Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies

  • 4h 35m
  • Benjamin Gilad
  • AMACOM
  • 2004

Surprise is rarely a good thing in business. Unexpected developments range in their effects from inconvenient to disastrous. To avoid being blindsided, companies must develop a Competitive Early Warning system, or CEW, which combines strategic planning, competitive intelligence, and management action. Such systems let organizations manage risk more effectively and prevent "industry dissonance"—when market realities outpace corporate strategies. Early Warning reveals how to:

  • Change strategy to meet new realities
  • Learn from the mistakes of others via the book’s eye-opening stories
  • Avoid common tactics like benchmarking and using consultants, which may do more harm than good
  • Tell executives what they need to know—not what they want to hear

Each chapter ends with a Manager’s Checklist of key points, and the book includes numerous charts, tables, and tools. With strong opinions and wry humor, world-recognized expert Gilad reveals how to anticipate and react to early signs of trouble.

About the Author

Ben Gilad is president of the Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence. He has trained the majority of CI managers at Fortune 500 companies. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, and others.

In this Book

  • Surprise!
  • What do You Know About Strategic Risks?
  • The Internal Dynamics of Early Warning Failures
  • The Analytical, the Tactical, the Couch Potato, and the Blind
  • Step 1: Identifying Risk (and Opportunities)
  • Step 1, Continued: War Gaming
  • Step 2: Intelligence Monitoring
  • Step 3: Management Action
  • Case Studies of CEW in Action
  • If You Start From Scratch ...
  • Epilogue
SHOW MORE
FREE ACCESS