How to Use Competitive Intelligence to Gain an Advantage

In general though I think competitive intelligence is often overrated. Certainly there are times that it matters -- Mikal's example in the article about whether or not a company could be first-to-market. In a fast-moving and cluttered market though (and these days most markets are fast-moving cluttered) it's a huge amount of effort ... and you can't get intelligence on everybody. I honestly can't even remember which competitor Mikal was worried about at the time, but they were just one of many.

So competitive intelligence is useful in the context of competitive strategy. What's interesting is that an overall strategic opportunity Mikal and I identified back in 2009 is still there: as far as I can tell, nobody is doing diversity-focused small business software.

If found out, the competitor may engage in counter Intelligence. It might have been more prudent for the company to keep the garbage man supplying the other side with information.