On Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition Review

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On Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition ReviewThis is a big ol' book - not just by volume, but by scope - and somewhere between Parts I (on developing strategy at the individual business level) and II (on the competitiveness of locations) it dawned on me that On Competition bears similarities to On Liberty, On Democracy in America, and On Human Nature*.
Like those classic tomes, this, too, cuts across disciplinary lines, tackles big subjects, and offers powerful insights into a wide variety of social problems.
Mr. Porter's been called "the world's most important business thinker" but, as I kept learning while reading Parts III and IV, his work touches on more than just business. His own big subjects are value creation and competition; the frameworks he's developed over the years have practical implications for organizations of all kinds. (think of government and non-government organizations)
You don't need to be a social scientist to understand the work. You *do* need to have a taste for academic-style writing and argument - and it'll no doubt help if you enjoy diagrams, activity maps, data tables, matrices, and other sorts of inserts. You should also have more than a passing interest in the interplay between business and society. If that's 'you', you'll find the articles in On Competition richly rewarding.
Maybe now more than ever. I think the book's most important message is that competition has the "staggering power to make things better - both for companies and for society." What better time than the midst of an economic crisis to learn that?*by John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and E.O. Wilson, respectivelyOn Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition Overview
For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has towered over the field of competitive strategy. On Competition, Updated Edition brings together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are new to this edition, including the 2008 update to his classic "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," as well as new work on health care, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and CEO leadership.
This collection captures Porter's unique ability to bridge theory and practice. Each of the articles has not only shaped thinking, but also redefined the work of practitioners in its respective field. In an insightful new introduction, Porter relates each article to the whole of his thinking about competition and value creation, and traces how that thinking has deepened over time.
This collection is organized by topic, allowing the reader easy access to the wide range of Porter's work. Parts I and II present the frameworks for which Porter is best known frameworks that address how companies, as well as nations and regions, gain and sustain competitive advantage. Part III shows how strategic thinking can address society's most pressing challenges, from environmental sustainability to improving health-care delivery. Part IV explores how both nonprofits and corporations can create value for society more effeapplying strategy principles to philanthropy. Part V explores the link between Strategy and Leadership

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Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) Review

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Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) ReviewThis book is a gem. It is a rare book that I would recommend equally to senior executives and students thinking about a career path, but this is such a book. I agreed to review this book for the publisher and received a free copy. I've known the author since the early 1990's when the U.S. Government first tried to learn how to do commercial intelligence, calling it Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). They still don't get it, for the same reason most executives don't get it: arrogance, ignorance, and a complacency that comes from having too much money and not enough accountability.
Before laying down my notes, let me first place this book squarely in the top twelve books in English. This is the one I would recommend to anyone as a starter, followed by:
Ben Gilad, Blindspots (Infonortics, UK), order online from them directly
Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies
Measuring the Effectiveness of Competitive Intelligence: Assessing & Communicating CI's Value to Your Organization
Super Searchers Do Business
Super Searchers on Competitive Intelligence: The Online and Offline Secrets of Top CI Researchers (Super Searchers series)
Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods
Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional
The New Competitor Intelligence: The Complete Resource for Finding, Analyzing, and Using Information about Your Competitors
Keeping Abreast of Science and Technology: Technical Intelligence for Business
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time
The last are mine, as with all my books free online at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog. There are MANY books in this field, some listed at the back of this book. For me it boils down to culture, structure, sources, and process. CULTURE: from the CEO to the Chief Content Officer or Chief Knowledge Officer, do the bottom-line bosses understand that Competitive Intelligence is worth at least 20% of their gross in new revenue or avoidance of lost revenue? STRUCTURE: Is there at least a six person CI shop with a direct report relationship to the CEO or no less than one down from the CEO? SOURCES: Does the CI staff have a budget for serious research including out-sourcing of special studies and integration of appropriate processing power? PROCESS: Is the CI staff integrated into both the day to day decision-making as well as the strategic forward thinking? Nothing is dumber than "this is what we've decided to do, tell us about the path."
Now my notes on this book, which fully satisfies as an overview of the above and as an introduction to the broader literature.
1. External matters. It has been a long time in coming, but both the commercial intelligence industry (which is emergent from the scattered competitive intelligence industry) and the key customers including law firms are starting to realize that the customer's future needs, unstated needs, and the totality of the external environment are vastly more vital than internal data mining also badly known as Business Intelligence. One shipping executive told me they learned the hard way that in one particular African country with a strong textile industry, the regulatory and corruption context was so bad that the fashion cycle was OVER before they could get the finished goods out of the country. Never assume anything and forget the past.
2. Truth matters. The author is very polite on this point, one that the U.S. Government at the political and senior executive level still does not appreciate. I am totally enchanted by the early quote from the chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, "When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it." That one quote made this book worthwhile for me.
3. Executive short-falls. I like to quote Ben Gilad, who along with this author and Jan Herring and Dick Klavans and Babette Bensoussan are among my most respected colleagues: writing in BLINDSPOTS: replacing myths, beliefs, and assumptions with market realities (Infonortics UK 1996): "Top managers' information is invariably either biased, subjecive, filtered or late." Also from Gilad: "Using intelligence correctly requires a fundamental change in the way top executives make decisions." The author does a devastatingly elegant job of putting executive naivete in its place early on, the same section serving as a "lay of the land" for any aspiring commercial intelligence practitioner.
4. Definitions and Scope. The middle of the book is great on definitions and strong in comparing market research with competitive intelligence on multiple levels. In Figure 3.1 on Page 38 th author lists the following as being essential elements of any comprehensive endeavor (I put them in alpha order) Culture; Customers; Demographics; Distributors; Economy; Government and Industry Regulations; Other Industries; Prospects; Substitutes; Suppliers; Technology; AND Competitors. I will never forget the head of the French steel industry lamenting in 1993 that after spending a ton of money on studying all other national steel industries, they got cut off at the knees because they failed to realize plastic would be a substitute for automobile parts including underside parts.
5. Data, Information, and Intelligence. The author does a very fine job, the best I have seen by anyone else, distinguishing among data (pieces), information (a generic collage) and intelligence (actionable answers for specific executives making specific decisions). I like the general discussion of know versus don't know, today versus tomorrow, and the integration of assumptions (question them), changes (recognize them), and strategies (have at least one). I especially like the author's emphasis on encouraging dissent and re-evaluating soup to nuts every single year.
6. Creating or Employing a CI Capability. This portion of the book is intended to be an overview and it does a fine job there. The author also reviews sources and puts Google in its place, but fails to mention that advanced search (not what Google offers, but understanding its actual code language and using it to create subsets within subsets) offsets some of Google's shortfalls. The author properly notes that "it's not about software," and provides proper emphasis on the human aspect of intelligence, something I address in comprehensive manner with my Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy at the Public Intelligence Blog.
7. Applications. Chapter 7 details more than a dozen applications of CI, with over 70 examples of how and when to use CI.
8. Myths and Advantages. The book ends with a chapter on the 13 myths of CI followed by another on the 15 advantages of CI, and as tempted as I am to list them here, I will simply note that they also make the book worthy of purchase in and of themselves.
This book has been endorsed by Cyndi Allgaier, Babette Bensousson, and Jan Herring, whom I know to be among the top dozen English-language practitioners, and while I am focused more on creating a World Brain with embedded EarthGame that brings all eight tribes of intelligence together (Academic, Civil Society, Commercial, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, and Non-Governmental), I believe this book to be the new leader, the new best in class offering for anyone thinking about "getting a grip" on reality so as to survive.
The author has done all of us a great service in producing something that is easy to read, up to date, and a great starting point for anyone from the CEO of Exxon (poor fellow) to a student at any community college wondering about being a Chief Sustainability Officer versus being a Chief Knowledge Officer--NEWS FLASH: you cannot be one without the other, do both.Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) Overview

