Business Blindspots, 2nd edition 
replacing myths, beliefs and assumptions with market realities

Benjamin Gilad

Ben Gilad's book is for senior managers, and for all those with a direct interest in corporate information and in CI, the organisation and practice of competitive intelligence. Business Blindspots, the underlying cause of competitive sclerosis, fall into three broad categories: unchallenged assumptions, corporate myths and corporate taboos. The three are examined and illustrated by Professor Gilad in his usual hard-hitting, direct style. And along the way we are treated to an unrivalled display of analysis and wisdom.

The first edition of this book sold out within two years and became a cult book. Its major concept, eradicating competitive blinders that hamper the performance of executives and their companies, through the use of a sophisticated competitive intelligence process, put Professor Gilad in the forefront of managerial thinking in America. The description of the principles of building a competitive intelligence function that actually saves companies from disasters is based on Gilad's consulting practice and actual success stories. This second edition includes new insights by Ben Gilad, based on his travels in the past few years, and his meetings with CEOs of major corporations.

Ben Gilad worries about the central and vital role that intelligence should have in a corporation. He illustrates throughout the book what happens when intelligence is neglected and blindspots are allowed to persist, and what happens when corporate leaders either do not know what is happening, or choose to overlook vital facts.

Above all, Gilad concentrates on the human side of intelligent corporations, maintaining that the major weaknesses in corporations cannot be solved simply by hardware and software, but by the application of human-led systems and structures.

In over two hundred pages, Gilad imparts wisdom, humour, common sense, practicality and the message that in today's global, fast-moving, competitive environment, firms have both to pay attention to what is happening in their operational environments, and develop mechanisms and structures to ensure that the people who take the decisions receive the early intelligence.

Book ordering information

Sample chapter

• Gilad on Cardinal Richelieu
  Richelieu, without hardware, and with pigeons as communication technology, could teach our generation of techies a lesson or two about strategic information and keeping close to the market. If there is no money for a trip to inspect a competitor's plant, or travel to an association's meeting, or for retired employees to make some phone calls for you to find out about an interesting development ... or for a competitive war game ... Then all the information technology in the world will not produce competitive intelligence for your company.
• Gilad on the banking industry CI capabilities
  Bank executives are typically hard pressed to come up with strategic understanding of the industries they lend to, or for that matter, understanding the meaning and value of strategic intelligence ... (T)ry not to work for banks which still don't understand that they, of all companies, need the best strategic learning process money can buy. Oops, sorry, did I catch you on your way to your local S&L?
• Gilad on the pharmaceutical industry
  Sheltered from tough competitive pressures for many years, the operating presidents never felt the need to rely on competitive intelligence to support their judgment calls. The typical attitude had been that competitive intelligence was good mainly for the middle managers and salespeople ... Just watch what had happened to Merck.
• Gilad on acquisitions
  Every time one reads about mergers and acquisitions where "the corporate cultures did not mesh", one is in essence reading about another sloppy operation.
• Gilad on executive confidence
  I am sometimes asked by top executives for examples of information that a process can provide that they cannot get themselves. I tell them: Let me gather a few experts in one room for two hours and see who knows more, you or the collective them. I even venture to select the experts at random by shooting darts at the organisational chart.
• Gilad on adopting a Japanese approach
  The intelligence process ... place is in the 'office of the president', a concept borrowed from Japanese companies. This Japanese import does not require callisthenics in the morning or abolishing reserved parking for executives.
• Gilad on executives and intelligence
  For whatever reason, from cost-consciousness to a distorted image of 'lean and mean', to a feeling of 'we have enough information', top executives regard line staffing as wholesome, and strategic staffing as wasteful overhead. Almost universally, they react favourably to a suggestion to strengthen the intelligence support for their subordinates. Yet the effect of better intelligence at these levels is minuscule compared to the effect of bad intelligence at the top.
• Gilad on cosy relationships with suppliers
  Relationships with suppliers are often subject to sclerosis – no one questioning, no one breaking china. If the supplier is large and might even place an executive on the client's board, the blindspot is stuck in cement. Cross-functional teams collecting competitive intelligence, doing competitive deciphering on suppliers? Not here, baby. Our accounting vendor is fine. The vice president of finance, who used to he a partner there, told us so himself.
• Gilad on the big consulting firms
  Intelligence advisers who are tempted to give strategic advice should remember the following: The reason so many large American corporations have fallen from grace over the past two decades was not lack of strategic advice. Strategic advice was available, and supplied, in large quantities by the prestigious consulting firms (for hefty sums but few results).
• Gilad on intelligence overheads
  : At the intelligence-process' heart is one manager, one telephone and a PC. The rest is nice.
• Gilad on intelligence location
  Companies that place their intelligence operations in a planning department rather than next to the CEO or president will see benefits as unattainable as are the Niagara Falls to a thirsty man in the Sahara.
• Gilad on databases
  The intelligence process is politically neutral. It simply presents a picture of reality obtained primarily from networks of human sources who identify and decipher early signals. The emphasis on human networks and human intelligence (HUMINT) is one lesson from Japan: The speed of information passing through a human network, as well as its richness, is crucial to the competitiveness of Japanese firms. Databases and publications are good for academics who can wait for the information to be obsolete.
• Gilad on CI
  Competitive intelligence is deciphered early signals from the market that tell top management if the organisation is, or is not, still competitive.
• Gilad on early signals
  Most executives are too busy, too insulated and too involved in their own strategic concepts to identify early signals regarding change. They receive their information when the signals are strong enough and late enough to have been identified by security analysts or newspaper reporters. No competitive advantage can result from identifying loud signals.
• Gilad on the route to the top
  What is the most common complaint of competitive intelligence professionals in the business world? They do not know what top management needs in terms of competitive input. The most common reason intelligence budgets are cut and personnel dispersed and the 'process' is considered a flop is that division heads do not receive any meaningful benefit from it. A significant reason is that the vast majority of these functions in Western corporations are several steps removed from top management. Mary in Room 238A on the left does not typically have breakfast with the president. That would never be remedied by periodic questionnaires or interviews in which intelligence experts ask top management to share its concerns.
• Gilad on travel
  Reading about the way a Japanese corporation sends teams of its employees to gather information at trade shows, and how its engineers take every opportunity for plant tours, and how its executives may spend months travelling in a foreign country collecting information, and how its representatives will be placed in undeveloped markets years before the actual market penetration takes place, one realises how backward we are in giving our employees opportunities to form networks of information sources.
• Gilad on training
  How do you turn a self-centred cadre of managers and employees into fighting marines? The answer is education and training. Boring answer. Long-term investment. Unmeasurable results. Costly. Anyone interested?
• Gilad on power
  Information privilege is one of the most coveted privileges of becoming a senior executive. The price a company pays is so high though, that executives should take a serious look at changing their assumptions on this issue. It causes all the information bottlenecks and feelings of powerlessness and loss of involvement and cynicism and lack of trust – and I can continue with many more typical corporate malaise – often ascribed to ambiguous 'culture'.
• Gilad on information sharing
  It is amazing how little information American companies share with their employees. The phenomenon often borders on paranoia. The explanations given for the fact that the overwhelming majority of managers and employees don't have the slightest idea of their own company's strategy, expected strategic moves, detailed performance, or strategic concerns range from security issues (completely misplaced) to a paternalistic attitude that "they don't need to know" (completely wrong) to "it is not practical" (completely outdated).
• Gilad on human intelligence
  The problem with technology is that too many intelligence professionals, or more typically their bosses, confuse it with intelligence capability. Competitive intelligence is a people process.
• Gilad on operations
  Good intelligence networks are always simple, basic, people-oriented. They require the understanding of human nature and the ability to persuade people and to listen to people. The more complex the process becomes, the less beneficial it will be. Save the money to help your internal sources gain better access to external information (such as sending them on as many trips and to as many conferences and trade shows as humanly feasible) and to hire outside sources of knowledge. This is where you should never count your change.
• Gilad on ethics
  Rarely have I encountered more hypocrisy than in discussions of the legality and ethics of competitive intelligence. Companies that don't mind sending defective or low-quality products to market, executives who will abandon you in a minute when political troubles appear on the horizon, and managers who will fix the blame on everyone around, will all rise to question the ethics of collecting competitive information.
• Gilad on strategic intelligence at Samsung
  Any way you look at it, this is a brilliant piece of intelligence work. Most [American executives] have neither the people nor an organisational process that can deliver such an intelligence analysis ... the intelligence flow (in a Western firm) circles the organisation, away from the busy life of the top brass, like an undercurrent of low voltage electricity, waiting to be amplified to strategic intelligence, and instead being dumped into the black hole of the internal paper shuffle

