Rob Duncan

Do you want better performing teams? Are you serious about that goal? Then contact Rob Duncan, who can help your teams be more intelligent – in terms of cohesion, collaboration, competitiveness and social skills. More than just an eloquent speaker, Rob is also a Certified Management Consultant who can roll up his sleeves and get actively involved in improving your organization’s performance. A longtime college educator, Rob and his team can work with your organization to develop learning systems that will continue to add value long after the keynote address.

Featured talks and seminars: 1. Team Intelligence; 2. Competitive Intelligence; 3. Collaborative Intelligence; 4. Social Intelligence.

1. Team Intelligence: Lessons from a Voyage around Cape Horn

What were the secrets to building a great team on a gruelling 3-month sailing voyage around the dreaded Cape Horn? Join Rob for a first-hand account of a life-changing tall ship voyage through stormy seas and interpersonal strains that ultimately led to a rounding of the “Sailor’s Mount Everest.” Told through stories and pictures, with the keen insights of a skilled management consultant, Lessons from a Voyage around Cape Horn will leave your team inspired, engaged, and ready for their next challenge!

2. Competitive Intelligence: Fast, Cheap & Ethical Techniques to get the Edge

What can you do in the next 15 minutes to give your firm an unbeatable lead over the competition? Join competitive intelligence expert Rob Duncan for an entertaining, fast-paced and informative look at a war chest of tools that can be employed cheaply, quickly and ethically to gain a sustainable edge. Drawing on his book “Competitive Intelligence: Fast, Cheap & Ethical”, selected as a Best Business Book of 2008, Rob will leave your group raring to go on these simple and effective tactics.

3. Collaborative Intelligence: Enhancing Innovation through Social Media

What do you do when your customer is suddenly the head of your design team? “Harness it to your advantage,” says social networking expert Rob Duncan. Rob’s doctoral research confirms that online social networking is breaking down traditional boundaries between companies, competitors and customers. Intelligent collaboration is the way of the future, and Rob Duncan can explain in straightforward terms why LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and other collaborative technologies are going to drive business in the future, and why you need to be there.

4. Social Intelligence: Building Socially Smart Teams for Winning Performances

What do improvisation, active listening, the reading of micro-expressions, networking and acting technique have in common? They all relate to the growing field of social intelligence. Defined as ‘a person’s competence to comprehend his or her environment optimally and react appropriately for socially successful conduct,’ social intelligence is needed more than ever in business. Join Rob Duncan, New York trained actor and co-author of the book “Improv to Improve Your Business: Using the principles of improvisation to foster communication, creativity & innovation” on an engaging journey through some simple, easy to use and powerful techniques to build social intelligence in your teams.

Contact us for more information at greatcapes@gmail.com or via the Contact tab on this page.

Doing real things with real people is more fun!

My Klout score has stopped rising lately, and has begun a mild correction downward. And yet I’m having more fun, doing more things with real people and accomplishing way more. I am immersing myself in scene study work with some great acting partners, and enjoying speaking to groups of real-live people. I wrote a feature length movie screenplay in 2 weeks.

So what’s up?

Well, I’d never describe myself as any kind of canary in a coal mine, but the inescapable fact is that I am bored with social media. The less time I spend engaged in social media of any kind, the happier I am. Taking a complete pass on Pinterest for example, was a sign of good health to me.

This isn’t the first time I have noticed this. I wrote about it here some time ago when I had returned to theater training in New York. Mind you, it’s not unusual that I would be an early exit candidate, since I was both an earlier adopter and did a doctorate on the topic of social media (the latter a guaranteed recipe to kill an interest in anything…).

So am I part of an early wave that is starting to walk away for good? Or am I taking a well-earned vacation? Time will tell. Just the same, I won’t be lining up to buy any social media stocks for the long term.

Here are a few things to consider doing as the weather improves, kind of a spring cleaning for the brain:

1. Have a cleansing social media fast. Stay off social media for a week or more at a time. Yes, it’s scary. Start with 2 hours and work up to whole days gradually, so you don’t go into sudden withdrawal.

2. Spend a week unsubscribing from updates, feeds and emails that no longer interest you. It’s amazing how many of these things still stream in, yet we don’t think to hit the instant unsubscribe button.

3. Be social, don’t just “do” social. Join genuine, real-world social events. Take a class, put on a play, join a team, see friends. If you’re really Jonesing for online connections, use things like Meetup to line up real face-to-face events.

