Fuld & Company announces a major expansion of its capacity in Asia through its acquisition by the Phinma Group, a Manila, Philippines-based corporation
Dear Colleagues:
Fuld & Company has always been about delivering the best in competitive intelligence services to its clients. Last week’s news about our acquisition and subsequent ability to now serve you with a larger Asia/Pacific presence and 24/7 research capability is something we believe will help you, our clients, very directly. As the press release reads:
“As part of the acquisition, Fuld will be joining forces with Global Business Research Support (GBRS), a provider of competitive intelligence research services for consulting firms, research agencies and companies worldwide since 2002. From its operations center in the Philippines, dedicated GBRS knowledge teams produce strategic and competitive intelligence reports on key markets, industries and players around the world.
“The addition of Manila-based GBRS will broaden Fuld & Company’s expertise, its service capacity, as well as allow for a true round-the-clock competitive intelligence services to better serve our multinational clients around the world,” said Leonard Fuld, founder of Fuld & Company.
“Fuld & Company’s operations and management teams in Boston and London will remain in place, continuing to deliver customized research and analysis, strategic gaming, and competitive intelligence process consulting services, with additional support and global reach through GBRS.
Just think of the ways we can serve you in the coming years:
- High quality analysis on a global level
- Multiple language capability
- Competitive analysis that takes into account many cultural perspectives
- 24/7 access to the Asia/Pacific region
- Conduct war games and strategy games on a global scale for our multinational clients
This is just the beginning of the list. We look forward to working with you in the years ahead. I welcome your calls and comments.
Leonard Fuld
How Competitive Intelligence Rules Encourage Cheating
Companies must have rules but why do many corporations write information collection rules that are often unrealistic and even potentially harmful to themselves. For more details on this argument, I recommend you read my recent article, How Competitive Intelligence Rules Encourage Cheating, appearing in the online Harvard Business Review Conversations section. Feel free to post comments on the article. I look forward to your opinions.
What do election day and corporate intelligence have in common? Culture.
Here we are in the U.S. with election day upon us. I for one am sick and tired of all the attack ads skewering one candidate or another. These campaigns have upset me without informing me one iota. Similar failures – all be the less deliberate – occur inside companies all the time. Why? Because you didn’t get the message across in a way the executive wanted to read it.
A few weeks ago I spoke to a group of competitive analysts in Brazil about how culture can change the way you deliver intelligence. To be blunt North Americans typically want intelligence served up differently than Japanese, and differently than Germans. This is not a criticism, just an observation. In the thousands of research assignments we have undertaken over the last 30-plus years, we have seen the pattern. To ignore the pattern is to do all the good work only to have the client say “We don’t get it,” or worse, “Please, do not contact me again.”
Rather than deliver you my recommendations, I prefer to open the conversation by posing three different cases to you. What you would do in each case:
• We ran a war game with an American firm which has a China subsidiary. The American executives asked to have the game run in China regarding a new product line being launched in China. They wanted to make sure their very successful Chinese subsidiary make no mistakes. We had a difficult time getting everyone to agree on the game’s objectives, let alone uncover competitors’ strategic weaknesses. By the end of the two days, we did achieve some success but I would have wanted more, more engagement, more “we are one team,” etc. What was the problem, the challenge and what would you have recommended to the client – if you could roll back the clock?
• A Japanese company wanted to learn from the best-of-the best in innovation from American firms. This case took place over 15 years ago, by the way. We chose Intel at the time because in all measures it managed to grow while at the same continually innovating – shedding old products while introducing new, successful ones. The client understood our selection but rejected our analysis. Intel by all measures was America’s great innovator. In the end the client asked us to research another firm, one whose innovative prowess did not match Intel’s. What about Intel do you think the Japanese client rejected? A hint: It had something to do with organization structure.
• Finally, we delivered a monitoring program for a pharmaceutical firm with two internal clients who saw the world very differently. The marketing executive was satisfied with knowing the rival’s strategic direction, while the R&D chief wanted specifics on clinical trial enrollment and other quantifiable success measures. At the same time, we had to make this client – both clients – happy with a single and tightly bounded budget. What would you recommend we do here? Culture was at the heart of this challenge.
