Strategy and Competitive Intelligence

Expedia Lodging Partner Services (LPS) is currently recruiting for a talented individual to aid the industry-leading Competitive Intelligence function in improving understanding of all aspects of competitors’ product supply – across the Lodging, Air and Package lines of business.The team serves a critical role in directing the organization’s efforts to improve supply breadth and quality. The successful candidate must be able to manage multiple tasks and projects simultaneously, own deliverables end to end, prioritize workload effectively, and thrive in a dynamic environment.

GE, perhaps more than any other major company, is dedicated to the use of data visualization as a key part of its marketing and communications efforts. Stemming from last month's Insight Center on visualizing data, I spoke with Linda Boff, GE's executive director of global brand marketing, about the benefits and challenges of this approach..

The workplace has never been more global than today. But despite that, I often find the last thing on people's minds when doing international work is the global element. Instead, and often for good reason, people focus on concrete and pressing work details. As a result, they tend to follow "gut" theories — what they assume to be true about adapting behavior across cultures. The problem is that these gut instincts are often false, misleading, and difficult to apply. In studying this topic for the past decade and working with hundreds of professionals from across the globe learning to adapt behavior, I've identified three such "myths" of global adaptation:

We are looking for someone who has good relational skills and who is highly organized to participate directly in the growth of the company.  A strong interest in competitive intelligence and the internet is a must.  A true sense of customer service, good project management abilities and a sense of business development will help you succeed in this innovative environment. t.

Understanding the successes and failures of your competition can give you a distinct edge. Uncovering what makes their employees happy or unhappy, successful business practices, and where they are focusing their efforts can lead to a distinct competitive advantage. You can dig deep to find effective attributes and make them your own, honing in on exclusive information and using it as a building block to accomplishments of your own. Before you know it, top talent is choosing YOUR business over the others as their preferred place of business.

If you want to provoke a vigorous debate, start a conversation on organizational culture. While there is universal agreement that (1) it exists, and (2) that it plays a crucial role in shaping behavior in organizations, there is little consensus on what organizational culture actually is, never mind how it influences behavior and whether it is something leaders can change.

The NSA has released a book it produced for its workers on how to find intelligence on the web. The 643-page tome, called Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research (.pdf), was just released by the NSA.

The book was published by the Center for Digital Content of the National Security Agency, and is filled with advice for using search engines, the Internet Archive and other online tools.