Howdy from the beautiful Rocky Mountains! The Rocky Mountain chapter of SLA is thrilled to contribute this week’s FutureReady365 posts. We are a small, diverse community of 150+ members spread across a four-state region (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and South Dakota). We have a medley of posts from public school, government, higher education and independent professionals that we hope will prompt conversations, comments and thoughts on being future ready. Happy reading!

These days there is lots of talk about collaboration. I’m a believer as all my best ideas come from engaging in life’s experiences by listening, learning and discussing with others; and reading constantly.

This is how I developed cooperative intelligence www.thecisource.com/coopintel in 2004. I learned that many in competitive intelligence, my professional angle, are frustrated since their ideas and insight either don’t get shared with decision-makers or are ignored. We often blame management for this behavior, when it’s up to us to be heard and listened to. You need to figure out how to earn the respect of managers individually—and over time they will listen and engage.

The core attitude is cooperation, in that you show a willingness to give to others without expecting something in return. There are 3 interrelated behaviors in cooperative intelligence: Leadership, Connection and Communication.

Cooperative Leadership: While info pros and librarians usually don’t hold traditional leadership positions, we can be leaders by doing excellent work, which contains a proactive, future looking element. It is easy for us to become mired in the reactive detail of projects.

Likewise, we need to stand up for what we believe. Sometimes we are asked to research topics or use research methodologies which we think are unethical, and we have to say NO! We also need to share information and analysis that our management won’t like. It’s our job, and cooperatively we can gently, but firmly share what we learn.

Cooperative Connection: Cooperative connectors value everyone we meet. We make a point of making people feel important by listening and staying in touch. We make the person we are speaking to feel like s/he is the only person that matters, even when surrounded by hundreds at the SLA Annual Conference, for example!

Cooperative connectors share specific information only with those who might value it. Sharing with those who don’t care is rude. Take the time to identify who will appreciate what you produce. Cooperative connectors also keep their contacts up to date and add new people to their distribution lists in the areas they value.

Cooperative Communication: One way to be a cooperative communicator is to be a good listener, to observe, engage and ask good questions. Notice what people choose not to share or when their body action doesn’t jive with their words. Librarians are trained to be good listeners so have a competitive advantage over most other professions. However, do we project a cooperative attitude? Take the next step and find out how out how your customers want to be communicated with, their areas of need as well as their expertise. In our quest to be helpful, we often forget that people like to be asked about what they know.

Help your company be future ready by sharing your knowledge cooperatively. Your management team needs your insight, and you need to figure out how to reach them cooperatively!

Ellen Naylor is the owner of The Business Intelligence Source (http://www.thecisource.com). Read more of her insights at http://cooperativeintelligenceblog.com. She is a member of the Rocky Mountain SLA team.

Note: This blog builds on Ellen’s January FR blog.

Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

We’ve discussed a number of important competitive intelligence concepts and applications during CI Week on the FR365 blog – including the importance and value of analysis and industry-focused practices – all leading to the future readiness of the information professionals responsible for CI tasks and the organizations we serve. Our final post is a fitting wrap-up for the week – focusing on the highest goals of the CI process and its execution.

By Derek L. Johnson

How are you planning to elevate your competitive intelligence game in 2012?

One of the reasons I love fall so much is because it’s a reminder that we need to get our plans in place for the year ahead and get ourselves ready to meet an uncertain future as well-prepared as we can be.

Another reason I love autumn is because it’s football season; and football has important lessons to teach us about competitive intelligence being Future Ready. No football team takes the field without first giving their players the very best preparation before game day. Pre-season training camp focuses players’ attention on the field where they relentlessly drill each position even while strength training in the gym. But effective training also means working together to master the plays necessary to win. Then, throughout the season, preparing together to face each opponent, players unite to study film, keep healthy and stay fit so that, on game day, they can perform at their best.

