[CI]

I AM NOT A SPY

Posted in Communication, Competitive Intelligence by Dan McHugh on June 23, 2008

Playing around with slideshare today, a great service for sharing presentations via email or embedding them in blog posts.

Having huge problems with getting slideshare to work with my WordPress blog. Still a great service, just not the one for me.. your mileage may vary.

Also having an issue with Google Docs (again nice service, just there is a 10meg limit on PPTs).

Luckily we live in a competitive market and authorSTREAM came to my rescue.

This is for all the times my parents and friends ask me what I actually do here in Singapore!

Enjoy!

more about “SPY not a Business ppt Presentation“, posted with vodpod

8 Responses

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  1. Arun said, on June 23, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    Hi Dan,

    This is Arun from SlideShare.

    It could be that “Visual Editor” is turned on in WordPress – this often strips embed codes and creates problems while embedding. If you do run into issues, just let us know through the feedback page. You could even yell out on Twitter and we’ll make sure your issue is resolved. :) ( http://twitter.com/simplyarun )

    The SlideShare editorial team has featured your presentation on the homepage. We find it really creative! You could sign-up for an account – it gives you a lot more features than a guest account.

    Cheers
    Arun

  2. Dan McHugh said, on June 23, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    Thanks Arun,

    I actually searched high and low and went through that suggestion you mentioned. I could be my browser is playing up (we use a lot of dogfood inside Microsoft). I’ll definitely be giving SlideShare another chance as I do like the simplicity and UI of the site.

    Thanks for featuring my deck on your homepage. I’m honoured :)

    Dan

  3. Richard McEachin said, on June 24, 2008 at 3:35 am

    This is a wonderful presentation for anybody that thinks the intelligence business is glamorous and glorious. In reality, it is hard work, education, and determination that makes one successful. This is a self-elected elite. We live to work and get happiness as a by-product. The leaders we serve may get some measure of public acclaim and that is satisfaction enough for us.

    In the private sector, the ROI on Competitive Intelligence (CI) efforts far exceeds that of R&D. We only have to “win” now and again to yield a high ROI. That is the “high” we get from doing CI. (And the occasional bonus cheque doesn’t hurt either.)

    Richard McEachin
    http://www.ConfidentialResource.com

  4. Dan McHugh said, on June 24, 2008 at 8:12 am

    Thanks for the kind words Richard. I agree there is a bit of mystique surrounding CI professionals and sometimes that works in your favor and other times not. I think for our profession as a whole we need to focus on documenting those ROIs to help move us out of reactionary and data-processing-filtering roles and into a very proactive (or offensive) form of CI. Seeking out opportunities, rather than defending or trying to find FUD points.

  5. Michael Neugarten said, on June 24, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    This is an intelligent (and eye-catching) presentation.

    But if I see another presentation or paper that talks of CI not being spying, I shall scream.

    People working in procurement do not begin every lecture and paper by explaining that one way of procuring raw materials is to steal them. So why are CI professionals always be explaining what it is they DON’T do…

    Please, please let’s get beyond that.

    Regards

    Michael

  6. Dan McHugh said, on June 24, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    Michael, your point is a very valid one and I thought long and hard about whether we needed any more “noise” out in the ether about this CI hobby-horse.

    I think part of the reason procurement doesn’t need to explain who they are and what they do is because people don’t normally meet someone in procurement, find out they are in procurement and then decide to change their behavior radically, based on that knowledge.

    The number of times people (after being handed my card, or introduced) have either
    a) flat out asked me if I’m gathering information on their company at the time.
    b) started to lock up and not really talk about their business or if they do, in very broad terms.
    c) Asked me if it’s all cloak and daggers (it’s not and I get sick of telling people).

    Yes, it gets frustrating, but I think as a profession we can move past it. There is a difference between stealing information and having a very narrow focus on doing damage to a competitor’s business. I think we sometimes miss that point, but certain flavors of CI are focused on winning, gathering intelligence (from legitimate sources) and focusing that on hurting another company. People know that and that’s what gets them cagey and for CI to fall victim to it’s own brand of FUD.

    I, like you would love to see this problem go away.

  7. Richard McEachin said, on June 25, 2008 at 2:55 am

    I’ve written in the past about making the inane connection of CI to economic espionage by people who do not understand how CI is performed in different parts of the world. It’s difficult to get people to see that the methods of CI are a matter of culture, ethics and law.

    Richard McEachin
    http://www.ConfidentialResource.com

  8. Adrian Alvarez said, on June 28, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Hi Dan,

    I want to congratulate for your presentation. It is fun and very clear.

    Fortunately, we do not have this problem here in Argentina (there are some problems in Brazil though). Because so far the word intelligence, to most people, is not related to espionage, maybe because it is too nascent.

    The problem we have is that the intelligence is more related with being smart (being smart is written inteligente either in Spanish or Portuguese). Therefore, some people make fun of this or take us as nerds.. I do not know what is worse…

    The second problem we have is that nobody knows what CI is.. But this is easier because you can frame the definition towards what it really is and you do not need to keep telling the difference with espionage.

    Best regards,

    Adrian Alvarez
    http://www.midasconsulting.com.ar
    http://inteligenciacompetitivaenar.blogspot.com/


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