Competitive intelligence: What IT must know
Bruce Taylor spoke with Arik Johnson, founder and managing director of Recon Competitive Intelligence at Aurora WDC on competitive dynamics among enterprises. This is an edited transcript of that conversation. You may also listen to the original interview here.
Hi. I'm Bruce Taylor, and this is Voices on ITworld.com. In a time of great concern about corporate risk, regulatory compliance, and the safety and sanctity of proprietary and competitive information, the field of competitive intelligence as a part of the strategic planning and positioning of a corporation may seem a bit of out of sync with the times. Our guest today, however, may have some very different thoughts. He is Arik Johnson, founder and managing director of Recon Competitive Intelligence at Aurora WDC, where he advises business leaders on how to better understand their business rivals, the competitive dynamics among enterprises in the marketplace. He also writes a syndicated column on competitive intelligence issues.
Bruce Taylor: Arik, welcome to the program.
Arik Johnson: Thank you, Bruce, great to be here.
Taylor: To begin, could you give me an overview of competitive intelligence, what it is, what it is not, what kinds of information gathering and analysis tools does it require, and things that you think that an audience of IT professionals would want to know.
Johnson: Certainly. Competitive intelligence is one of those undertakings that any moderately successful business will do, at least informally in order to create sustainability for itself and its market. And ultimately the level of formalization of that function sort of separates winners from losers, in my opinion. It allows organizations to out maneuver and outsmart, really out innovate their functional equivalents, their direct competitive rivals in whatever markets they decide to play in.
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