Know your surroundings.
Market intelligence is important to help your organization succeed, so you have to have a clear sense of what is happening around you.
“It’s very important to talk to people in the industry,” she says. “You have your people or you, yourself, at meetings. Every company has a variety of vendors or people that they work with, that they partner with or that they purchase services from. They’re often excellent sources of bringing you feedback in terms of, ‘Here’s why somebody else is trying this that might not be in your immediate competitive market, but they certainly are doing things that are a little different.’
“For example, technology is sort of a ubiquitous need across multiple, multiple industries. The way technology might be used in health care — maybe you’re manufacturing similar applications, similar tools, similar quality processes, and there’s a lot of things that overlap across industries. Some industries, on the whole, are further behind than other industries. So, sometimes you can look at completely different industries from your own, and say, ‘Hey, look at their 10-year trajectory. Look how they made those things happen.’ How does that apply to the industry you’re in?”
You also need to ask the right questions. For example, you want to ask, “What are some problems people are having, and what are the solutions?”
You need to apply those same questions to those outside your industry because someone in another industry could be developing a completely different product or solution.
“What people need to do is be experts in their own areas,” she says. “But they should also be reading and talking, being in meetings that are outside of their core capabilities or their core methods, to see what is actually coming in from the right and left flank or coming up behind.
“You can actually make sure that the way you are doing it is going to be the best solution for whatever that market is, because everybody is out there being market-driven and you have to really understand what the market wants and how do you provide that product or service that the market values.”
