I was reading about the Diapers.com acquisition by Amazon and came across this CIA-like team named “Competitive Intelligence.” “Stone explains how Amazon has a secretive unit — dubbed Competitive Intelligence — responsible for ordering large quantities of goods from competitors to analyze their businesses. This division eventually became aware of Diapers.com and its parent company Quidsi, and dispatched M&A chief Jeff Blackburn to initiate acquisition discussions.” http://allthingsd.com/20131010/how-jeff-bezos-crushed-diapers-com-so-amazon-could-buy-diapers-com/ Does anyone know if this team actually exists? What roles do they hire for? SDE, Scientist? Or is this just media glamorization?
Data Scientist would be a value add to a CI team. I’m not a data scientist but I have a background in statistics. A major part of a CI role is telling a story from the data/observations and sound business estimations.
Intel had if not has a similar group. It’s internal URL was competition.intel.com
All large companies have a CI function. I ran an org as well. Very visible and impactful roles and quite fun (I’m sure depends on the company). Strategists. Analysts, engineers and marketers can all be part of a CI org. IMO CI org functions well under a CEO/CSO office.
What a cool division!
Most companies have a CI area. I built and then managed a Competitive Intelligence team in a large org. They tend to sit in the the strategy area of either the executive office or product areas. Now I’m a user of CI content; IBM has a huge CI group that is a good resource for product development, G2M, and strategy.