I had the great opportunity to design and MC the October 10 program at Reconverge:G2 in Indianapolis hosted by Eli Lilly and Aurora WDC.  The theme for the day was Technical Intelligence … which rapidly morphed into what we were really all about:  Competitive Intelligence about Innovation!

The program featured a group of remarkably talented technical intelligence practitioners, including:  Kathy Flynn from Baxter Healthcare; David Conley, a TRIZ expert and President of Innomation Corporation; Dolly Goulart from Qualcomm; Dale Cooper from Procter & Gamble; and Clay Philips from General Motors.

Here are the BIG IDEAS from this information and insight packed program:

  • You can do this!  You need to do this!  Innovation is the great disrupter of business.  It is the un-named competitor and it can arrive almost anywhere in the business model … not just out of the clever minds of current rivals.  Systematic analysis of technology and innovation is a crucial intelligence activity that all of us need to take up.

  • Write a business plan for Competitive Intelligence and Technical Intelligence.  OK this steals from Wednesday keynote Peter Johnson’s advice!  But it applies to the technical intelligence project.  You need to make a plan:  Who is the TI customer?  How will we serve the TI customer?  How will we satisfy the needs of the TI customer?  How will we change outcomes?  Big questions that need to be answered to structure an effective TI program.

  • Speak the language of your commercial customer.  Great technical or innovation intelligence has to speak the language of commercial audiences.  This audience doesn’t need to understand the chemistry; they need to understand why they should invest in the chemistry.  That means you need to frame technical insights in terms of the questions your commercial partners are trying to answer.

  • Appreciate time horizons.  Not every future crisis needs to be addressed today.  Doing innovation intelligence will get you excited, even agitated, about things that are still over the horizon.  Your well-founded concern often doesn’t relate to the issues facing management today.  Have the patience to accept that these short term issues command greater attention … but diligently hammer away at those longer term threats and opportunities and you will get through!

  • Systematic analysis uncovers true patterns.  Technical innovation follows clear and discernible patterns.  Knowledge of these patterns can help organize your technical intelligence work.  Use of systematic analysis can assist in discovering new innovations as well as identifying competitor breakthrough areas.

  • It pays to understand current innovation performance and pay-out.  Understanding the impact of recent innovation on marketplace outcomes is crucial to pointing your intelligence efforts.  It can also help your organization set reasonable innovation goals and better organize product development efforts.

  • Understand that the objective is to help make decisions.  When organizing technical intelligence, keep the end in mind!  That end is enabling decision making … especially decisions made better and before competition.  It’s nice to forecast future innovation threads; it’s better to figure out what options these provide your firm and what decisions can be taken to accelerate progress.

  • Reframe market boundaries and definitions to help position insights.  Bringing trends and innovation predictions to bear on your business often requires that you reframe your market space.  Technologies that disrupt industries often don’t operate inside current market boundaries.  Having clean clothes may or may not require laundry detergents.  Help your organizations see how disruptive ideas often succeed because they draw new boundaries.

  • Find non-traditional sources and precincts to understand disruption.  Doing great technical or innovation intelligence requires you to go beyond the sources of information typically associated with competitor intelligence.  Venture capitalists, academic researchers, incubators, taste mavens … they all live on the cutting edge.  Who’s on that cutting edge in your industry?

  • Create events to demonstrate the potential impact of technology change.  Finding it hard to get executives to pay attention to innovation intelligence?  “Show and Tell” maybe just the ticket.  Creating low risk, high touch events that physically demonstrate how future innovation might manifest itself makes it important and real for any audience (think mock-ups, models, audio-visual displays).  And it’s a lot of fun.

drucker