The Annual SCIP European Summit has become a focal point for the strategic and competitive intelligence community to meet, share ideas and exhibit services.
This year’s conference was held in the beautiful city of Vienna from the 8th to the 10th November and included interactive breakout sessions, case studies as well as topical discussions which highlighted relevant issues, concerns and solutions that affect CI professionals. The event also included regular networking sessions throughout the two days which facilitated lively discussions and interaction among participants and exhibitors.
On Wednesday morning Simon Jones of Borealis delivered a keynote address focusing on ‘Strategy and Competitive Intelligence’. He said that successful strategies rely on commercial intelligence to assess the impact of external drivers. He also suggested that wishful sales forecasts were the main cause of disastrous strategies.
This was followed by David Frigstad, Chairman of Frost & Sullivan who reminded us that 90% of CEO’s cited competition as the key obstacle to growth and 75% of them turn to Google to gain competitive insight. Frigstad also highlighted an interesting fact: only 10% of participants at the SCIP summit had competitive intelligence in their business title. This demonstrates how CI incorporates a much broader range of roles and responsibilities from Business Development, Market Research and Strategy Management.
Aurelien Blaha from Dassault Systemes presented a case history of how to set up and manage an internal intelligence community. In order to leverage the position of CI within his organisation he developed a branded CI platform known as ‘Competitive Intelligence Advantage’, a playful use of the CIA acronym. He insisted that CI team needs to encourage more active participation with greater levels of interaction and feedback. Thomson Reuters presented the closing session on Thursday on the impact of Social Media. The current challenge for Thomson Reuters is to apply technology to editorial practices in order to capitalize on new news sources. The old-fashioned way of news reporting has been revolutionised as journalists use Twitter to engage with their audience and also to use their audience as a possible source of information.
Overall the SCIP European Summit was a tremendous success and we look forward eagerly to next year’s summit in Dublin.
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