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Competitive Analysis thinking: What Are You Training Yourself Not to Notice?

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Competitive Analysis thinking: What Are You Training Yourself Not to Notice? Competitive intelligence relies on paying attention, even before using any tools. The analyst who notices only visible activity will produce a busy report and miss half the market. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.” – Sherlock Holmes New products attract the eye. New hires look important. And new campaigns give us something concrete to capture. But noticing what’s missing is harder. The web page hass gone A familiar speaker no longer appears at the annual conference A partner directory suddenly has fewer names. Real partner directory, unlike those on Crayon A product manager changes role, and nobody replaces them A sales representative stops mentioning an offer that remains on the website Each event might seem too minor to mention, but together they can signal a major change. Attention becomes habit What you decide to track shapes how you think. A t...
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Scenario Planning Indicators: The Missing Half of Every Scenario Exercise

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  Scenario planning just influences decisions when each scenario includes clear indicators and a trigger for action that everyone agrees on. Without these, you end up with a set of well-written stories, and stories alone do not drive action. This is the most common failure we see in scenario work. The workshop goes well, and the ideas are real. Teams create and debate four possible futures, then write them up. After that, the presentation gets filed away, and the organisation continues with its original plan. The Assumption That Breaks Scenario Planning Most organisations treat scenario production as the deliverable. Build the scenarios , present the scenarios, job complete. That assumption is where value is lost. A scenario is really a hypothesis about how things might unfold. If you do not attach a way to test strategies it, it is just an opinion, no matter how carefully you built it. The goal of scenario planning is not just to describe possible futures. It is to help your org...
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How Using Analysis of Competing Hypotheses Shows What’s Really Happening in Your Market, Not Just What You Hope Is True

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Confirmation bias means looking for evidence that supports what you already believe. Real intelligence is about searching for evidence that could prove you wrong. The Competitor “Threat” That Didn’t Exist In 2024, we spoke with a SaaS company that was sure its main competitor had a complex plan to move upmarket and steal its enterprise deals. Here’s what they “knew”: The competitor hired three enterprise sales reps. Competitor launched “enterprise-grade security features”. The competitor won three enterprise deals in Q2. The competitor announced enterprise partnerships. The story made sense. Their strategy seemed clear. The threat looked obvious. But that wasn’t what was really happening. Instead of just looking for patterns in surface evidence, we used a structured analysis. We listed out different possible explanations: Hypothesis A The competitor is executing a serious enterprise strategy to displace us. Hypothesis B The competitor is testing the enterprise market with limited commi...
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