Strategic Early Warning – Is It Possible?
An ACI Web Conference

Early warning is a hot topic, but is it real?

Join Monster.com CEO, Jeff Taylor, Astra Zeneca senior strategist, Wayne Rosenkrans, and early warning technology specialist, Coemergence CEO, Michael Chender, for a lively and provocative discussion. Session moderator will be Ben Gilad, Academy founder and author of the recently published, Early Warning, Amacom Books, 2004. The Fuld Gilad Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence presents a series of Web conferences on state-of-the-art concepts in strategic risk and competitive intelligence.

With increasing pressure from regulators and financial markets, companies are being pressed to identify strategic risks in their markets that can have significant effects on their earning prospects – both opportunities and threats. But is early warning even possible in the fast changing competitive arena facing most global players?

Early warning can deliver great opportunity, as Jeff Taylor of Monster.com should know. By establishing the Monster service as one of the first 500 sites on the World Wide Web, he foresaw how the Internet would open up an entirely new and profitable market in career building and recruitment. Astra Zeneca’s Wayne Rosenkrans created his company’s first strategic early warning process, one of the most advanced systems in use today. Coemergence’s Michael Chender created an innovative software design and methodology specifically geared to strategic early warning which draws untapped strategic insights from employees through a company. During this panel discussion, you will hear this experienced and outspoken panel answer questions, such as

• What are the organizational obstacles to early warning (aside from the embarrassing fact that the future is, well, not fully known…)?
• Why are so many companies surprised by market developments? Do executives get the information they need to act early?
• How do executives fight inertia and the natural tendency for people and their organizations not to change or respond to change? What have they found personally were the most effective and practical approaches to overcoming those obstacles?
• Do panelists think early warning is even possible?
• How much is luck and timing an issue in business success and how much paying attention to warning signals and early trends?
• To what degree are the early warnings we need already within our organization?
• Would timely intelligence ever change the fate of organizations?
• How do they know an opportunity is indeed an opportunity and not a passing fad?

Just click here to hear this recorded Frontiers in Intelligence web conference.

Early warning and competitive intelligence are hot topics nowadays. Calls for serious increase in business resources devoted to early warning capabilities are clearly in the focus of government and business executives alike. The Fuld Gilad Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence, as the leading training institute in the field, believes its mission is to expand decision makers’ awareness of the need for better early warning at all levels of the enterprise. For more information on the Academy or to register for its courses, contact Lynne Smith, Registrar, at lsmith@academyci.com.