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Intelligence gathering software can't replace competitive intelligence system.
"It is extremely dangerous to collect intelligence on your desk!" Drucker, a master of management once said. But many domestic enterprises are doing this!
Buy some intelligence gathering software and set up a "competitive intelligence system" in the name of "high efficiency, low cost and full desktop", which sounds really beautiful!
But how much can this do?
A few days ago, Zhang Shiping, a competitive intelligence expert and chairman of Borui Yidian Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., expressed serious doubts when interviewed by this reporter.
"It is unrealistic to expect this to provide accurate information support for enterprise decision-making centers!" This reflects that many enterprises have such a superficial understanding of competitive intelligence system, which makes Zhang Shiping even more worried.
"Having information does not mean having wisdom"
As we all know, intelligence is a matter of life and death for the battlefield situation. In fact, in the history of modern economic development, information is also very important to the economic growth of an enterprise and even a country.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Motorola was strongly impacted by Japanese enterprises, suffered serious losses and faced bankruptcy. However, since Motorola established the world's first enterprise-level competitive intelligence system, it has quickly come back to life and embarked on the fast lane of development, becoming one of the world's top 500 enterprises! Zhang Shiping said that many large American enterprises, including Motorola, have established intelligence systems.
At the national level, Japan's economy rose rapidly on the basis of a defeated country, and intelligence played a decisive role. A Japanese intelligence expert once said that 54% of Japan's GNP comes from competitive intelligence! South Korea established a developed economic system from the ruins of war, which directly benefited from its clear-cut strategy of "building the country through intelligence".
Shopping malls have always been known as "battlefields without smoke", and business wars also need to "know yourself and know yourself" in order to be "invincible". Without information, it is impossible to know yourself and yourself, and China enterprises are no exception. Moreover, with the globalization of competition and the global allocation of resources, the breadth and depth of competition faced by domestic enterprises have expanded dramatically, and information has become more and more important!
However, in Zhang Shiping's view, what domestic enterprises lack most now is intelligence. "Information is the first resource!" It has gradually become a kind of social knowledge, but Zhang Shiping pointed out that for enterprises, this "information" should be defined. Information that can help enterprise leaders make correct decisions is valuable, or information that can help leaders make decisions is intelligence! Therefore, "having information does not mean having intelligence, and the two cannot be confused." "He stressed.
In this sense, the current situation of Chinese enterprises is a typical "information overload, information scarcity!" . Although a huge amount of information enters the enterprise's field of vision every day, there is very little information really needed, and it is impossible to identify what is valuable. "Massive" has become a burden. This is due to the lack or dislocation of competitive intelligence system.
"Having an abacus does not mean having an accounting firm"
In 2002, Professor Bao Changhuo, known as the "master of competitive intelligence" in China, introduced the concept of competitive intelligence from the United States, which caused great repercussions in China. Universities compete to offer related courses, and various media also spare no effort to publicize them. China enterprises began to accept the inspiration of competitive intelligence on a large scale. Haier and other large enterprises have established their own "competitive intelligence systems", and for a time, competitive intelligence surged in China.
However, the good times did not last long. In a year or so, these systems have "failed". Enterprises generally reflect "information that is useless and has no practical value". Zhang Shiping believes that this is due to the lack of actual combat experience, and all the theories imported from the United States are pure theories. "Enterprises have strengthened their understanding of the importance of intelligence, but how to obtain intelligence, identify intelligence and apply intelligence is mostly a blank sheet of paper." In addition, domestic enterprises basically have no accumulation of actual combat experience, and their operability is greatly reduced. As a result, the popular competitive intelligence system in China has fallen into paralysis and confusion.
The rapid development of information collection software seems to have brought a "turning point". Information acquisition software enterprises have grasped the psychology that some enterprises urgently need to get rid of the difficulties faced by competitive intelligence systems, and have packaged their products into "intelligent competitive intelligence systems", which has become the "mainstream" of domestic enterprise competitive intelligence systems.
"This is a tool as a whole competitive intelligence system!" Zhang Shiping believes that information collection software is only one of the tools for information collection, and "having an abacus does not mean having an accounting firm"!
Regarding the role that intelligence gathering software can play, Zhang Shiping pointed out that the information of intelligence gathering software comes from the Internet, and the information on the Internet is rich and timely. But for the "intelligence-level" information that enterprises need, finding a needle in a haystack directly is tantamount to finding a needle in a haystack. How many enterprises will easily put their strategic ideas, R&D trends, cost components and other core secrets online? Which boss dares to use an "intelligence analysis report" based solely on the Internet?
"Internet and paper media can provide good clues and directions, but 70% of the work is still behind!" Zhang Shiping introduced that 70% of the value comes from on-the-spot investigation, combing and tracing personal connections, whether it is the verification of the authenticity of source information or the mining of truly valuable information.
"This needs to fully mobilize people's senses and intelligence, and requires a lot of professional labor, which is by no means a technology company can solve!" When it comes to specific methods, for example, there are more than 300 personal relationship investigation methods in Zhang Shiping!
Zhang Shiping revealed that he was the chief of staff of the special forces and had 16 years of intelligence work experience in the army. He is trying to apply the ideas and methods of military intelligence to the competitive intelligence field of enterprises, and he is also the first person in China to make this attempt. "China's military intelligence experience is actual combat! He believes that this will largely make up for the lack of practical experience in competitive intelligence of domestic enterprises.
Carrying out competitive intelligence activities with patents as the content is one of the important contents of enterprise competitive intelligence work, and its specific contents are as follows:
1, Monitoring and Analysis of Legal Data in Patent Literature
By monitoring and analyzing the legal data in competitors' patent documents, we can grasp the patent status of patented products and technologies owned by competitors. For example, patent affairs reported through the patent bulletin (including rejection, withdrawal and revocation of patent applications, etc.). ), you can know whether the patent applied by competitors is authorized, and whether the authorized patent is terminated, deemed withdrawn or declared invalid for various reasons.
