5 lessons about competitive intelligence from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Kimberly Mercer

So. Much. Data

Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbor’s boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on.

The internet is loud and it echoes with intel that your competitors share, by intent or accident it doesn’t matter. It’s overwhelming: the feeds, the tweets, the alerts; the analyst reports, the investor decks and the profiles; the sites, the wikis and the APIs. Searching, digging and then sifting through all the rival data is a Sisyphean task. Why are you looking for the same information at the same time every month? Why do you spend hours combing through data to find what you need? What if the information you need was captured and delivered to you in a smart, accessible way? 

Sometimes you need to know what type of snow is falling, and sometimes it’s enough to just know you need to bundle up. Klue learns the difference and makes sure you’re prepared.

Be humble.

All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.

Smart leaders encourage imagination and curiosity and What Ifs. How will the internet impact our cozy, over-priced cable packages? What’s a phone got to do with photography?  “Leaders must get comfortable with living in a state of continually becoming, a perpetual beta mode.” When you accept that you don’t know all of the answers, you are free to ask the right questions.

Be brave

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Though sometimes, you actually will hit the ground. And it will hurt. Jeff Bezos says that “What really matters is, companies that don’t continue to experiment, companies that don’t embrace failure, they eventually get in a desperate position where the only thing they can do is a Hail Mary bet at the very end of their corporate existence”. Build a culture that rewards new ideas and learns from mistakes.

Be honest

Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.

Success is insulating and competition often comes from the most unexpected of places. Leaders must always look to what comes next and cultivate a culture of hustle, no matter what the balance sheet says. The CEO of Blockbuster once called Netflix as a “very small niche business” dismissing it as neither an opportunity or a threat. He was…wrong. 

Don’t panic

Don’t Panic.

Don’t panic.

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