4. Honor your solitude. Take some time to reflect. Cultivate a sense of enlightened exclusivity. Be less available.

5. Take yourself private. Stop over-sharing every little thing. If it’s a marketing tactic, trust me, it’s not working (you heard it here).

6. Keep social media as a treat – like ice cream. The odd time I pass through Facebook and LinkedIn (okay, Facebook) these days, It’s actually fun to see what people are up to.

So my challenge to us all is: step away from the screen, put the gadgets down, and go out and play. With real people!

Collaborative Intelligence: How to liberate minds and transform enterprises through social networks

After doing all the research for my doctorate and writing my thesis (“The role of online social networks in inter-firm collaborative innovation and problem solving”), I swore I would never do anything requiring that kind of effort ever again! So here I am, a few months later, hard at work on a new book that captures my key findings and presents practical ideas on building collaboration through social media in a format that is brief, readable and useful for people at all levels, in all kinds of organizations. Clearly I am incorrigible…

The book, “Collaborative Intelligence” is due to be published in 2012. As a teaser, I am putting a brief summary of a few of the book’s ideas below, so readers can get an initial sense of the contents.

Intelligence matters!

There are many forms of intelligence that relate to business and organizational life. Teambuilding intelligence, competitive intelligence and social intelligence are just a few. One of the most important, yet least understood, is social intelligence. Loosely defined as the ability to correctly assess your surroundings and act appropriately, social intelligence involves sensing what is going on around your enterprise, both inside and out, making the correct inferences about the signals being received, and then responding in a way that leaves your organization better off. The increased pace of change, thirst for innovation and the democratization of knowledge have resulted in an environment where understanding the environment and reacting to it effectively and quickly are critical. Looked at as a whole, we can think of these organizational intelligences – teambuilding, competitive and social – as collaborative intelligence. Your use of social networks can either enhance or diminish your collaborative intelligence.

A challenge: Grab a piece of paper and quickly map out all of the signals that your organization receives from its environment, both external and internal. Don’t overthink it – just scrawl away. Can you see any signals that aren’t being received that would be useful? Are there any existing signals that you could be capturing and organizing more effectively? Is everybody in the organization equally able to pick up on useful information and signals, or is this function quite centralized?

Keep what you need, and share the rest

We have grown used to operating environments where it is extremely important to guard competitive advantages by keeping secrets. The widespread adoption of social media means that there are fewer and fewer secrets. My research has shown that the vast majority of LinkedIn users I surveyed are connected to people in other organizations, and they rely on these inter-firm networks to share information, come up with new ideas and jointly solve problems. Lines have been blurred between competitors, and between customers and the organizations they buy from. Smart organizations understand this, and are attempting to harness this increased interconnectedness, rather than trying to restrict it. Imagine a world without secrets. It is coming rapidly due to social media. Organizations can focus on protection, and fighting infringement in every jurisdiction around the world, or they can prepare for a post-secrets landscape, and find better ways to keep customers.

A challenge: What is your organization’s “secret sauce,” the one thing that would drive you out of business if it were known to the competition? What percentage of all your organization’s knowledge does that secret sauce represent? One percent? Ten percent? Of the remaining knowledge, what aspects could you trade with other organizations for your mutual gain?

The power of many individuals

Teamwork and social networks are nothing new. Guilds, for example, have existed since pre-industrial times. More recently we have seen communities of practice and knowledge management as attempts to gather and share expertise. Guilds have been described as groups that are drawn together through similar interests and shared passion for a topic. Sounds like a LinkedIn Group, doesn’t it? Similarly, there is nothing new about social networks, as they have always existed. You only have to watch the HBO series “Rome” to see the power of alliances and connectedness in a historical sense. In recent decades, study on social networking has pointed out the importance of weak ties; that someone who is weakly connected to you may actually be more helpful to you than someone who is strongly connected to you. How perfect is that for social media, where we may never have met someone we are connected to?

Online social networks: way more of a good thing

So the key with online social networking is not that it is a new concept, but that the technology is now freely available to build networks on a massive scale with minimal effort. Unlike communities of practice that tended to focus around a specialized job area, and attracted people of a similar profile, today’s social networks can contain vastly different individuals, from CEOs to artists, allowing a radically greater knowledge base and sources of new ideas and innovation. How do you consciously make use of this pool of talent though?