Through the description items in the published patent specification, including the filing date, priority date, patent type, country, priority application country, designated country or selected country in the international patent (PCT or EP) application, we can grasp the effective protection period and geographical scope of the patent authorized by competitors. Once it is known that the patent right of a competitor's patent has expired, the competitor can use the patented technology of the competitor for his own use. Perhaps the most typical example is the research of NiTi memory alloy by Japanese companies. Because the United States was the first to master the patent of the most basic technology of NiTi memory alloy, many Japanese companies had to quietly conduct research for nearly 20 years, and only when the American patent expired did they scramble to win the application patent of NiTi memory alloy.
2. Monitor and analyze the unauthorized open patents of competitors.
By monitoring and analyzing the specifications and claims of unauthorized patents published by competitors, we strive to find out which patents are not granted and which do not meet the requirements of the patent law, and provide proof to the patent examination department in time to set obstacles for the final authorization of patent applications. Generally speaking, Patent examiners attaches great importance to public opinions. If there are objections from the public in the actual trial procedure of a patent, and the examiner is provided with comparative documents or facts that may deny the patentability of the patent application, then the process of patent authorization will be blocked. For example, Company N applied for a patent for an ink. After the applicant responded to the first notice of examination opinions of the patent office examiner, the examiner thought that the patent application basically complied with the provisions of the patent law of China, and pointed out in the second notice of examination opinions sent to the applicant that the patent application document was expected to be authorized with only a small amount of text modification. At this time, Company B, as a competitor, analyzed the description of the patent application of Company N and showed the examiner the comparative documents, which proved that the patent application lacked creativity. Considering the public's opinions, the examiner put forward the possibility that the patent application was not authorized because of its lack of creativity compared with the comparative literature in the third examination opinion. The candidate answered rationally again and was finally rejected by the examiner. Although the applicant has requested reexamination from the Patent Reexamination Board, the prospect of authorization is still dim.
3. Analyze and utilize the patent documents authorized by competitors.
The authorized patent not only determines its legal protection status, but also reflects the possibility of its implementation. So on the one hand, we analyze the technical content of patents authorized by competitors, and judge whether to improve our existing patent technology or take our existing patent as a part or component, so that we can sell or transfer our patents to competitors. On the other hand, it is necessary to analyze the scope of competitors' patent claims, find out their loopholes, break through their patent network defense, apply for new patents, and then occupy the market. For example, Li Sen Company of Nankai University, based on the analysis of a large number of existing patent claims in Japan, the United States and other countries, developed and synthesized a new type of Ni-MH electrode material by using elements outside the scope of existing patent protection, obtained a series of patents for new-type Ni-MH electrode materials at home and abroad, and occupied the market of new-type Ni-MH electrode materials at home and abroad.
In addition, some competitors' patents with too wide claims, such as those of Markush in chemical patent applications, are analyzed, and a certain technical scheme is selected. Through experiments, unexpected technical effects are achieved, so that one's invention is creative, thus breaking through the patent blockade of competitors and obtaining one's own patent right.
4. Make regular statistical analysis of all patents owned by competitors.
Through regular statistical analysis and ranking of all patents owned by competitors, we can get the data of competitors' technological development and business strategy, from which we can gradually judge competitors' research and development priorities, technical policies and development directions, and evaluate their strength. For example, a company in China sorted out and statistically analyzed the patents published by Japan Industrial Technology Research Institute in a certain period, and found that the research and development work of the institute focused on solving the measurement and testing methods of basic parts and materials.
In addition, by analyzing the proportion of patent application and authorization of competitors, we can examine the maturity of their technological development; Judging the economic strength of competitors by analyzing the ratio of domestic patents to foreign patents; By analyzing the number of invention patents and utility model patents owned by competitors, we can determine their technical level and evaluate their technical and economic strength.
5. Regularly analyze the patent status of this industry.
Taking the number of patents of a certain technology category in this industry as the ordinate and the year as the abscissa, we can see the development of this category of technology in various stages of this industry; Taking the number of patents in various technical categories in a certain period or a certain year as the ordinate and the technical classification as the abscissa, we can judge the technical hotspots in this industry in a certain period; By comparing the total number of patents of competitors in a certain technology category, we can initially confirm who is the most powerful competitor in this industry. The following table lists the number of patents of microwave ovens owned by major manufacturers in the world, from which it can be seen that the main competitors of global microwave oven technology are Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi, Sharp and Sanyo in Japan, followed by Venus and Samsung in South Korea.
6. Pay close attention to the patent application trend of competitors.
The above mainly introduces several methods of how to analyze and use the patent literature information disclosed by competitors. However, because most countries in the world adopt the principle of first application, according to this law, whoever applies for the same invention first may obtain the patent right and then occupy the market. There are countless examples of this. The patent of artificial alizarin of Krupp Company of Germany was filed one day earlier than that of the UK, thus obtaining the patent right in the UK. German artificial alizarin products enter the British market. Another example, a? g？ Bell is only better than e? Gray applied to the US Patent Office for the patent of telephone 1 hour in advance, which made Bell the father of telephone invention. As Sun Tzu said, "Know yourself and know yourself, and fight every battle", it can be seen that it is very important for enterprises to pay attention to collecting patent technology information that competitors are studying and developing, and to closely monitor the patent application trends of competitors. The patent application trends of competitors are often confidential and have zero information. It is much more difficult to collect this kind of information than to collect public patent literature information, so enterprise leaders should arrange competent information personnel to obtain this kind of information by all means but legally.