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Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development, 2nd Edition Review

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Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development, 2nd Edition ReviewRarely do I get excited about books on workflow modeling. I have a few good books on the subject, all of which provide solid approaches and most of which are well written. This book stands out because it goes beyond merely "solid" or "well written" by giving one of the most comprehensive approaches to workflow modeling I've had the pleasure of reading.
First, like most books on the topic, none of the components of the approach are new. What makes the approach refreshing is the way the authors take standard techniques and tie them together into a coherent process. Second, this book can be used as a workbook during a workflow modeling project, and is well suited to this because of the numerous checklists and diagrams that will prove invaluable every step of the way. Finally, this is the first book of its kind that incorporates use cases, making it invaluable to project teams that have standardized on UML (Unified Modeling Language)or wish to integrate an object-oriented approach into a workflow modeling project. If you're not familiar with use cases I strongly recommend Writing Effective Use Cases by Alistar Cockburn (the best book on the subject in my opinion); UML Distilled by Fowler and Scott is an excellent introduction to that subject if it's new to you.
The approach is straightforward: frame the process and define its scope, understand the existing process (if there is one), design the "to-be" process and develop use case scenarios. I wish to offer one caveat at this point: if you are reengineering a process that is seriously broken you might consider skipping the "as-is" process. Understanding the existing process is useful if your goal is incremental improvement. Reengineering efforts usually radically transform existing processes, making efforts to understand them both moot and wasted.
Some of the highlights of this book include the authors' clear definitions and way of decomposing complex systems into discrete steps and components. For example, they use a five tier view of processes that ensures you have a complete view of all issues and factors. The views are: (1) mission, strategy and goals (I personally extend goals further into Goal-Question-Metric), (2)business processes, (3) presentation, (4) application logic and (5) data. Note that the last three align nicely to a 3-tier client/server architecture. This observation clearly shows how coherent the authors' approach is and how it can foster alignment of technology to business requirements.
I also like how the authors clarify the key issues in process design by pointing out six enablers that you need to account for during the analysis and design phase: (1)workflow, (2) technology, (3) human resources, (4) motivations and measurements, (5) policies and rules and (6) environmental constraints (facilities, external process capabilities, etc.). There is one minor point of disagreement I have between their workflow modeling technique and the one I use. The authors use swimlane diagrams (also called Rummler-Brache diagrams), while I use deployment diagrams. The difference? Swimlane diagrams do not capture phases or cycles. I always place workflows into the context of Entry Criteria-Task-Validation-Exit Criteria (ETVX), which is nearly identical to the TQM Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle. I insist on ETVX because it allows me to spot missing validation points in an existing workflow, and ensures that I clearly define entry and exit criteria, as well as validation points in a "to-be" workflow. Of course I am stating personal preferences - following the authors' approach verbatim will definitely result in a workflow design that is not only "bulletproof", but will align information systems and business process almost perfectly.
This book is a gem. It's readable, full of ideas and, with the incorporation of use cases into the approach, completely up-to-date with respect to IS/IT methodologies. If you want a fresh, modern approach to workflow design this book is the only one that will provide it.Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development, 2nd Edition Overview

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