A challenge: Jot down the names of people in your organization who are super-connectors. It shouldn’t be too hard: If you needed someone to brief the team on Twitter, who would you tap? What about LinkedIn or Facebook? Do these people know each other? These individuals need to be aware of each other so they can work together to help the organization harness the power of “edge connections,” those networks that employees are tapped into in their own social lives. Support them with time to work together to identify other people who are highly connected and let this group develop a connectedness approach for the organization.

Implementing a collaborative intelligence strategy: liberating the individual

One of the worst things most organizations can do is to prohibit the use of social media in the workplace. Doing so telegraphs several very unfortunate messages to employees:

• that you will steal time from your employer given the opportunity
• that you are distractible by nature and will fool around rather than work
• that the people you know are of no value to our organization as customers, potential employees, sales facilitators, goodwill ambassadors or idea generators

Smart organizations understand the power of their employees’ own networks, and that these edge connections can be extremely helpful to the organization provided the right structures and guidelines exist. Check out my post here for a suggested framework of best practices around the conscious use of online social networks in organizations.

Encouraging collaborative behaviors: leadership begins at the bottom

Your staff at all levels should all feel empowered to serve as what I call Collaborative Engagement Officers or CEOs. My research has shown that the vast majority of LinkedIn users are connected to counterparts in other organizations, including both customers and competitors, and that they make use of these connections to help solve problems and generate new ideas. Add to this the fact that the most connected person in your organization may be the newest hire or somebody who isn’t even known well by the top leadership, and you have the ingredients for a shift away from top-down style management. The true locus of power has shifted from the top of organizations to being more diffused among highly-connected staff at all levels. So where does that leave senior management? Smart organizations will create cultures where engaging with networks is a part of the daily routine, and will scope out expectations of social network usage clearly in order to minimize risks of communications mistakes and manage the amount of time spent on social networks as opposed to other duties.

Transforming the enterprise: goodbye to hierarchies and silos

So what are the benefits of embracing a networked staff and promoting the development of relationships beyond the walls of your organization? Here are a few:

• improved customer service and customer input
• greater access to innovation collaborators
• reductions of the inefficiencies caused by silos
• better staff engagement with the organization’s mission, at all levels
• enhanced serendipity through a more varied mix of minds and approaches
• speedier and more nimble competitive responses due to improved signal sensing

So these are a few of the ideas that will be explored in Collaborative Intelligence. I hope you will read and enjoy the book when it comes out!

As part of my doctoral research, I conducted qualitative research with people who had experience with using online social networks (OSNs) in their workplaces. The aim of the research was to develop a starting point for a framework for developing best practices for the use of OSNs in organizations.

The results of the qualitative inquiry identified a number of suggested best practices for organizations considering the use of OSNs. The elements presented below are intended to help serve as a starting point for organizations.

The elements have been grouped under the categories of strategy, listening, communication, guidelines, training, diffusion and measurement. As the usage of OSNs becomes more prevalent, and more history with OSNs is examined in future research, this set of suggested best practices can be extended and clarified over time. Below is an initial framework for consideration.

Strategy
Planning for OSN implementation should tie back to the organization’s strategy, goals and objectives. To this end, it is helpful to align the level and type of OSN planning to the planning culture of the organization overall.

“Align the strategy with the culture – if the culture is open to it, trial and error may be fine; otherwise it can be a disaster.”

Organizations that are more structured and methodical in their planning will likely benefit from a more structured approach to developing and rolling out an OSN plan. For this type of organization it will make sense to develop a concrete plan with reasons for using OSNs, and expected results. For organizations that favour a more iterative or adaptive approach to planning, starting with a tentative OSN strategy that can be adapted as needed may be the best approach, making adjustments as learning takes place.

“Don’t try to over-plan an approach to using OSNs. The most important thing is to start using the technologies, play with them, and figure out how to use them as you go along. Otherwise you can end up paralyzed by over-planning and losing valuable time relative to the competition.”

As noted above, the key is make sure there is an alignment between the planning style and activities that the organization uses overall, and to fit the OSN planning efforts into that style.

Listening
It is important to scan the environment and observe what is being done currently with regard to OSNs. This scan should include looking at what the competition is doing, as well as what is being done in other types of organizations and industries. It is equally important to understand what the behaviour and needs of the organization’s customers and stakeholders are. This will be helpful both in terms of not re-inventing the wheel, but also in terms of fitting an appropriate OSN approach to the needs of key stakeholders. It is important to research where the intended audience currently spends time, so that the organization ends up adopting the appropriate tools and platforms to reach that audience most effectively.