CI teams are similar to football teams in many ways, particularly the competitive part, but with one critical difference: intelligence managers rarely have their players train together as a team. I hope you’ll help change that by investing in your people as one of the many things you can do today to elevate your game in the year ahead. But you should also be working on mastering your budget cycle, globalizing your perspective, building your internal human network and going beyond competitors.

To help understand how to achieve these goals, we’ve put together a couple of videos we hope you enjoy – part one here and part two here – that we hope encourages you to let your reach exceed your grasp and elevate your intelligence game in 2012. Enjoy!

Derek L. Johnson, CFA is Chief Executive Officer of the competitive intelligence firm Aurora WDC.

Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

In this post from another of our Competitive Intelligence Division experts, we focus on a specific industry application for CI. It describes how industries – in this case, the pharmaceutical industry – are continually changing and the important of adapting our CI processes to those changes in order to become and remain future ready.

by Claudia Clayton, Virginia Chapter, Business & Finance, Competitive Intelligence, Legal, and Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Divisions

Last week, I attended the Pharma CI Conference in Parsippany, NJ, expecting to hear a lot about tools of the pharmaceutical CI trade. Instead, all of the keynote sessions focused on the changes in the healthcare industry and how these would impact the way that pharmaceutical companies develop products going forward. In the end, I learned far more about the focus on outcomes in the healthcare industry and why pharma companies should be more aware of these both in and outside of the US.

One of the most interesting presentations was made by a senior executive with Ernst and Young, on Pharma 3.0. Pharma 1.0 was basically the era where pharma companies focused on blockbuster drugs, e.g. those drugs that dominate a category. Pharma 2.0 was the era of diversification, where companies that specialized in cancer drugs expanded into cholesterol medications or expanded geographically. Now we are in the Pharma 3.0 era, where drugs must begin to mirror – at least in part – the outcomes-based focus of the healthcare industry. (To find the report, go to this link or Google Pharma 3.0 + Ernst and Young .)

Here are just a few of the key thoughts in the report, which I believe apply to SLA members and those information pros that engage in or support competitive intelligence:

• Connecting information and developing insights: Companies now need to connect information across disparate sources, to involve IT management in strategy development, and to remove information silos.
• Build and operate multiple, simultaneous business models: Diverse customers and markets call for diverse business models, done in a systematic and scalable way.
• Collaborate in new ways and with new partners: The report calls for “radical collaboration” with very different partners, using customers and other stakeholders as “co-creators” and attracting non-traditional partners.
• It’s not about you: Ernst and Young tells companies they must stop pitching and start engaging – based on emerging communities and enhanced desire for personal value.
• Disrupting the value network: Incentives, metrics and standards in pharma need to be tailored to health outcomes. Although this relates specifically to the pharma industry, the principal applies to any industry that is impacted by others in our increasingly connected world.

So, if you are looking for insights, trying to provide relevant value to your clients, and interested in taking advantage of industry or product disruption rather than being negatively impacted by it, read this report. Then spend some time thinking about how to bring your programs into a 3.0 world.

Claudia Clayton is Managing Director of ViewPoint, a strategy, consulting and research firm established in 1993. She leads the competitive intelligence activities of ViewPoint on behalf of major US corporations in multiple industries. Claudia is a committed and hard-working volunteer, primarily serving the members of SLA’s CI Division and the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP). She won SCIP’s Catalyst Award in 2007 in recognition of her commitment to the CI profession. Claudia was the CI Division’s 2011 Conference Chair and currently serves as the CID’s Membership Chair as well.

Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

There is a great deal of discussion this week regarding the value of analysis – the exercise that turns information into intelligence. In today’s blog post, Emily Rushing emphasizes the importance and value of analysis and offers some practical ideas for accomplishing this important step in the competitive intelligence process, ultimately helping ourselves and our organizations become future ready.

by Emily Rushing, Texas Chapter, Competitive Intelligence and Legal Divisions

“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign…”

-         Signs, Five Man Electrical Band, 1971.

