Competitive intelligence has recently sparked a wave of interest, partly motivated by the greater availability of information (the much-touted information explosion) and a reflected increase in the proliferation of commercial databases around the world. What else is driving this growth?
In purely competitive terms, no era before ours has presented so many opportunities or so many dangers. Recent changes in the Eastern bloc nations and the dawn of a unified Europe are a call to American corporations that can compete and that operate at the edge of their knowledge and capabilities. European and Japanese companies have grown to have a dominant position in US patents over the last twenty years. Japanese firms are using our universities as a competitive tool through funding and research programs. In 1989, West Germany's world exports exceeded ours, as well as those of other developed nations. Despite these inevitable social and economic dislocations,a united Germany will be a force to be recognized.
Given this changing landscape, competitive intelligence is an increasingly important activity. Whether it's due to the need to know an industry, a market, a product or a competitor, reliable global information is essential to our national success. As Frederick the Great said, "It is forgivable to be defeated, but never to be surprised." With today's information resources, and a CI (Competitive Intelligence) program that reflects the needs of the corporation, surprises can be minimized.
But this is a book about the process and resources of competitive intelligence, not about the electronic transformation of information itself. It may well be that electronic manipulation and storage of information have the same effect in our time as the invention of movable type printing had in fifteenth-century Europe. For the first time in history, books and the educated population needed to read them go hand in hand. In the same way, access to a growing world of information empowers modern corporations to understand themselves and their markets more fully than ever.
Definitions of competitive intelligence
We like to think of competitive intelligence as the selection, collection, interpretation, and distribution of strategically important public information. Needless to say, there are other definitions of competitive intelligence. Here is a sample.
Business intelligence is the activity of monitoring the external environment of the firm to obtain relevant information for the company's decision-making process.
Competitor intelligence is the analytical process that transforms disaggregated competitor intelligence into relevant, accurate, and usable strategic knowledge about competitors, position, performance, capabilities, and intentions.
Competitive intelligence is a way of thinking.
The CI uses public sources to locate and develop information about competition and competitors.
Competitor intelligence is "highly specific and timely information about a corporation."
The goal of competitor intelligence is not to steal a competitor's trade secrets or other private property, but rather to systematically and openly gather (i.e., legal) a wide range of information that once collected and analyzed provides a greater understanding of the structure, culture, behavior, capabilities and weaknesses of a competitor's firm.
But definitions, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, are like clocks, and none are too precise. True, we openly practice competitive intelligence, but we would prefer that the company we investigate remain in the dark. (Surprise is no small thing in the competition.) It is also true that we generally digest, analyze and fix the material in our reports, but sometimes, just like when we search a database that presents production numbers for ten years in the form of a report about a certain product, analysis and digestion may just be gilding the pill. The heart of the matter is sometimes simply in the numbers or the unanalyzed facts.It is true that sometimes we need a wide range of material about a wide range of corporate functions, but sometimes you need a very precise piece of information, (What kind of machinery do they use in that plant?) And it is true that we only use public access information, but sometimes our client would like to know the color of the CEO's underwear, and with pardon the word, we would like to answer that to our client as well. Sometimes, however, the color of the underwear becomes familiar.we would also like to answer that to our client. Sometimes, however, the color of the underwear becomes familiar.we would also like to answer that to our client. Sometimes, however, the color of the underwear becomes familiar.
Does corporate competitive intelligence bear any resemblance to intelligence work done by the CIA, or in John le Carré novels? It is ridiculous to deny that there are similarities. To the extent that both require probing the environment to obtain information that could hurt or help the client's organization, yes, they are similar. In both cases, whether you work for a corporation or for the government, hunting for information is interesting and exciting, just as meeting the customer is. Both require the selection, collection, interpretation, and distribution of information. Beyond this, the similarities fade. Projects in CI can sometimes feel like they are matters of life and death, but they are not. Not really.The CIA and other government intelligence agencies are known to have worked outside the law. Competitive or business corporate intelligence does not operate this way.
Competitive intelligence has nothing to do with espionage!
The CI, as we will see here, does not use illicit or illegal methods to achieve its objectives.
