Competitive intelligence thinking: The power to make you look up

When conducting competitor or market analysis, it’s important to use competitive intelligence thinking. It’s easy to fall into two camps:

Inside the work
Outside the work
However, the real advantage lies in understanding how these two things interplay.

Inside the Work
Inside the work is all about being deeply embedded in your day-to-day operations. You’re focused on tactical execution. The product launches, pricing strategies, and customer acquisition. You’re analysing competitors on a surface level. That’s benchmarking KPIs and keeping tabs on their marketing campaigns or product changes. Keeping your battlecards up to date. It’s the nuts and bolts of what you’re doing and what they’re doing. This is crucial, but it only tells part of the story. This is where CI software is fabulous and Klue is the best at it. Knowing what your competitors are up to early.

If you don’t bother looking up and all you do all day is stay inside the work, you are going to miss the bigger picture—the important stuff. It’s like being too close to the tree—studying the patterns on the leaf without knowing there’s a bloody big forest out there. You may understand what competitors are doing right now, which will appear very impressive. Pretty battlecards and graphs. Each has its place but you’ll be blind to anticipating what’s coming next. Read more: What can competitive intelligence do for asset management firms.

Outside the Work
Now, outside the work is where you lift your head and zoom out. Here, you’re not just thinking about what your competitors are doing but why they’re doing it and how broader market trends are influencing their choices. This is about understanding the context. The emerging technologies, shifts in consumer preferences, regulatory changes. Those that could reshape your industry and provide you with the next big thing.

Outside the work means asking the tough questions:
What larger forces are at play that could push competitors to pivot?
What’s happening in adjacent markets that could create unexpected competition?
Are there societal or economic shifts driving changes in customer behaviour?
This and other rich and varied question is competitive intelligence thinking.
It’s this view that helps you see transitions. Those subtle shifts in the market that most people miss. Companies that master this can identify inflexion points and act before their competitors. Read more: Understanding Competitors Product Offerings to enable differentiation.

The Balance and Competitive intelligence thinking
Real competitor analysis happens when you strike a balance between inside the work and outside the work. Being too focused on the former keeps you reactive, constantly trying to keep up with competitors. Leaning too far into the latter can make you disconnected from day-to-day execution, lost in the very clever world of theory.

The key is to weave both together. Take insights from the outside world and apply them to your inside strategy. When you do that, you stop simply competing in the current market and start shaping where the market is headed next.

That’s how you move from reacting to what competitors do to making strategic moves they didn’t see coming.

Let’s talk…

https://www.octopusintelligence.com/competitive-intelligence-thinking-the-power-to-make-you-look-up/