Who is your competitor? An easy one to answer when you had companies selling similar products or services who were clearly your competition. Today, in the age of technological disruption, the situation has changed significantly… your competitor could be your customer. And it’s quite likely that even a new market player can be a threat to your business in the future. After all, David and Goliath will always exist…

Which makes it all the more crucial to track your competition. True competitive intelligence (CI) is far more valuable to an organization than confirmatory intelligence, as it can lead to superior decisions. Decision-making done on the basis of personal experience and gut feel perhaps worked in a relatively stable external environment. With rapidly changing technologies, lifestyles, economics, politics, etc., it is dangerous to do CI merely as a formality.