Megatrends: Should competitive intelligence pay attention?

[Eric Garland]

There was a debate on this site a couple years back when the financial markets imploded - should more industry-driven competitive intelligence analysts take the time to look at megatrends that will impact their business, even if it isn't technically about specific competitors, customers and market trends?

We may get a chance to retry this question - Greece's two-year bonds are yielding 26%. Portugal's sovereign debt was just downgraded by ratings agencies. Spain is following fast. And Japan is finally on the verge of fiscal collapse after years of monetization. And while the United States as a nation is somewhat more stable, several of its cities and states are close to "Chapter 9" bankruptcy.

Sure, you may not be in the financial industry monitoring the yields of bonds on a daily basis - but should you be keeping an eye on this anyhow?

If not competitive intelligence, then who?

[Arik Johnson]

I for one would love to debate this in a Friday teleconference! Maybe next week?! Tomorrow's is scheduled around the CI wiki task force.

[Edward Allison]

Schedule it up.

[Arik Johnson]

Hi all,

Apologies for not having gotten this Intel Collab discussion scheduled - I got sidelined by... well, some work to do - so, I'm wondering if we should instead plan on 2 weeks from tomorrow (May 28) rather than rushing things and having a poor turnout for what I think is a pretty important discussion.

As of now, I haven't scheduled a teleconference for tomorrow, so I suggest we schedule this two weeks out and then next Friday May 21 go ahead with our wiki discussion as planned.

Feedback?

- Arik

[Alex Nelles]

May 28 is perfect for me :-)

[Arik Johnson]

Thanks Alex - meanwhile, we can certainly lay out some of the key questions here that we want to try and tackle. I know I've got a few - mostly related to where the demand side of the CI market is headed.

[Arik Johnson]

Okay all - we're on for May 28 at 10:30 AM Eastern time - anybody care to join the panelists? I've got six slots available - the primary difference between a panelist and attendee (beyond a commitment to showing up live on the line the day of) is that your mic is unmuted by default and you're expected to help guide the conversation. Otherwise, attendees can also speak, but I need to unmute you.

Once I get 6 volunteers I'll setup the registration link and launch an Event placeholder here as well on the topic.

Mr. Garland, can I count you in as a panelist that day since you initiated this topic?

[Dr. Avner Barnea]

Just an update – we had last week a discussion about Mega trends and the role of CI here in Israel. 15 CI professional have discussed this matter through with the managing director of Frost and Sullivan in Israel. It was a very fruitful discussion, and we have found out that interrelations between CI professionals in their company especially if they operate in global markets together with the experts of FS could be very useful. It will be most interesting to hear from other members of this network. What is their experience with this kind of cooperation?

[Arik Johnson]

Hi all - I've been in touch with some of you about getting this scheduled and it seems that tomorrow morning is falling apart as the best day to discuss this. I apologize for the short notice, but I'm wondering if we should reschedule? Perhaps for a couple of weeks from now? If you like, we can go ahead with it nonetheless, but I haven't done a lot of promotion for the call so it'll be a pretty small audience.

[Arik Johnson]

Is there a date preference on the reschedule from today? I'd say let's try for either June 11 or 18. I'm trying to get a longer runway for everybody on telecon topics and wiki has next Friday the 4th, then I've got requests for a CI Ning tutorial for either one of the 11th or 18th, so would counterschedule megatrends discussion against the other of those two dates.

Let me know what you all prefer and apologies again for the last minute change.

Happy weekend!

- Arik