In keeping with this week’s Competitive Intelligence (CI) theme, I’d like to offer a comment on some favorite topics of mine: using CI to predict the future by reading the signs, and the value of intelligence analysis. I do so with apologies to readers of the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog who may have recently seen our post on “Applaud the Jellyfish.”

Many of us regularly engage in CI work and one of the most common, and most valuable, services we provide is the analysis of data. This analysis typically occurs when you’ve done the research, assembled an intimidating pile of data, and now need to sort through, sift out the meaningful stuff, and turn that into answers.

The process of providing that analysis helps us derive meaning from the signs. Or, to phrase that another way, to turn data into intelligence. A smart organization, with savvy library and information professionals, becomes future ready by watching for the signs, understanding what they mean and then using that intelligence to make good decisions.

So, we librarians and information professionals can demonstrate our future readiness by continuing to find and create innovative ways to add the analytical value to our work.

This analysis may be supported by exciting new predictive search tools, or temporal analytics, or just good, old-fashioned environmental monitoring. The processes may be improved with efficiency measures or with new and better technologies.

Whatever the latest techniques, as long as we are effectively turning signs into meaning, and data into intelligence, we will be future ready.

Emily is the Competitive Intelligence Manager for Haynes & Boone, LLP. Her interests include competitive intelligence, business and financial intelligence, legal and business research, business development, strategic planning, knowledge management, and information technologies. Emily has written and presented on competitive intelligence, research and technology. A Dallas native, her hobbies include reading, cooking, and reading about cooking.

Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

Analysis turns information into intelligence.  So, it is a treat to hear from an expert on competitive analysis – Dr. Craig Fleisher – in today’s blog entry.  Dr. Fleisher provides a summary of some of the analytical tools that information professionals responsible for CI tasks can use to create actionable intelligence, adding value to the decision-making process and making our organizations future-ready.

by Dr. Craig S. Fleisher

Competitive intelligence (CI) has always been a key tool in the organizational future readiness tool-kit. By its very nature, intelligence is forward looking and helps organizations take actions today in often complex, fast-moving and  uncertain environments that will better position them for the future.  To illustrate this point, I’ll identify a few analytical tools I have written about in my books [i] that are part of the essential CI tool kit.

Driving forces analysis (DFA) is a way of understanding and accounting for possible change at the industry level. “Drivers” are clusters of trends that create influences on changes to an industry’s structure and a rival’s competitive conduct. CI practitioners use this tool to better understand how attractive or profitable their industries may be at a designated future point.

Growth vector analysis (GVA) helps the practitioner review the different product alternatives available to an organization in relation to its market options. By undertaking a systematic evaluation of the market, competitive conditions and market growth opportunities can be identified and understood. GVA is one of the first steps in the process of targeting profitable growth opportunities. This tool organizes the myriad of growth opportunities into a manageable framework.

Various forms of life cycle analysis, focused for example on targets like issues, organizations, patents, products or technology (for example), help the practitioner to understand how the focal element will ordinarily evolve. By understanding the ordinary evolution of the item, the practitioner can better gauge tactics and strategies to leverage actions to extend an item in its growth stages, or to identify the best time to develop new products or services when the present ones require replacement.

Scenario planning and analysis is a structured way of developing multiple scenarios that compensate for two common decision-making errors, namely under- and over- prediction of change. Through a disciplined yet creative approach, scenario analysis is a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis that imagines many possible futures of environmental change, reduces these many scenarios to a manageable number of possibilities, incorporates sensitivity analysis to determine dependent variable relationships, and isolates trends and patterns to counteract blind-spots in strategic decision making. It provides a framework to couch future decisions around the strategic posture of an organization in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Information professionals that understand the application of these analytical tools can enhance organizational future readiness efforts. The use of each of these tools requires specific types of data and informational inputs. I can think of no other professionals in today’s organizations that can acquire these informational inputs as proficiently special librarians. You are needed by planners, marketers, strategists and decision makers, among others,  to help your organizations succeed in the future. Knowing how these future-focused CI tools are employed is just another way that your contribution can make a significant difference!