“Listening is a key activity that should be a goal of an OSN strategy. It is critical to be listening to what is being communicated by customers, and by competitors.”

Another role for listening is being aware of the fact that OSNs are not merely broadcast media, but are also an important means by which customers and other stakeholders can communicate with an organization. Missed messages represent missed opportunities. One suggestion is to have a “designated listener” on staff, someone whose job it is to monitor developments in the social networking arena, as well as monitoring actual communications from customers, stakeholders, collaborators and competitors.

Communication
A communications strategy for OSNs should be part of an overall coordinated communications strategy for the organization. As OSNs represent a unique medium, they require a unique approach to communications. In particular it is essential to be regular in communicating and to have engaging, relevant and value-rich content that meets the needs and interests of the audience. It is suggested that a professional communicator be used to design the communications strategy.

“Focus on quality not quantity. Focus on the experience you are creating for the customer. Focus on being a real person and being available to help… Ensure that what you promote is what you are.”

The importance of being authentic in OSN communication has also been emphasized in the qualitative interviews. The OSN representation of the organization should be in alignment with the brick and mortar organization.

Guidelines
It is important to develop guidelines that govern the appropriate use of OSNs, confidentiality and disclosure of information. These guidelines should be supplemented by training of all staff. As one respondent noted, it is useful to keep in mind that there is nothing fundamentally new about OSNs; they are just an enabling technology the same way a telephone and a fax machine were. It can be helpful to look at how the organization has dealt with other new technologies in the past, since there may not be a need for entirely new strategies, policies or guidelines. Though policies and guidelines can help mitigate negative consequences of using OSNs it is still necessary to have a plan for handling negative results, accidents or missteps.

“Need pre-planned answers and rules for interactions before negative comments and situations are encountered. Have a policy for negative situations and make sure everybody understands it. Hope for the best and plan for the worst. Be clear that social media leaves you open to detractors, so have a strategy in place for handling this.”

Establishing written corporate policies and procedures from both an employee and departmental perspective is recommended. A good starting point for this effort is to look at the existing policy frameworks the organization already has for items such as security, access, usage, confidentiality and see if these can be adapted for OSN usage, rather than coming up with a whole new set of guidelines.

Training
In order to effectively use OSNs, organizations need training on best practices for OSN usage, both for new hires and for existing employees. For example, it can’t be assumed that all employees know how to use OSNs or how to use them effectively and in agreement with company policies. It may be worthwhile to create a controlled task force for the first several months to convey valuable information to employees on how to use OSN tools and what employees need to know about representing the company on OSNs. Employees need to know they are representing the company at all times on OSNs and they same rules apply online as offline. OSNs are a tool to help empower employees as advocates of a brand or an organization, but those employees need to be trained to know what the appropriate behaviours are.

Diffusion
Earlier in this study, the role of early adopters in the diffusion of new technologies was discussed. The role of champions and influencers in a roll-out of OSN usage is very important. It is critical to identify these people within the organization – as well as in other stakeholders such as customers or collaborators – and to encourage these key people to assist in rolling out the usage of OSNs. Tying performance measurement and reward systems to the successful championing of OSNs in the organization would be a good way to attract and motivate the appropriate champions inside the organization.

Measurement
Management should set expectations and measurable goals for OSN usage. For example, what percentage of the time will the employee need to utilize social media to meet sales and referrals, against the total actual sales and referrals generated in a specific time period. Consider having audit and compliance measures implemented via neutral third-party vendors who can monitor, evaluate and measure productivity and feedback from a client perspective. Most OSN activities should have some sort of customer conversion as their ultimate goal. Conversion does not have to mean a sale, but some sort of action that is desired on the part of the audience. It could be clicking though to a website, signing up for a newsletter, or simply asking for more information. With the desired conversion in mind, a better social networking strategy can be developed. All marketing campaigns that make use of OSNs should be able to be tracked and measured for success. Not all metrics surrounding the use of OSNs need to be hard and analytical though – a blend of hard and soft metrics, such as anecdotes and success stories, can be very valuable.

“Focus on basic success metrics. These need not be too analytical. If you are putting out good content, and it is reaching the right people, that can be sufficient. Anecdotal results and good stories are just as important as hard metrics.”

Now available on AMAZON!

