Methods and Tools for Creative Competitive Intelligence

254 Pages·2017·12.562 MB·English

by  Stephane Goria

Methods and Tools for Creative Competitive Intelligence
Series Editor
Fabrice Papy
Methods and Tools for
Creative Competitive
Intelligence

Stéphane Goria
First published 2017 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Chapter 1. Intelligence and Creative
Competitive Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. Supplying intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2. Informational supply and creative
competitive intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3. Creative class and creative competitive intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4. Creative competitive intelligence, objectives and means . . . . . . . . . 15
Chapter 2. Researching and Identifying Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1. Weak and strong signals and routine signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.1. The puzzle method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.1.2. The 3S hypotheses method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.1.3. Researching routine signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2. Trends interpreted using graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3. Sources of information on trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.4. Algorithm of trend research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Chapter 3. Formatting, Analysis and
Inspiration Using Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.1. Word clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2. Boards, cartograms and trend books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3. Note about researching images that relate to a trend . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.4. Trend funnel and cartogram of opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.5. Routine boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
vi Methods and Tools for Creative Competitive Intelligence
Chapter 4. Presenting and Analyzing Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.2. Illustrating indirect links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3. Illustrating links between individuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.4. Demonstrating networks with multivariate entities . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.4.1. Using star glyphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.4.2. Using Chernoff faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.5. Invisible chessboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.6. Comparative analysis of networks using graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Chapter 5. Visual Tools for Problem Solving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.1. The great issues of problem solving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.2. Maps to express questions and ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.2.1. Mind maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.2.2. Concept maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.2.3. Lotus flower maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.2.4. Ishikawa diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.2.5. The tree to break down objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.3. Window tools to change perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.3.1. Crossing multiscreens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.3.2. Hyperspective multi-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.3.3. The customer experience corridor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.4. Business use cases and user stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.4.1. Business use case diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.4.2. User stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.5. User experience maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Chapter 6. Investigating the Past and Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.1. Existing solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.1.1. Go and see what is done in other regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.1.2. Go to see what is done in other sectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.1.3. Go and see what exists in nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.2. Lateral thinking of obsolete technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.3. The C-K theory for design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.4. Investigating blue oceans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.4.1. Strategic canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.4.2. Forgotten customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.5. Crossing of current trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Contents vii
Chapter 7. Inspiration Using TRIZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.1. A few general points about TRIZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.2. The innovation principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.3. Matrix of (technical) contradictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.4. Separation principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
7.5. Eras and laws of technical system evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
7.6. Analyzing the technical system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
7.7. The ideal final result (IFR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Chapter 8. Reasoning with the Aid of Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
8.1. Search operators of expressions of avenues for innovation . . . . . . . . 121
8.2. The easy choice operators and their negation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
8.3. Verbal operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
8.3.1. SCAMPER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
8.3.2. Mathematical operators (the most basic ones) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
8.3.3. DTC operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
8.3.4. FRED ASTAIRE operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
8.4. Operators using the imaginary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
8.4.1. The operator using super powerful characters (SPC) . . . . . . . . . 130
8.4.2. The operator inspired from science fiction (ISF) . . . . . . . . . . . 131
8.5. Combined techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
8.5.1. The use of the Sequencer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
8.5.2. Crossing of windows and operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
8.6. The analogical operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
8.6.1. Simple usage of an analogy matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
8.6.2. Using Synectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter 9. Use of Games for Serious Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
9.1. Some forms of games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
9.1.1. A game as an attitude or support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
9.1.2. The game as a design goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
9.2. The game for serious purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
9.3. Information bingo to monitor speeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
9.4. The semantic brainball to find ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
9.5. Keyword battleships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Chapter 10. Diversion of Role-playing Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
10.1. Role-playing games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
10.2. Knowledge acquisition through role-playing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
10.3. The personas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
10.4. The court of ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
viii Methods and Tools for Creative Competitive Intelligence
10.5. The seven creative families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
10.6. Investigation trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
10.7. Complex route mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
10.8. The investigation of possible futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Chapter 11. Tactical or Strategic
Reflection and Wargames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
11.1. Reasoning by military analogies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
11.2. Free business wargames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
11.3. Product clash maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
11.3.1. Choice and preliminary data collection,
development of questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
11.3.2. Drawing the bottom of the map/terrain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
11.3.3. Placing pawns and estimating
movements: the simplified version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