Some common goals of competitive intelligence:
- Detect competitive threats Eliminate or reduce surprises Improve competitive advantage by reducing reaction time Find new opportunities
Competitive intelligence is so wide-ranging that it can use information related to almost any product or activity, or information about recent industry trends or topics (packaging companies are constantly tracking changes in environmental regulations), or whatever. says about geopolitical trends (for example, currently 30% of all material in the aeronautical industry is sold to companies in the Pacific Rim). The CI may be driven by something that seems as mundane as the need for a biographical profile of a recently hired executive, or something as important as the news that a competitor to steel is making significant investments in R&D in ceramics and electronics.It may even be the suspicion that a future competitor in an unrelated industry will soon threaten the corporation with new technology.
A future competitor to the Royal Typewriter Company was introduced by a couple of young men, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who ingeniously soldered a collection of microchips, cables, and a cathode ray tube into a kind of computer-swing in their California garage. What emerged from this home game was the Apple computer. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's work on the home computer started an industry that was to reshape the typewriter business, and many other businesses as well, in profound ways over the ensuing years. (Later, when IBM decided that Apple had defined the market for its PC, following Apple's lead, IBM's business definitely changed.) A future technological threat to the empty tube was the microchip,and a future competitor to the buggy business was Henry Ford's car. The question is: if they are unrelated industries, how do you find them before it's too late?
Some of these future competitors will appear on the surface, where good leadership with solid competitive analysis can warn them in time, and maneuver around them; others will appear as an iceberg, silently, with 90% of its mass below the surface of the water, where they can do the most damage. In some cases, vision and the ability to see what is approaching are useless. "Let's not worry, those little cars are not what Americans want to buy," is the case of Detroit seeing the competitive iceberg back in 1960 and not reacting for thirty years. Detroit automakers may never be able to compete with the quality of Japanese and European cars. One journalist observed that the institutional personality of Detroit automakers is so dominant and strong,that the only way they can change their thinking is if they move to another part of the country. “Send a bright, thoughtful, young person to Detroit and in six months he or she will be thinking and talking like everyone else. These are good American cars, and that's just what our customer wants. "
Japanese photographic camera manufacturers have recently introduced cameras that use magnetic media instead of photosensitive film. (Digitally captured photos are viewed on video (TV) monitors, something that slide projector manufacturers should have identified some time ago, and should have included in their systematic scans of competitors, along with the products of the other film producers. slide projectors). Eastman Kodak can easily supply magnetic storage disks for these cameras, as well as Fuji, 3M and many other manufacturers, but they will eventually send their slide projectors to the Smithsonian, where they will be seen only as trivia.Eastman Kodak may or may not want to compete with video monitors (the replacement technology for the viewfinder and slide projector) against Sony, Panasonic and many other established foreign electronics manufacturers. Much of the technology and production capacity for home appliances appears to have been lost in Japan and the Pacific Rim. Such capacity may have been permanently lost in the United States, unless current studies of digital HD (high definition) television provide us with a new entry into the home appliance market.Such capacity may have been permanently lost in the United States, unless current studies of digital HD (high definition) television provide us with a new entry into the home appliance market.Such capacity may have been permanently lost in the United States, unless current studies of digital HD (high definition) television provide us with a new entry into the home appliance market.
Not all companies, no matter how large and powerful, adequately understand the nature of their own business, or their consumer base. Also, not all companies or divisions always understand or act in their best interests. Without the vision authorized by such an understanding, no CI will help avoid the inevitable. Without such an understanding, threats cannot be seen for what they are, if they can be seen at all. Competitive intelligence, in many ways, is exactly this: perceiving threats and ways to get the necessary information once the threat is perceived in some way.
Who practices competitive intelligence?
Those who work in CI range from public, legal, or corporate librarians and information center analysts, to management personnel, financial data specialists, business development people and strategic planners, to former CIA agents and military intelligence personnel. retired, information specialists and academics. (One of the authors of this book, John Moorhead, is a former United States Naval Intelligence officer.) Many of those who practice it at the corporate level, according to a survey by The Conference Board, are marketing directors or marketing research managers. It seems that at this point in the evolutionary progress of the CI, to quote Lawrence of Arabia, "nothing is written."
Outside of the agencies that perform competitive intelligence work, one can find the gamut from certain public relations firms and the consulting arms of communication and public affairs firms to young companies dedicated to competitor analysis and industrial research.
Competitive intelligence has only recently emerged as a distinctive field of endeavor. Only one association, the recently formed Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, now exists to serve this field directly, but a number of others, such as the Information Industry Association.), the Planning Forum, and perhaps even the American Marketing Association and the Special Library Association serve some related interests and overlapping information needs.
