a war game to anticipate a rival’s pricing moves, new product introduction, or distribution strategy, and even to avoid being surprised by new entrants who play by different rules altogether

For more than twenty-five years, Leonard Fuld has been developing groundbreaking ways for managers to stay two steps ahead of the competition, providing effective ways of finding out about pricing, new product rollouts, strategic alliances, outsourcing, and cost of operations. In The Secret Language of Competitive Intelligence he shows how to take data that is widely avail-able to everyone, think critically about it, and convert it into highly refined intelligence that leads to effective market-based decisions.


Table of Contents

DISRUPTIONS, DISTORTIONS, RUMORS, AND SMOKE SCREENS: Page 1
Just Another Day in the Office

Chapter 1 THE ART OF SMART: Page19
How Intelligence Insight Helps Win the Game of Risk and Reward

Chapter 2 REALITY BITES: Page 45
Remove the Blinders

Chapter 3 WILL GOOGLE BEAT MICROSOFT?: Page 69
Using War Games to See Three Moves Ahead

Chapter 4 MAKE ME INTO A PEPPERONI: Page 119
Seeing the Trees to Understand the Forest

Chapter 5 EARLY WARNING: Page 135
Getting Intelligence on Competitors That May Not Exist in a World That Has Not Arrived

Chapter 6 THE INTERNET HOUSE OF MIRRORS: Page 165
Seeing Through the Confusion to Gather Intelligence Gems

Chapter 7 COMPETITIVE FOG: Page 211
How Rothschild, Buffett, Walton, Dell, and Branson Saw Clearly and Others Did Not

Chapter 8 DAY TO DAY: Page 237
Integrating Intelligence with Your Work

Chapter 9 THE BIG UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Page269

Notes 285
Acknowledgments 293
Index 297

Leonard M. Fuld, the founder and president of Fuld & Company and cofounder of the Fuld Gilad Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence, was called “the undisputed dean of competitive intelligence” by Fast Company. His articles have been published in leading publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Journal of Business Strategy. Mr. Fuld and his firm have also been profiled in the New York Times, The Economist, Fast Company, Newsweek, and Investors Business Daily, and he has appeared on the Today show and Marketplace.