Craig S. Fleisher - Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods

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Craig S. Fleisher
and Babette E. Bensoussan

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2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.
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Printed in the United States of America
First Printing February, 2007

ISBN 0-13-187366-0

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fleisher, Craig S.
Business and competitive analysis methods: effective application of new and classic methods/Craig
Fleisher, Babette Bensoussan.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-13-187366-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Business intelligence. 2. Competition. I. Bensoussan,
Babette E. II. Title.
HD38.7.F57 2007
658.4'032dc22
2006030892

This book is dedicated to my immediate family, my wonderful wife Angela and three awesome boys Zachary, Austin, and Kieren. They have contributed love, patience, and understandingcharacteristics that were particularly needed during the cold, winter months as we put the finishing touches on this effort and tried to keep the synapses connected. Thanks again everybodyI couldn't have done it without you and your support.

Craig S. Fleisher

I dedicate this book to Garry Johnston, my husband and best friend. His encouragement, patience, and love throughout the countless days, weeks, and months involved were instrumental in me emerging with some semblance of sanity. Garry, you have been a tower of strength. Thank you.

Babette E. Bensoussan

I, Craig Fleisher, want to express my gratitude and thanks to a number of friends and colleagues without whose help the book could not be written. My first expression of gratitude goes out to my co-author Babette Bensoussan, who worked alongside me for the last few years in developing this text. Second, a big dose of thanks goes out to Sheila Wright, my colleague and fellow SCIP Board member who researches and teaches competitive intelligence and marketing courses at Leicester Business School (De Montfort University, UK), and who was a magnificent and timely help in polishing Part 1, as well as being a particularly helpful sounding board for my ideas. Go Tigers! My highly capable research assistant Jennifer White did a marvelous job in helping me uncover and organize the materials as well as develop PowerPoint slides for each of the technique chapters, and Sanjay Gupta assisted in reviewing and commenting upon several chaptersparticularly the one on business model analysis, which he helped develop, as did my long-time research assistant Victor Knip, who was his usual hard-working self.

I also want to thank the many individuals who helped review these chapters and provided valuable advice. I'd particularly like to thank long-time competitive intelligence and related professionals Brad Ashton, Albert Cruywagen, Bill Fiora, Alex Graham, Arik Johnson, Timothy Kindler, Victor Knip, Martha Matteo, Rainer Michaeli, John Prescott, Pascal Savioz, Pat Shaw, Fred Wergeles, and Melanie Wing. Thanks to many excellent MBA students in my various CI courses at the University of Windsor, University of New Brunswick, and Wilfrid Laurier University. The book also benefited from feedback from students and workshop attendees at the University of Sydney and Sydney Graduate School of Management (Australia), Nihon University (Japanspecial thanks to my friend and colleague Yoshio Sugasawa), Stellenbosch University, Graduate School of Business Leadership at UNISA (thanks to Peet Venter), University of Pretoria and North-West University in South Africa (special thanks to Wilma Viviers). They offered me a wonderful sounding board for discussing many of the book's ideas. Additionally, I want to acknowledge David Blenkhorn, who co-taught CI courses at WLU with me, where I also benefited from teaching related strategy courses with my colleague Kenneth Harling, and Conor Vibert of Acadia University, with whom I regularly discuss these concepts. Additionally, several valuable workshops and conferences held under the auspices of Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), CBIA (South Africa) and its long-time leader Steve Whitehead, my friends Mike Kuhn and Marie Luce-Muller of IBIS South Africa, Frost & Sullivan, KMWorld, and Marcus Evans Conferences, in particular, have also allowed me many opportunities to hone these ideas. Last but not least, I want to express my appreciation to various agencies that provided funding and other forms of support along the way in developing this book, including the Canadian Council for Public Affairs Advancement, National Research Council (Canada), National Research Foundation (South Africa), Odette School of Business, Dean Allan Conway, and the Windsor Research Leadership Chair and Odette Research ChairsUniversity of Windsor.

I, Babette Bensoussan, readily acknowledge that I am right on the cutting edge of the still relatively new competitive intelligence market in Australia. This positioning has not only presented me with a multiplicity of challenges when compiling this book, but it has also placed me in a somewhat unique professional situation.