Every discipline, no matter how old or recent, possesses schools of thought, gurus, beliefs that they value, taboos, etc. The new ones simply have less luggage. Later we will see the gurus, or keyword authors. We have already discussed the taboo against using less legitimate information resources. There is also a commandment about being ethical when seeking information. At the practical level, or “schools of thought level,” three groups of recognized CI specialists stand out.
The first group maintains that interpretation and analysis are essential activities in CI. "It is clearly possible," as a professor of statistical measurement once put it, "to lie with the numbers, but it is much easier to lie without them." The question here is: are our analytics tools valid and serious, and what is the device or matrix that will most easily communicate the complexities of an industry or corporate position relative to its peer corporations?
The second group maintains that hunting, gathering and locating reliable information is an essential activity. The question here is how to keep up with the proliferation of databases, printed resources (books, magazines, and reports), and how to keep up with the procedures for getting information that is not published. (Locating and requesting a document or record from a government archive requires some finesse, even when one is being open and ethical.)
A third group believes that the collection of valid / reliable information and its analysis are equally important. If one of these two activities looks weak or diminished, the other will probably have flaws.
Raw information or data transfers are understood to have limited utility, and are not usually a product given to the customer. Data and almost any type of information generally need to be integrated and analyzed in a document that is well organized and can be easily read and interpreted. Graphs, tables, and charts are often useful communication aids.
At the same time, if one does not know the kinds of information that can be found during the hunting and gathering process (whether electronically or in print) one cannot ask the right questions. For example, PIERS, a Journal of Commerce database (which will be about 100 years old) with data on imports / exports, is now available in the DIALOG database entry service, and allows the researcher to track the movement of import / export materials from one company to another company located abroad. Just knowing about this resource would lead a manager to ask (in a legitimate and legal world) "What products or materials have been shipped from Company X in the past year?"
If management cannot be expected to ask the right questions about the competitive environment without understanding the types of information that shape that environment, what does this mean for CI?
It means campaigns and programs to inform and educate management. A corporate leadership that has taken the first step in the right direction to establish a CI function, but now needs to understand what kinds of information can be found. Without as much proselytism, at the very least, competitive intelligence will not be sufficiently utilized; in the worst case, the CI program will suffer an unjustified and premature death.
Footnotes
Back Benjamin and Tamar Gilad
The Business Intelligence System
New York, AMACOM, 1988, p. viii
Back Seminar guide
The Competitor Intelligence Group
division of Kirk Tyson Associates, Ltd., 1986, p. III-11
Back William Rothschild
How to Gain (and Maintain) the Competitive Advantage in Business (
New York, McGraw Hill, 1984, p. 179
Back John J. McGonagle, Jr. and Carolyn M. Vella
Outsmarting the Competition
Naperville, IL, Sourcebooks, 1990, p. viii
Back Leonard Fuld
Competitor Intelligence: How to Get It; How to Use It (
New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1985, p.5)
Back William L. Sammon, et al.
Business Competitor Intelligence. The Axioms of Competitive Intelligence (The Axioms of Competitive Intelligence)
Most of the information needed for a given project is available through public channels.
The percentage in which the majority of those who practice it use this type of public information ranges between 80% and 90%. Given the amount of information available in our era, this 80% to 90%, if carefully analyzed and presented, may be more than adequate for most needs. The remaining percentage is negligible.
Information is where you find it.
This caveat simply means that while one may have their treasured sources and resources for certain types of information, vital information is often found in unusual places. We once found the sales and earnings numbers for a large private company in the transcript of an Environmental Protection Agency hearing. The company was trying to prove that it could not afford a large fine from the EPA, and in doing so had sent its CFO (Chief Financial Officer) to testify at the hearing. The CFO brought with him the spreadsheets for the past three years, which became part of the hearing, and therefore became public through the hearing minutes.
CI projects go through stages that can be described in a U-shape.
At the beginning of the project, the researcher is full of optimism about achieving his objectives. Soon after actually starting the project investigation, the researcher's enthusiasm is reversed and he feels that the material to complete the project successfully will not materialize. Time passes and data and information begin to accumulate, and as the project takes shape, the researcher begins to climb the side farthest from the curve.
Someone else is interested in the project.
