 |
||
 |
||
|
|
POINT OF VIEW Macro-to-Micro: The Impact of Mega Trends on Your Competitive Future
As strategic and competitive intelligence professionals, one of our major responsibilities is to provide early warning to outside changes that affect our organization’s ability to be successful. Particularly important is the ability to identify and track trends of various sizes and intensities. In the global economy, the pace of change continues to accelerate and the increase in competitive intensity intensifies the unpredictability of change. The more rapid emergence of disruptive technologies also makes it difficult to identify future competitors. All of these factors make it more important for competitive intelligence to develop a 360 degree perspective, requiring visionary skills to understand where the world is going. Most of us are aware of the mini and micro trends around us, but we don’t often have the opportunity to detect and follow the macro (or mega) trends that can completely change our competitive environment. Mega trends cross all industries and regions, and make significant impacts on our lives, careers and organizations. Identifying these megatrends is helpful, and analyzing them is valuable. But our ability to develop forward thinking skills required to identify unmet needs, challenges and opportunities can significantly increase the impact of intelligence. To help expand our horizons and stimulate new perspectives, SCIP held a “Mega Trends Think Tank” session at SCIP 2011 Europe, where attendees considered the impact of selected mega trends on their collective future. Seated in industry groups, participants shared their knowledge and began the process of developing a perspective that can help them identify innovation opportunities. Such effort sets the stage for strategic and competitive intelligence professionals to develop a much larger role in their company’s future. In this mega trends session I had the pleasure of moderating a table of intelligence professionals from the energy and power systems industries. Here’s a summary of the trends these individuals discussed.
About the author Bonnie Hohhof is the director of competitive research for SCIP and the editor of Competitive Intelligence Magazine. She has over 25 years of corporate experience, including the Corporate Strategy Offices of both Ameritech and Motorola. A charter member of SCIP, she also served on their Board of Directors, founded and edited the Competitive Intelligence Review and received the SCIP Fellow and Meritorious awards. She has a BA in Political Science from Northwestern University, an MS in Information Sciences from Dominican University and an MBA from Roosevelt University. She can be reached at bhohhof@scip.org, or 630-469-0732.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
© 2011 Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals |