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Gathering Cooperative Intelligence
by Paul "the soaring" Siegel
Cooperative intelligence? Yes, my subject is cooperative, not competitive, intelligence.
Running a business on the Web requires an extraordinary amount of intelligence - about technology, people, business, and sites. You need more information than ever before because the Internet, as well as everything impacted by the Internet, is changing every day. To be a player you must know what's happening.
Gathering appropriate information is needed for doing both competitive and cooperative intelligence. However, the purpose in each case is different.
The purpose of competitive intelligence is to discover the strengths and vulnerabilities of competitors to enable you to develop a winning strategy. But today it is difficult to determine who your competitors are.
The purpose of cooperative intelligence is to find ways you may help others and they, in turn, may help you to learn what you need to know to make your online business a success. Instead of competition, it makes more sense to think of ecological systems.
Nevertheless, competition is the basis for practically all discussion about business. For this reason, I discuss competitive intelligence before going to cooperative intelligence. But first, a word on ecology.
Your Business Ecology
The Internet is a living, growing ecological system. Within it are many ecological systems. Ecological systems may at any one time be in one of 4 phases: birth, growing, declining, death. Thus, Netscape gave birth to an ecological system with its browser, the Navigator. Because it gave the Navigator away, the ecological system grew rapidly. Then Microsoft gave birth to the Internet Explorer browser. As people switched from Netscape's browser to Microsoft's browser, the former system declined and the latter system grew. Now the Navigator ecological system is almost dead and the Internet Explorer ecosystem is dominant and growing.
There are vast differences between the concepts of competitiveness and ecology:
- SURVIVAL OF FITTEST VS. GROWTH - Before the major idea was survival against a bittter enemy. Now the emphasis is on growing and developing
- COMPETITION VS. ADAPTABILITY - Survival was achieved through fierce competition. Now the way to make progress is by learning to adapt to change
- INDUSTRY VS. COMMUNITY - We used to know which industry we were part of and we competed with companies in the industry. Now, the trick is to join a growing community and help it grow for the benefit of all
Competitive Intelligence
The Internet is a goldmine of information and it has many sources for locating information about "competitors." Here are but a few:
- COMPANY WEBSITES - You will find news releases to tell you about the latest company project, staff biographies to learn about management, links to partners and customers from which you may gage current activity.
- SURVEYS - Many outfits gather statistics, guage market conditions and forecast future trends. A good, free survey service is offered by NUA. To subscribe send an email to
mailto:surveys-request@lists.nua.ie
- FINANCIAL SITES - If you are looking for information about a public company, visit financial sites. Also check
http://www.edgar-online.com - for SEC filngs
http://hooversonline.com - for specific company information
- CAREER SITES - The Internet has many career sites. Here you may check what sort of job opening companies have. This will give a good indication of projects they are working on. Checking resumes of job applicants may help to determine who is going where. Try
http://www.collegegrad.com/
- INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SITES - There are many, but IBM offers an excellent site for patent searching at
http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/
- GOVERNMENT RESOURCES - The government has statistics, surveyes, anlyses, regulations, business advice, etc., etc. Two excellent sources are
http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/
http://www.business.gov/
Cooperative Intelligence
In contrast to competitive intelligence, you are looking here for ways to cooperate with successful people and businesses for your mutual gain. Your approach is not one of furtive search but open discussion. Emphasis is not on reading reports but on communicating and working with others. You are looking for ways to learn and grow. And for this you must get involved:
- LOCATE NETWORKING VENUES - There are many on the Net. To find them, search a variety of directories and search engines. Here a few to get you going:
- Universal Search Engines/Directories - 3 good ones:
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.altavista.com
http://www.google.com
- Niche Directories - Oriented to specific fields or subjects:
http://members.nbci.com/jakepb/ - search engines in many
fields
http://www.calvin.edu/library/searreso/internet/as/ - browse by professional discipline
- Publications Directories - Here's one by E & P
http://emedia1.mediainfo.com/emedia/
- Forums Directories - Fnd out where you may discuss different issues online
http://www.forumone.com/
- Newsletters/Mailing Lists Directories
http://www.newsletteraccess.com - for newsletters
http://www.liszt.com/ - for email discussion lists
- List Hosts - They host newsletters and mailing lists for
free, so they have a big list of the offerings they handle.
http://www.topica.com
http://www.egroups.com
- SUBSCRIBE AND READ - Subscribe to literature and read it to see what it is like. Visit online forums and note the level of discussion. Visit publication sites and read what they have. Evaluate them to see if they fit your needs.
- PARTICIPATE - This is key. Comment on messages you see at forums and on lists. Offer your insights. Be part of the discussion. With regards to publications, submit your articles for publication. The greater your involvement, the more you will learn.
- FORM PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS - Contact people whose ideas and approaches you appreciate and discuss them on a personal level. Develop useful relationships.
Summary
You gather intelligence in order to understand the Internet and its business players well enough to enlist them in your efforts in developing your business: Defining your ecological niche, and obtaining marketing help. The process involves both the passive gathering of information, which used to be called "competitive intelligence," as well as active networking with people. Networking is best done with a cooperative attitude.
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