No matter how small, obscure, or esoteric the topic is, it is certainly of interest to someone other than you and your client. This someone may be the editor of a newspaper in a small town where the company is located, or it may be the editor of a special newsletter, or an industry government specialist, or a competitor of the company you are researching, or a product distributor, or a warehouse manager, or the head of an association. In a case involving the production of a specialty material so small that it could not be traced by normal means, the firm investigating tracked down the man who had invented the product twenty years ago when he was working for a large multinational corporation. He had been running his own business for fifteen years,but he had developed his own sources to trace his invention. The investigation had led to someone who was interested.
Unique sources of information are unreliable.
Information from one source may be entirely correct, but it may not. It is, from appearances, unreliable for competitive intelligence purposes. In CI work, the primary use of information from a single source is for something to be confirmed by a second source. Information corroborated by two or more sources is likely to be reliable. Information that cannot be corroborated should be treated as rumor. It can still be useful to the customer, who may think the rumor shines like gold, and it can be. But if it is a rumor and is presented as fact, your professional judgment may be in question.
True market share is harder to find than it sounds.
This wouldn't matter if customers weren't so eagerly trying to find it, but it does matter, because they're looking for it. Part of the problem is that market share is often sought for small private companies, or divisions of large private companies, where only the CEO and two other people can know the answer during certain times of the year. Part of the problem is the ignorance of the total size of the market for smaller industries. Part of the problem is the difference in product lines, even in large companies, so even two companies that seem to be making the same product often don't. The product line and participation is also complicated by the way manufacturers and others use SIC numbers (standard industry classification codes,for its acronym in English). Additionally, companies tend to be identified by SIC numbers in three or four digits, rather than the more precise seven or eight digits. The use of four-digit codes amplifies the imprecise nature of SIC numbers. Some print sources, such as directories, limit their market share lists to public corporations, which almost always distorts the image of the market and its major players. A number of information products (including the recently acquired TriNet database) propose to disclose market share to their readers or search engines, but unfortunately, it does not usually happen in a way that is helpful. If the market is small enough, no one can have bothered to break it,and it may have to be painstakingly built brick by brick. Building size and market share in this way can take months and involve interviews with a considerable number of industry participants.
Companies, like individuals, leave a paper trail as they go about their business.
For every action there is a reaction. If a company wants to produce new material that involves the use of different chemicals, it will need to go to a number of regulatory agencies. Such presentation is a public document. If a company wants to expand its plant, it must apply for building permits, and these too become public documents. Later, when corporate agents such as construction engineers and architects submit their supporting documents and sketches for the plant expansion, these too become public documents.
REMEMBER: the CI's job is to understand the corporate world well enough to find the role that company stocks play.
Public information
"Look! I had made the sanctuary of my mind a public affair. "
Deciduous Saint Thomas, 604-656 AD
We have said that competitive intelligence uses public information. Public in this sense means that the information can be obtained more or less legitimately. This distinction is close to being a key concept in CI, because it helps define what is ethical or permissible behavior.
Publish: make known, announce publicly, reveal, produce for publication
Public: accessible or shared by all members of the community
This does not mean that public information is something a company may want outsiders to know. It's that companies leave a paper trail as they go about their business. Corporations go to the trouble of ensuring that their strategic planning and product presentation agenda is confidential. In almost all cases, the timing of a particular strategic action is important, and prior knowledge of this action by competitors is undesirable. In more volatile industries, timing can be critical to product success. A copycat product can often be introduced quickly, stealing precious market share, or worse, a competitor's superior product can be launched before yours, if your planning becomes public.
Ideally, whenever you can dramatically improve an existing technology, you should have a product so important that it is the dominant force in the market. But a fast-moving competitor with a better understanding of the market and an ability to compensate for his technological naivety can succeed in preparing the way to his door more quickly.
Sony first appeared with a VCR (video recorder) in its proprietary Beta format. But a smaller competitor, JVC, appeared a few months later with similar technology but in a different format of its own invention called VHS (video home system), and requested the cooperation of a number of Japanese electronic firms. to assist you in your manufacturing and marketing. As we already know, JVC now leads the market, and with a slightly less demanding video output quality than Sony's.
Corporations are not always internally consistent or coordinated in their efforts to keep their perceived secrets to themselves.
The Dutch electronics company Philips is one of the latest companies in Europe to continue to fight the Japanese in the mass market for home appliances. The Philips video factory in Vienna is as modern and automated as most in Japan. When asked for information about production techniques, Philips' corporate public relations office in London refused, saying it was "strategic information." Later, by showing the factory to visitors, Philips managers proudly revealed everything the British office had wanted to keep secret.