Dr. Fleisher is the Chief Learning Officer of Aurora WDC, Madison, Wisconsin. A former business school dean, MBA director and university research chair, he has authored 10+ books, been President of SCIP (Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals), editor of the Journal of Competitive intelligence and Management, and was awarded SCIP’s Meritorious and Fellow recognitions for his contributions to the field of Competitive Intelligence.

Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

By popular demand, members of SLA’s CI Division are again blogging for the FR365 effort during the week of September 26, focused specifically on competitive intelligence processes and applications. We are delighted to provide content and an understanding that will help the FR365 audience understand what CI is and how it can be applied to add value across organizations. Helping ourselves and our organizations become future ready is the ultimate value delivered by a productive and successful competitive intelligence program. We hope you will enjoy and apply some of the concepts and practices we share with you during CI Week.

by Toni Wilson, Cincinnati Chapter, Competitive Intelligence Division

A common message mentioned during nearly every CI Division session at this year’s SLA conference was that competitive intelligence is not about our organization’s competitors, but about keeping our organizations competitive. This is an important clarification, but what does it really mean in practice? A couple of topics, to which we can and should apply our CI process, can have the effect of changing a marketplace as a whole – ultimately impacting our organizations and our existing competitors in the future.

One important topic on which we should focus as part of a CI effort is the role of changing technologies. Consider the role of streaming technology and its effect on cable and satellite TV services providers, as a current example. Huge numbers of individuals and families are cancelling their traditional cable or satellite services to depend on online streaming services for entertainment and/or invest in tools that make the process more convenient (I’m personally a fan of Roku). I’m not aware of the statistics, but this trend must be having an enormous effect on the providers of the traditional services. If these emerging technologies are not an immediate threat to these businesses, they likely will be in the future. Did they see this coming? Maybe…if they were future-looking and their CI functions were focused on the emergence of the streaming technologies, in addition to the activities of their established competitors. If not, they must be struggling to respond to these marketplace changes, which certainly impacts their respective abilities to compete successfully. I’d rather be the intelligence practitioner who brought this trend to the attention of my decision makers years ago than the individual forced to explain why revenues are being eroded today.

Competitive intelligence can also help identify opportunities for organizations, in addition to future threats. An obvious example includes the government legislation and regulations that have been created around the demand for environmental protection and the popularity of sustainability. Related laws were developed over a period of time – a focused CI process could easily identify opportunities for new products and services by using published bill- and regulation-tracking information, among other sources. The laws have impacted a number of industries, the most successful of which identified the related opportunities early and created and executed plans to take advantage of them.

While I’m certainly not recommending this, it’s possible that if the only thing we accomplish is to help our organizations understand the technologies and legal or political trends impacting their ability to compete successfully in the future – even if we don’t focus on individual competitors – we will be successful in adding value and making a real and lasting difference into the future.

Toni Wilson is the principal consultant at MarketSmart Research Services. She is an experienced competitive intelligence practitioner, having performed hundreds of projects over the past 20+ years, in a variety of industries and throughout the world. Prior to establishing MarketSmart Research in 2000, Toni was a corporate intelligence professional at LexisNexis for more than a dozen years. She is an expert in sources, tools and techniques for intelligence collection, and frequently speaks to groups and coaches individuals regarding the CI process. Toni is a volunteer leader, prolific author, enthusiastic mentor and professional award winner. She is the current chair of SLA’s Competitive Intelligence Division.

Introduction (Toni Wilson)

We started CI Week on the FR365 blog with a description of what competitive intelligence is and what it is not, and we are closing the week with the same focus – understanding what CI is and the value it delivers for information professionals and organizations with goals to be future-ready.  This blog post offers a graphic and practical description of how CI can be applied in real-world situations.

