The Secret Language of Competitive Intelligence

1. INTRODUCTION

The title of the book is The Secret Language of Competitive Intelligence. The book was written by Leonard M. Fuld. This book was published in 2006 by an American based printing house i.e. the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc, New York.

About the author of this book: Leonard M. Fuld is the Founder and President of Fuld & Company and cofounder of the Fuld Gilad Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence. His articles have been published in leading publication, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and Journal of Business Strategy. Mr. Fuld and hisfirm have also been profiled in the New York Times, The Economist, Fast Company, Newsweek and Investors Business Daily.

This 309 pages book was authored by Mr. Fuld to further elaborate the art of smart. This book subject matter is competitive intelligence, the ability to see through or stay ahead of competitors, which is the unspoken and hidden key to success. This competitive intelligence can be used to knowing a customer’s strategic thinking, a rival’s cost structure when making a bid, or a competitor’s new product plan.

2. CONTENT

Discussion in this book provides the outfit to cut through the smoke screens and rumours that distort reality and shows us how to avoid becoming our own worst enemy by removing blinders that can hide a competitor’s intimidating moves. Also, this book converse about how to see our competitor’s vulnerability and take benefit of the easily exploitable opportunities it presents. Last but not least this book also argue how to run a war game to anticipate a rival’s pricing moves, new product introduction, or distributing strategy, and even to stay away from being surprised by new entrants who play by different rules in total.

This book has nine main chapter excluded the preface.

The preface of this book is titled Disruption, Distortion, Rumours and Smoke Screen. Basically, this chapter generally discusses the content of the other chapter and how the author got the idea of intelligence competitiveness. The author admired his late father who was an immigrant from Germany who then became the ground infantry for the American in World War II. The tools used by his father in that war was the ability to speak German and how he used the ability to gain information from the captured Germany soldier during interrogation.

Chapter 1 : The Art Of Smart

In this chapter, the essence is that intelligence is the art of applying flawed knowledge. It is the art of SWAG [as the author named it], the Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. No matter how much information we gather, uncertainty will always exist and still we need to make decision.

Developing intelligence seems so simple – firstly we must find our intelligence perspective, i.e. we have to see things our own way, our perfect way in seeing things. Secondly, we have to take advice from one great CEO after another. Then appreciate the culture overtones, read the signals and always look for ground-level information. It’s all so straight forward.

Chapter 2 : Reality Bites

This chapter points out that sometimes people just get in the way of valid intelligence because their minds block out reality. For too many managers, denial, rationalization, groupthink, or not-invented-here attitudes are among the reasons why a competitive revelation never comes to surface.

Chapter 3 : Will Google Beat Microsoft

This chapter is actually a report and discussion from a war game conducted by the author and his firm. The war game involved four teams from two great business schools i.e. MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the Harvard Business School. Each teams consisted of PhD students.

The war game was about which team could come out with the best business strategy. Each team represented Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Chapter 4 : Make Me Into A Pepperoni

The most important substance indicated in this chapter is that if denial supersedes the facts, then the irrational strategy will come out. This chapter pointed out how important to know our enemy clearly.

Seeing our competition clearly means seeing it rationally, if not necessarily perfectly. It is also about seeing, assessing, and understanding the details. This is so important to know the facts about the competitor in order to us making right decision to stay ahead.

Chapter 5 : Early Warning

This chapter discusses about the early warning concept. The early warning concept i.e. the ability to see into the future is easy to understand. Early warning consists of four very simple steps:
1. Draw the road map of possible future;
2. Identify the signals needed to watch for each of these futures;
3. Find the people who will watch the signals in the course of their everyday work; and
4. Make sure to create an approach to act quickly once one of the futures identified begins to emerge.

We need to know our colleagues and the amount of risk they can tolerate. The best way to learn about early warning and how to make it work is to learn how others have made it work for them.

Chapter 6 : The Internet House Of Mirrors

In this chapter, this book discusses on how to see through the confusion in the internet to gather information.

The internet has a lot of information buried but need correct way to dig the information because when searching the internet, it’s like the house of mirrors when every links link to each other. This book discusses further how to gather information in internet the correct and effective way.

Chapter 7 : Competitive Fog

This chapter shows how the influential businessman used the intelligence to gather information and expanding their business by taking over competitors. Below are few advices:
1. Act on critical intelligence with speed – Nathan Rothschild
2. You will need less information if you build on past experience – Warren Buffett
3. See your competitors through the eyes of your customers, probably the clearest view of all – Sam Walton and Michael Dell
4. Scan the market from all dimensions, including the political one – Richard Branson

Chapter 8 : Day To Day

How to use intelligence in daily live is discussed in this chapter.

The word intelligence may not be in our daily glossary, but we know its meaning. We can apply intelligence to achieve competitive advantage. We can achieve results without necessarily moving bureaucratic mountains, without reengineering an entire organisation. Intelligence is part of our life; it’s a win-win for everyone.

Chapter 9 : The Big Unanswered Questions

Intelligence is a strange business. Not many know about it and also ask sceptical questions in using competitive intelligence for their organisation to stay ahead of the competitors. This chapter tells about the unawareness of the public about the competitive intelligence.

3. REVIEW

In term of contents, this book gave good contents in competitive intelligence which is a new topic. Many people still doesn’t understand about competitive intelligence and how to apply it in organisation, either business or else.

However, this book is quite a boring book with its 309 pages all text. There’s no continuation between the chapters and elaboration of the book are dry and not specific. In elaboration, the author should consider using picture, drawing, chart, diagram etc to give better understanding to readers.

This book like a story telling when the author told too much about the success of a few individuals in business but still cannot elaborate well and with simple way how to use this so called competitive intelligence in daily life. The author should consider improvising his skill in writing and consider what type of reader these days than just wrote a conventional book with boring all text.

And a war game which consisted of student from university was not the reality of how Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft would react in their business strategy. It was the outsider from the company who give the strategy in the war game. The author should gather true information from inside the company and give reader real actions of the giants.

4. CONCLUSION

From this book, reader can learn new topic to improve management skills. And the most important skill to learn is how to see through the competition by understanding the strategy of the competitors and quickly react to the strategy either defensive or offensive ways.

p/s: Book review ini merupakan satu tugasan semasa aku berkursus Diploma Pengurusan Awam, INTAN.