The variety of publicly available information is too vast to detail. But as we have already mentioned, between 80-90% of the information that a project requires can generally be found through channels available to the public, and the rest can often be deduced or estimated. The trick is knowing which channels can be productive, and which can have only limited information. Given the realities of time and financial constraints, it is important to dedicate defined project resources to the most productive areas.
We said at the beginning that CI involves locating and analyzing public information. But we must not confuse public information with published information. Much of the world's public but unpublished information takes the form of requests, hearings, and documents from government agencies and regulatory bodies. These agencies are behind every imaginable institutional door, from an EPA branch in a state capital, and the local division of a union, to the manager's office in town or the building permit office in a small town to about to house a competitor's new facility.
If a competitor's new plant is being built in or near a wetland area, all agencies from EPA to Army Corps Engineers will need to approve the acceptability of the site. (Even new construction on conventional sites requires applications from a number of local, state, and federal agencies.) To approve or disapprove the site, each agency will ask the manufacturer for documents such as sketches, vehicle or truck traffic projections, plans for disposition waste, descriptions of materials to be used in manufacturing, employment projections, electrical energy use projections, descriptions of equipment to be used in the manufacturing process, and the construction budget and schedule. Each of these agencies, with all their documents,is a potential source of information through something as formal as a request made under the Freedom of Information Act (which makes government documents available under certain conditions), or through something as simple as a verbal request for commercial but friendly look.
Company directories are good sources of information about location, sales, number of employees, address, and other basic information. Some examples include Dun's Million Dollar Directory and the Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives. Dun's also has a directory of foreign corporations. The Directory of Corporate Affiliations is a good source for tracking who owns what.
Other types of directories are also useful. The Encyclopedia of Associations is invaluable when finding knowledgeable commercial sources, for example.
Government forms come in all shapes and sizes, from a detailed and comprehensive 10K to a state corporation registration with only the company's name, address and registered agent. But these forms generally contain a lot of reliable information. Some commercial databases specialize in government forms, such as Information America, which provides Secretary of State and UCC information online. In California, real estate transactions are available online.
Of course, all the information from the commercial databases and tickets or sellers that one searches such as DIALOG, DOW JONES, NEWSNET, NEXIS and DATASTAR will be public / published by definition. Comprehensive databases of local or regional newspapers, such as VU / TEXT or DATATIMES can be extremely useful.
Sometimes when no local newspaper was available online, we have turned to a local newspaper editor or a local public library. In a recent project we got the name of the distributor we had been looking for this way. And we learned that new facilities had been built to allow the company to double its production without major construction, that the company would be expanding into new product lines, that a generic product carried a brand name and we did not know, and other juicy details.. All of this came from two small articles provided by a librarian who collected clippings about local firms. He mailed them to us, along with a modest bill for the photocopies.
Individual types of public information (government documents, databases, corporate directories, interviews, and other sources) will be discussed later.
The world is full of public and legitimate information available, but simply less accessible than published material.
The international background of CI
No other time has been as important to American corporations as the decade we have just entered. Foreign companies, both Japanese and European, have made inroads into the domestic market across a bridge of industries ranging from steel and automobiles to household appliances and ceramics. In some cases, entire industries and their infrastructure have been left to foreign competition. Foreign students' SAT scores dramatically outperform American students, with dire consequences for our future technological capabilities.We learned that a well-known German company was unable to sell its packaging machine to US bottlers because local management felt the control panel was too complex for its poorly educated workforce. It did not seem to matter that the machine offered greater production economy and efficiency (much greater economy than the cost of training the operators). Walking away from higher productivity by saying "our workers are not educated or cultured enough to handle it" has become an expensive philosophy.Walking away from higher productivity by saying "our workers are not educated or cultured enough to handle it" has become an expensive philosophy.Walking away from higher productivity by saying "our workers are not educated or cultured enough to handle it" has become an expensive philosophy.
Both European and Far Eastern companies commonly spend much more than their American counterparts on research. Sad to say, our products do not have, despite some efforts to change and improve, a level of quality comparable to that of many European or Japanese companies. Many of our large companies are overloaded at the top, compared to their international competitors, with many layers of management between the worker and the CEO, something unimaginable in the developed world. A major business publication recently viewed the era of the 1990s as "competitive hell for American corporations." It can turn out exactly that, particularly if we continue to conduct our domestic business as we have in recent decades.