Book ordering information

Sample chapter

Benjamin Gilad

Benjamin Gilad was elected 'man of the year' in 1996 by the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (The Meritorious Award) for his influence on the development of competitive intelligence in the western world. He is a former Israeli intelligence officer turned management professor who shares his time between America and Israel. Fortune magazine selected him to lead its first CEO seminar on competitive intelligence for its Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 forums. The American Management Association selected his seminar for its Presidents' Forum, and Business Week chose him to lead its executive briefing on the subject. Ben Gilad is considered currently to be one of the most talented and provocative management speakers, and many other organisations from around the globe have asked him to teach managers about the right use of intelligence. He has designed and implemented intelligence functions in several of the leading American firms that are considered among the most effective units in the West.

Ben Gilad is the founder and President of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence, a first-of-its-kind institution that trains managers in competitive intelligence. He is the author of the definitive text in competitive intelligence, The Business Intelligence System (AMACOM, 1988), and the co-editor of The Art and Science of Business Intelligence Analysis (JAI Press, 1996). His articles on the subject have appeared in all major business periodicals.

Contents

• Preface to the revised edition
• Why giants fail

  Part One: A theory of blindspots and bloodshed

• The winner’s curse: competitive sclerosis
• Business blindspots
• Managing the competition
• Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Scipio and Federal Express: blindspots as a competitive weapon

  Part Two: Diagnosis

• The tests
• A case approach to flushing out blindspots

  Part Three: Treatment

• Competitive learning: the deciphering of weak signals
• Organising intelligence activities: the American, Japanese, Korean, Israeli and Russian experience
• Strategy, decisions and intelligence
• The new old paradigm of competitive intelligence
• The Five Rings model
• China breaking and the Office of the President
• Napoleon’s mistake
• Is it good for our country? And what about ethics?
• Just do it (before it’s too late)
• Endnotes
  Index

ISBN 1-873699-33-6. 270 pages. Published 1996 by Infonortics, Malmesbury, England

The PDF (downloadable) version is 172 pp plus 15 pp. (187 pp).

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