THE ART OF SMART . . . how not to get blindsided by the competitionYour 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 altogetherFor 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 ContentsDISRUPTIONS, DISTORTIONS, RUMORS, AND SMOKE SCREENS: Page 1Just Another Day in the OfficeChapter 1 THE ART OF SMART: Page19How Intelligence Insight Helps Win the Game of Risk and RewardChapter 2 REALITY BITES: Page 45Remove the BlindersChapter 3 WILL GOOGLE BEAT MICROSOFT?: Page 69Using War Games to See Three Moves AheadChapter 4 MAKE ME INTO A PEPPERONI: Page 119Seeing the Trees to Understand the ForestChapter 5 EARLY WARNING: Page 135Getting Intelligence on Competitors That May Not Exist in a World That Has Not ArrivedChapter 6 THE INTERNET HOUSE OF MIRRORS: Page 165Seeing Through the Confusion to Gather Intelligence GemsChapter 7 COMPETITIVE FOG: Page 211How Rothschild, Buffett, Walton, Dell, and Branson Saw Clearly and Others Did NotChapter 8 DAY TO DAY: Page 237Integrating Intelligence with Your WorkChapter 9 THE BIG UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Page269Notes 285Acknowledgments 293Index 297From the Hardcover edition.