The Boston Consulting Group, with the Wall Street Journal, recently surveyed Japanese and US directors about the obvious need for a larger R&D budget at their companies. Ninety-seven percent of Japanese directors expressed the need for higher R&D spending at their corporations, compared with 61 percent among US directors.
Without the advantages of increased investment in R&D, US companies may find themselves in the situation of some underdeveloped nations: rich in natural resources, but unable to bring those resources to market by adding value to them.
According to Jonathan Aylen, a researcher for the global steel industry, Japanese-controlled metallurgists are investing more R&D resources in non-steel areas such as ceramics and electronics. Aylen told Research-Technology Management that one company, Nippon Steel, is spending more on research than the eight leading US metallurgists combined. He noted that investments for EC steel are on par with Japan. Aylen has a column in the Steel Times International.
Japanese corporations are using elite universities as a key resource for science and technology research. Cutting-edge research is happening everywhere from Stanford and Harvard to MIT; Japanese corporations are actively allocating funds for research. Half of the foreign companies participating in MIT's Industrial Liaison Program are Japanese. In addition, more than a third of the corporate chairs created at MIT are sponsored by Japanese companies. These 19 chairs represent approximately $ 20 million for MIT. Evan Herbert has taken a look at the Japanese use of American information and technology, and it's a foreboding image in a way.
Universities insist they do not sell their services, but seek sponsors, and this is a sponsorship that aggressive, technology-driven Japanese companies are happy to supply. What do these companies get for their money? Keys to the store.
Fujitsu Limited, Japan's leading computer maker, created the Fujitsu Professorship of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT for $ 1.5 million in 1988. MIT elected one of its most respected professors, Robert G. Gallager, to hold that chair. Gallager wrote Information Theory and Reliable Communication. He co-directs the Information and Decision Systems Laboratory. He was president of the Information Theory Society in 1971. He is recognized for his work in flow control, data compression, and routing. What else does Fujitsu get for its $ 1.5 million? Access to other MIT resources, mainly.
Marvin Minsky, arguably the leading authority on artificial intelligence, is also among the professors at MIT. Minsky is one of two people Isaac Asimov named when asked if he knew someone smarter than him. (The other was the astronomer and writer Carl Sagan). How could Japan resist having access to such talent? Why would anyone expect them to resist?
In its promotional literature, MIT says: "The Industrial Liaison Program makes available to you the expertise and resources of all MIT schools, departments, centers and laboratories." Given the value received, $ 1.5 million sounds like a smart buy.
Recent changes in the status of the Eastern Bloc nations and the continuing evolution of the Economic Community do nothing to lessen this competitive threat. Given these events, and our recent failure to compete across the spectrum of technology areas, compels US corporations to conduct a careful analysis of their strategic position. The reasons for your diminished competitive stamina probably have less to do with skill than with mental state and attitude, but whatever the reasons, surely knowledge of the competitive environment and the resources that define it is a necessary prelude to change..
A competitive parable: the snail and the crabThe growth patterns of the snail Physella virgata virgata, which lives in ponds, are significantly altered by the presence of a certain type of crab. In a relatively free environment of the freshwater crab, the snail reproduces when its shell is approximately 4 millimeters long. The life expectancy of snails in this environment is three to four months (Science Magazine). However, if the water is also inhabited by the crab Orconectes virilis, the snails grow to twice their normal size, live twice as long (11 to 14 months), and reproduce later. Scientists who study this phenomenon think that in such a harsh environment, the snail relocates its resources away from reproduction, and towards the growth and survival of the community.
Suppose we compare this genetic development / biological response with the industrial / competitive environment that the European Economic Community and the changes in the nations of the Eastern Bloc will undoubtedly bring. This was the environment where Europe and Japan fought after World War II, when immediate pleasures had to be postponed in pursuit of community growth and survival. (An analogy to the early reproduction of US corporations may be our short focus on quarterly or annual results rather than directing resources into long-term profits.) Michael Porter, on the results of his research in his recent book, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, said:“… I realized that competitive advantage does not come from static efficiencies but from improvement, innovation and the ability to tirelessly improve competitive advantages towards more sophisticated types.These in turn do not result from a comfortable home environment but from pressure and challenge. We could have used a few more crabs in our comfortable home environment, apparently, and a little more pressure and challenge. As Shakespeare wrote, Sweet are the uses of adversity; Like the ugly and poisonous toad, He also wears a precious jewel on his head; And our life, exempt from public hunting, Finds tongues in trees, books in streams, Sermons in stones, and good in all things.
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