11.3.4. Placing pawns and estimating
movements: the detailed version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
11.3.5. Reasoning using product clash maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
11.4. The strategic goban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Chapter 12. Use of Objective-based Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
12.1. A small point about games with a purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
12.2. The strategic and creative shoot (SCS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
12.2.1. SCS, strategic round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
12.2.2. SCS, creative round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
12.2.3. SCS, counter-attack or second level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
12.3. The Rummy of attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
12.4. The Small Horse Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
12.5. The informational and creative centipede . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Chapter 13. Creative Competitive
Intelligence and Territorial Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
13.1. Territory in question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
13.2. Problems with creative competitive
intelligence and territorial intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
13.3. Geo-strategic approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
13.4. Risk approach with Clue Storming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Introduction
This book constitutes a summary of investigations, which I have carried
out for years, surrounding collective creative intelligence. This form of
intelligence is not the first that has been a particular interest of mine. The
more my research has advanced, the more I have been able to identify the
diverse relationships between intelligence and innovation, as well as
between intelligence and creativity. All of this really began in 2002 when
writing a business thesis concentrating on the improvements of intelligence
processes in a context of competitive territorial intelligence. Like all doctoral
students who are interested in competitive or competitor intelligence, it was
necessary to start this work by creating a summary of the diverse
information intelligence uses. I was soon to discover the most classic forms
of information intelligence, namely technological, competitive, strategic,
market or legislative intelligence. However, by observing and putting these
intelligence practices into their professional framework, I noticed that
numerous requests to investigate information have revealed the need to
identify new solutions. Consequently, it is on this relationship, between
information retrieval and identifying new solutions, that my investigative
work will intensely focus on.
Throughout the years, I have explored the existing relationships between
the functions of competitor intelligence and the requirements and functions
of innovation, and then between design and processes of competitor
intelligence and knowledge management. This led me to concentrate my
investigation on the lines separating intelligence from creating information,
in order to eventually link research activities for information and creativity
within the same research objective. It is in this way that in 2007, I opted for
the expression “creative intelligence” in order to give a name to a type of
x Methods and Tools for Creative Competitive Intelligence
intelligence that has the objective of directly contributing to processes of
innovation, invention and creation. On reflection, I quickly realized that I
was far from being the first to employ this expression to link intelligence and
creation. I then refined my readings and investigations to better understand
the specificities of this intelligence explored previously by practitioners and
theorists. Nowadays, I consider creative intelligence to be a process that
links competitor intelligence and innovation. Like other forms of
intelligence, it seeks to do this through various functions such as acquiring,
processing, shaping and sharing information, and also two other functions,
associated more with knowledge management and innovation, which are the
creation of knowledge and identification of innovative spaces.
The aim of this book is to push you to discover creative intelligence
through different methods that I have tested or developed. This is why I have
chosen above all to prioritize the questions that are relevant for
understanding the problem, the collection and arrangement of information
regarding creative intelligence. The concept of creative intelligence
addressed in this work is mostly considered as a type of intelligence, which
allows us to make discoveries in development stages, to identify creation
paths which have not previously been dealt with, to develop original
strategies, to anticipate innovation strategies and to form new points of
reference. All of these methods presented have to be considered as advanced
intelligence methods. I thus presume that the reader is at least already
familiarized with the concept of intelligence, questioning the problems
inherent in information retrieval, challenging search engines, using social
media or creating alerts. If this is not the case, I advise you to read works
like those completed by G. Balmisse [BAL 14], P.-Y. Debliquy [DE 14],
J. Deiss [DEI 15], C. Dupin [DUP 14], D. Rouach [ROU 10], etc. It must be
clarified that I will not address the practices of systematic and automatic
intelligence. At most, I will cite some of them and put forward their main
principles in order to tackle a method or a means to increase their relevance
using a “push” approach based on the automation of a digital intelligence
process.
As already mentioned, I did not create the expression “creative
competitive intelligence”. In fact, it seems that it had been awaiting
recognition since at least the start of the 1990s. I no longer remember the
precise moment I discovered it and I cannot tell you if I ended up employing
the expression after a lecture or an exchange with an intelligence specialist,
or even if the idea came to me naturally when reflecting on a term which
Introduction xi
could express the idea of intelligence that is directly related to innovation. If
you try this terminological investigation yourself, you will realize that when
you are searching for an expression inspired by intelligence and which
expresses a strong link to innovation or creation, the expression creative
intelligence naturally emerges and, consequently, it is very difficult to forget
about it. Nevertheless, other expressions such as “innovation intelligence”
and “inventive intelligence” appear. Since 2012, these two expressions are
increasingly used in job offers that require a similar skill.
My definition of creative intelligence includes both aspects of intelligence
as well as “creation intelligence” or “creative intelligence”, “creative trends
intelligence”, “design intelligence”, “stylistic intelligence” and “artistic
intelligence”, this last expression being linked with activities of artistic
creation or the organization of artistic displays. Creative intelligence as a
generic expression used to define a type of intelligence focusing on creative
and innovative activities can also be combined with other forms of intelligence
to create more plural expressions like “creative and technological competitive
intelligence”/“technological competitive and creative intelligence”, “creative
and strategic intelligence”/“strategic and creative intelligence”, “creative and
competitor intelligence”/“competitor and creative intelligence” or “territorial
and creative intelligence” which I will tackle at the end of this work. These
combinations of different forms of intelligence simply illustrate that resulting
forms of intelligence can be defined and put into place according to certain
specificities of two initial intelligence systems which are joined together.
Now that I have given you an insight into what could define creative
intelligence, I think that it is time to explore creative intelligence to a greater
extent. In order to do this, I will make use of a diagram that I call a
“reflective strategic framework” (Figure I.1) that I apply to all forms of
intelligence and especially creative intelligence. This framework can also
help to prepare the groundwork for problem-solving, whether this be in a
context of innovation or not. It is made up of five frames which bring
together the elements that strongly interact and that are relevant for resolving
a problem from its initial emergence (resolution request) up to its
identification (the resolution request is thus implicit). I encourage you to use
this framework as a basis to resolve a problem that you are faced with. The
order in which you will tackle the fields that compose this framework does
not matter; the important aspect is to try to fully find out about them before
starting to solve a complex problem. This framework summarizes
numerous points which must be examined when we carry out an intelligence