Picture this:  You are stuck in a horror film – a typical B-movie situation that already has multiple people dead or missing.  Do you want to go into the woods alone searching for a friend who has run off after a half-werewolf, half-robot-alien creature from the future has killed two of your other friends already?  If only you knew something about the Were-Bot.  Does it get full on two people or does it want to eat more?  Does it sleep after eating?  Perhaps it doesn’t like the taste of librarians.  All of this information could help you choose a future path, action, or next step.  It would be useful in this situation to have a Competitive Intelligence report on Were-Bots, and a librarian would be just the person to put it together.  Whether your business is ladders or law, school or screwdrivers, knowing what your competitors are doing, the composition of your clients, or, like our B-movie situation, the eating habits of your enemies, is invaluable.  The addition of this in-depth information can allow you to analyze yourself in relation to your partners within the company, and how, as a whole, you can relate to those outside.  Competitive intelligence makes an organization future ready by researching, compiling, and analyzing information on THEM, and it is this information that allows the right choices to be made moving forward.

Charles H. Frey has been the Manager of Reference Services at Neal Gerber & Eisenberg LLP in Chicago for four years.  He has been working in law firm libraries for 13 years and got his Library Science degree from the University of Kentucky.

Introduction (Toni Wilson)

This blog post, from an expert member of the CI Division, speaks to the importance of communicating the results of CI research effectively.  While we’ve been focusing to a large extent on the CI collection process this week, as it helps information professionals and their organizations become and remain ready for the future, communicating the findings from our CI collection efforts appropriately – so it’s absorbed and becomes part of the decision-making process – is absolutely critical.

Competitive intelligence (CI), at its most basic level can be defined as being future ready – or armed with the right information to the make the right decisions.  In this post-post modern, Web 3.0, social media, everything and intensely technology mediated world, information is ubiquitous.  Being “Future Ready” to me means being able to take information and elevate it by taking that information in whatever forms it comes and turning it into actionable intelligence.  Librarians or any information professional’s ability to turn reams of paper (or electronic documents) into a three-second sound byte or a neatly parsed phrase that holds meaning and contains value is the essence of being future ready.  In some respects, being future ready for special librarians engaged in CI is a matter of perspective and semantics.  For example, what the competitive intelligence world calls Early Warning Systems, librarians might call Current Awareness.  To be future ready, it’s time to stop thinking about research questions and to start thinking about business problems and how information-turned-into-CI, with the help of analysis, can help organizations solve their business problems with an eye to the future.

Zena Applebaum is a competitive intelligence professional at Bennett Jones LLP, a Canadian law firm.  She writes articles for industry publications and blogs regularly regarding topics important to the successful practice of CI.  Zena is currently the CI Division’s Vendor Relations Chair.

Introduction (Toni Wilson)

In this article from another of our CI Division experts, we move from understanding how CI makes information professionals and the individuals and organizations they serve future-ready to understanding the future of the practice of competitive intelligence itself.  In other words, as our respective marketplaces continue to change and evolve – prompting us to be prepared with competitive intelligence and insights – so does the practice of CI.  Another way to be future-ready is to embrace and prepare for changes in the way CI is practiced.

As the current chair for the SLA CI Division’s 2011 conference, I am particularly interested in what makes a conference session memorable and important.  One event I attended recently at the SCIP conference, which made an impression, was led by Dr. Craig S. Fleisher, a leading academic, expert and author – Dr. Fleisher delivered his interactive session, CI 2020, to a sold-out crowd.  The result was the collective reasoning of over 100 CI professionals regarding the future of CI.  Following are a few key takeaways:

1. The lines between primary and secondary research are blurring:  They will continue to converge due to the increasing use of social media in CI.  CI professionals may no longer specialize in one or the other in the future.
2. Info-glut, info-toxicity and data overload have us “drinking from an informational fire hose.”  This growing trend will require us all to become better analysts and create more sophisticated analysis.
3. Higher performance standards and certifications will be required.  Better standards for CI professionals to be measured by, as well as trustworthy certifications for CI personnel are a must.
4. The question of supply vs. demand is highly debated.  Forces increasing client demand include globalization and increasing competition.  However, CI professionals are not confident overall that enough educated practitioners can be trained with existing programs.