I was thrilled to be involved in this collaborative writing project, in which co-authors Brent Brooks, Rick Crain, Leah Henderson, Jim Hogan, Vanessa Lowry, Deborah Thomas, Scott Williford, Mark Wyssbrod and I all contributed chapters. Working from the “ten commandments of improv,” each of us wove a chapter story about how the techniques of improvisation have helped each of us in our business careers, and how they can help you. The ten commandments of improv that are woven throughout the book are:

Trust.

Agree on stage.

Listen.

Don’t be funny.

Avoid questions.

Be average.

Stay in the moment.

Mistakes are good.

Make others look good.

Have fun!

It was terrific to work with such funny and talented co-authors, and I know that you will find this book as much fun to read as it was to write! Watch for Improv to Improve your Business: Using the principles of improvisation to foster communication, creativity & innovation on Amazon early in 2011. Advance media enquiries and booking speaking events on this topic can be arranged by emailing me at greatcapes@gmail.com, or following the contact tab on this page.

The other day, I was parsing through my usual daily inflow of free webinar offers, machine-gun Tweets and other digital bombardments, and I found myself wondering whether we have drifted too far away from a fundamental focus on providing something of value to a customer, one customer at a time? Are we in fact in a visibility mania?

The dominant discussions out there seem to be about being located, ranking high in searches, and using social media for outbound ‘reach and flood’ marketing. But where do you take people once they have found you; what is the unique value you provide that makes them want to go for their wallets? There seems to be very little chatter out there about getting better at what we do, providing more service, having a true dialogue with customers, and learning from them how to provide more value.

Here are a few ideas on how we can return the focus to the customer:

Have a ‘Designated Listener’ on your team. The DL is there to pick up on what customers are saying, thinking and needing. This doesn’t have to be only using social media. Get out there, listen in person, use MeetUp to schedule a fun gathering for some dialogue, invest some time in a solid back-and-forth with a single customer on Facebook or in person.

Take your marketing local and in-person. Have some events where people can actually meet you and other customers live. I am picking up on some real fatigue out there with purely electronic relationships and social media. Let’s not forget the power of a handshake and a face-to-face chat. Bring in a speaker to stimulate some dialogue and let the discussion take off.

Make use of surveys and focus groups. Yeah, I know, major yawn. But these old standbys are still great ways to find out what is on customers’ minds, what is bugging them, how they like to be marketed to, and how they would in fact go about searching online for a business like yours. What keywords would they use – why guess?

Feature customer blogs on your site, both the complimentary ones and the grumpy ones. Invite a customer to be a guest blogger, or to be part of the design and customer service team by creating an online community that they can join. Hire a team of customers to meet with the company for a week, and tap into their insights and suggestions.

None of these ideas are new and revolutionary, and many were in my second book, “Competitive Intelligence: Fast, Cheap & Ethical,” but they are still valid, and could help us return to doing more listening and less talking.

I am interested in your thoughts! Please feel free to weigh in here, or by email. To explore having me meet with and speak to your team, please feel free to be in touch anytime via the contact tab on my website.

Leaders come in two broad flavors: 1) self confident ones, and 2) insecure ones. The self confident ones build teams, empower those teams, develop leadership within the team and then move on to their next challenge. The insecure ones micro-manage, insert themselves needlessly into processes, and cling to their authority role under the guise of being ‘indispensable.’

The best leaders have one overarching goal: to make themselves dispensable. They achieve this through a number of tactics:

• Hire good people – better, smarter, faster than themselves wherever possible.
• Performance manage the weaker performers, while putting the bulk of their energies into the higher achievers.
• Create a culture of experimentation and innovation, where trial and error are celebrated.
• Promote the achievements of everybody on the team, while taking minimal credit for themselves.
• Support the team from the background, letting others take center stage.
• Consciously develop team leadership by pushing responsibility downward, and developing everyone’s leadership ability, not just that of their clones.

It may seem counter-intuitive to try to make yourself dispensable, but that is exactly what the best leaders and team builders do. In my first book, Haul Away! Teambuilding Lessons from a Voyage around Cape Horn, I interviewed the captain of the Europa, a 400 ton tall ship, who had started his career in a one-person rowboat, and who explained his philosophy of becoming a leader:

I personally never ‘sought command.’ I started my career in a small boat, where you are the skipper by default. Over time, the boats got bigger, I got older, and my experience grew.

The lesson here is that leaders need to build and empower teams, and then move onto that ‘bigger boat,’ so they can do it all over again. The smart organizations are the ones who recognize the need for good team builders to keep moving and growing, leaving a legacy of successful teams and newly-developed leaders in their wake.

