Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World Hardcover – 27 Oct. 2009

Excellent condition

This book provides a very good overview into the key elements of competitive intelligence, when to employ it, and how to use the intelligence gathered. It also provides numerous real-life examples to support and illuminate the author's key points. While it does not cover key analytical CI tools, Chapter 9 usefully evaluates different information sources.I would recommend reading this book in conjunction with the classic Creating Market Insight: How Firms Create Value from Market Understanding, Smith & Raspin (2008) for the complementary subject of obtaining key insights from competitive and market research.

Love it

Seena has some provocative thoughts to develop a better understanding of the market and to make better business decisions. The book is the begining of a Journey to rethink "business as usual" and to start rethinking business models... forever!

"In these wacky and uncertain times, you CAN reduce risk and grow your business by knowing what others don't. Easy reading, lots of examples, and new thinking that will excite you about gaining immediate competitive advantage."

Seena Sharp's Competitive Intelligence Advantage is the first book in this category that I have happened upon and I found the treatment extremely helpful in getting up to speed without bogging down in minutia.By far for me the best chapter was Chapter 3, where Sharp differentiates competitive intelligence from competitor intelligence. Competitor intelligence has the narrow objective of uncovering critical information about parties you compete with; competitive intelligence "takes a broader, more objective and accurate view of what business faces" and what can derail or disrupt your organization.By emphasizing the need to examine the competitive landscape, Sharp showed me a new window and a new tool for examining all those elements that are important in assessing future near term threats and also opportunities. As an expert in business innovation, Clayton Christensen's theory of disruption has had a major impact. What this book did was to show me a new way to enlarge the scope of my vision to include all the ramifications and implications. Sharp quotes a Shell vice president in Chapter 3 who tells a conference "the big decisions that failed at Shell didn't fail because of our operations or because of project management. They failed because we misunderstood the external world."I believe this book will help the reader having to make a similar statement, if even some of the ideas and suggestions the author makes are implemented.-- Robert B. Tucker, author of Innovation is Everybody's Business

As a person who does business research for a living, I find this book to be a great professional development tool. Seena has a great "voice" that keeps you interested throughout the book. The way she breaks down the subject material and illustrates concepts through case studies makes this a very easy and captivating read. Her sources and easy-to-implement tips show that even a small business can take advantage of competitive intelligence.

Evolving and changing industries require insightful, objective and a more modern way of FORWARD thinking. In my opinion, Ms. Sharp is the defining authority in the world of Competitive Intelligence. Her book helps guide the reader into understanding what factors are the most important to consider when it comes to making key and smart business decisions.Chapter 7's "Knowing When and Why to Power Up the CI Engine" - Line Extension - exudes exactly why CI is paramount to a business's success. Seena explains how even having an ingenious idea can potentially fail without the proper insight of the changing market around you.I strongly recommend this book for anyone who seems as though they have hit a rut or have plateaued with their current marketing campaigns