Dr. Fleisher will be leading a CI 2020 session at the SLA conference this year, entitled CI Unconference.  The results from these interactive sessions are used by Dr. Fleisher as part of a longitudinal analysis of the future of CI.  It’s very exciting that SLA’s members can take advantage of an opportunity to participate in this important, ongoing project, learn from the findings, and apply them to becoming more future-ready professionally.

Claudia Clayton is Managing Director of ViewPoint, a strategy, consulting and research firm established in 1993.  She leads the competitive intelligence activities of ViewPoint on behalf of major U.S. corporations in multiple industries.  Claudia is a committed and hard-working volunteer, primarily serving the members of SLA’s CI Division and the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).  She won SCIP’s Catalyst Award in 2007 in recognition of her commitment to the CI profession.  Claudia is the CI Division’s 2011 Conference Chair and currently serves as the CID’s Membership Chair as well.

Introduction (Toni Wilson)

There are several themes running through this week’s blog articles from the CI Division experts.  One is that competitive intelligence is inherently forward-looking.  Another is that marketplace insights can be developed by observing and understanding patterns in the information we collect.  Related to the latter is a very important theme – that informational professionals are uniquely qualified to do this, ultimately creating value for the end users, clients and organizations we serve.  In today’s blog, Anna Shallenberger offers practical perspective regarding filtering the facts we gather to provide insights and need-to-know results.

Intelligence – be it regarding competitors, markets or any other area – is inherently forward-looking. And yes – research and content is necessary to feed the intel engine that empowers future-readiness.  Many Info Pros possess untapped skills key to delivering great intel (CI, MI, etc.) services, abilities they may not realize organizations need. The challenges are to apply them effectively and visibly.  YOU have to believe, because in a world where “Perception is reality” – people won’t buy what you’re “selling” without that confidence.

So what are these secret super-hero powers? Is it all about statistical number crunching and PowerPoint presentations? Certainly not, although a certain base proficiency in these areas is preferable. And, of course, our data collection and synthesis skills have value, not to mention our expertise in validating sources. It is the talent to both battle the swollen inflow of inputs AND partner in delivering those targeted Aha’s and So What’s.

It takes an effective balancing act – levering the wealth of information content and methodology our “researcheritis” yields with the right filter – while smartly triangulating the significance of that which has made it through.

Is it the same idea as actionable intelligence? Not precisely. Think of it like a souped-up version of the kid’s “Lite Brite” toy where content is the pegs and you have a big bucket of them in front of you.  The more pegs, the higher the resolution of the image, and the better the insights, right? Again, not exactly.

You don’t need to use every peg. Some should shine brighter (weigh more heavily) than others.  You can arrange them in a variety of designs that make sense in the moment. But the future ready Info Pro sees patterns based on triangulating, drawing on the wealth of otherwise useless trivia rattling around in our mental hard drive.

Yes, our content gathering skills have great value. But let’s consider our content filtering abilities, and how access to all the data we’ve seen in life empowers us! LIS professionals offer a unique ability to TRIANGULATE between all the information and ASSESS meaning.  Internal and external sources – gathered by ourselves or others. Teaming up on the analysis and impact of the intel. Because it’s that piece that makes organization most future ready.

Anna F. Shallenberger is an experienced researcher, educator, author, strategist & consultant, Anna Shallenberger, aka the ClosetLibrarian, was recently recognized in Best of the Business Web.  At SLA 2011 , she is a panelist  for “Integrating with Sales & Marketing to Capture & Deliver Intelligence.”  At the Intelligence Café, Anna will lead a discussion regarding Unique Information Sources & the Deep Web.   She was also a spotlight panelist @ SLA 2010 and served as conference planner for the CI Division.