To learn more, or to explore having me speak to your group or team about leadership, please contact Rob Duncan at greatcapes@gmail.com or via the Contact tab on this page.

Trade shows are awash in valuable CI

Trade show intelligence gathering

Trade shows are an excellent source of competitive intelligence (CI), both human and written. Attending a trade show with a calculated view to obtaining CI can be a very cost-effective exercise. The key to trade show intelligence is first to determine what our intelligence objectives are. Once we have decided what specific pieces of intelligence we desire, we can formulate a plan of attack, identifying likely sources of CI as well as who will be responsible for obtaining each piece of intelligence.

Much of the work of planning a trade show CI mission can now be done in advance using the Internet. Most trade shows have websites which can be mined for useful information such as who will be speaking as well as a map layout of where each competitor’s presence will be located. We can often find photographs of specific human targets we may wish to approach for human intelligence efforts.

The intelligence-gathering team

In approaching a tradeshow for intelligence-gathering purposes, team organization is very important. There are several different roles to fulfill:

• Team leader: responsible for planning, organization, setting intelligence goals, determining specific targets, assigning specific intelligence objectives to field operatives, communicating final results
• Field operatives: responsible for obtaining specific pieces of intelligence, through physical collection, observation and human intelligence
• Analysts: Responsible for obtaining pre-trade show intelligence gathering, collating and analyzing intelligence gathered from field operatives

The reality for many of us is that we are a “CI department of one,” and will have to perform all of these functions alone. The alternative may be to hire students from a school that teaches market research and CI, who are often thankful for paid entrance to a useful trade show. In any event, careful consideration of each of these functions is necessary in order to carry out a successful trade show intelligence-gathering mission.

Planning the mission

The role of the team leader is first to plan the exercise, which involves determining what intelligence is desired and which trade show it makes sense to target for the intelligence. Once a trade show has been selected, online research and/or printed marketing material is helpful in terms of refining and selecting our targets for the intelligence we require. Often such specifics as lists of exhibitors, floor layouts, speaker biographies and the like are available. This is useful because it helps avoid unnecessary wandering around during the trade show itself.

The next task is to assign specific pieces of intelligence to the person responsible for gathering it. Each piece of required intelligence needs to be defined in terms of how it will be obtained. In the case of human intelligence, we need to determine who will be targeted and what approach will be used. The conversational hourglass approach to elicitation covered in the next chapter will be useful here. For other intelligence, other approaches will make sense. Perhaps we want to get a look at the features of our competitor’s soon-to-be-released product, and there may be printed material or demonstrations available.

One of the exploitable vulnerabilities companies face at trade shows is that it is usually the enthusiasts who are selected to staff the booths. These can be people who are too junior to know what should be kept secret, or sales people who are eager to promote the products to anyone who might be interested, or product development experts, who can be lured into detailed discussions of the features that they are proud of.

Executing the mission

At the trade show itself, particularly multi-day events, we should begin by doing a sweep of the facility, gathering everything that is available in terms of printed materials and giveaways, from all the relevant target companies. This “snag and bag” operation can often yield plenty of the intelligence that we wanted. Taking the gathered material away and analyzing it can help us to refine our approach and targets for the next wave of intelligence-gathering. At an out-of-town trade show, a hotel room can serve as a command post where gathered material can be sifted through, and plans can be adjusted based on what can be extracted from the material.

In general, the less face-to-face interaction we rely on to obtain our intelligence, the better. Anything we can gather by indirect means like printed material, observation or overhearing is a bonus, since it makes it far less likely that our intentions and activities will be unmasked. This multi-wave approach to gathering intelligence allows us to use the riskier tactics, like human intelligence sparingly, thus minimizing the chances of being seen to be snooping.

A three-wave approach to a trade show intelligence-gathering mission can be summarized as follows:

Wave one

• Plan the overall mission
• Determine the required pieces of intelligence, and the targets or sources for the intelligence
• Make a first pass of the trade show, gathering everything that is being given away at the target booths
• Analyze the gathered material and see if some of the required intelligence is there
• Refine your requirements

Wave two

• Conduct human and observational intelligence
• Analyze this intelligence to isolate any remaining gaps

Wave three

• Conduct final intelligence to gathering any remaining intelligence required

 

Through careful objective-setting, planning and execution, trade shows can be an extremely cost-effective way to gain strategic competitive intelligence. More on this topic is available in my book “Competitive Intelligence: Fast, Cheap & Ethical”  which can be obtained through the Media and Books tab on this page.