2017 RECONVERGE: G2 Archive

BREAKFAST & NETWORKING

Opening Keynote: Reinvention

John Hink will kick off RECONVERGE:G2 with an opening keynote focused on reinvention and reimagination in innovation and business dynamics. Additional details forthcoming.

Agents of Change: Intelligence Opportunity in Transformation

During this highly-interactive session, we will outline the key opportunities for intelligence professionals during times of transformation, whether it is an expert’s transition from an internal to an external role, her transition across industries, or harnessing the power of the intelligence function when an industry is going through disruptive transformation. This session will be interactive, so whether an audience member is an analyst or manager, there will be opportunities for each of them to glean insights related to the practical application and value proposition of intelligence as they navigate their work product and career.

Reimagining the Business Development Process: Using Win/Loss Analysis to Capture and Keep the Business You Want

Many in sales, marketing, competitive intelligence, and even executives don’t really know why the company wins and loses business. Businesses can keep from repeating their mistakes by doing the one thing that most businesses are afraid of doing: following up with their customers and asking, “what happened?” Discover how to remove the guesswork, and help your company gain more business by conducting Win/Loss interviews with your customers and those who chose a competitor. Research shows that acting from a formal Win/Loss program can improve business win rates between 15 to 30 percent.

Key takeaways:

• What Win/Loss analysis is; why it works; and how your company can benefit from developing a Win/Loss program.
• Ellen Naylor’s unique 12-step Win/Loss process that has guided managers and executives to world-class results.
• The 7 key issues that you must address as you develop a Win/Loss program.

At the conclusion, you will be armed with the knowhow to develop your company’s Win/Loss program.

BREAK & NETWORKING

Competitive Intelligence Ethics for a Digital World (Phil Britton)

As more and more business is conducted digitally (online, social media, metadata, location-based data), do the rules of engagement change from a Competitive Intelligence standpoint? More details to come!

LUNCH

How to Tap the Natural Technology and Business Trends Governing the Changes In Your Industry

Details TBA

Rise of the Robots: How Machine Learning Will Reinvent Human Intelligence Gathering

Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence already are changing the face of modern life. We see the impact emerging today with self-driving taxis and long-haul trucks. But we also have seen it in the white-collar world: Claims processors and Radiology technicians are being laid off in favor of computing platforms such as IBM Watson. Where does this leave the intelligence profession? Will the robots displace the industry? Will there be no impact at all? In a scenario that is probably not one nor the other, where can/should/will Intelligence professionals add value to remain relevant? Kurt will guide this as an interactive session, relying on your insights and perspective to explore this highly-relevant topic for all of us and our organizations.

Customer Experience Programs: CI Pros Embrace Challenges and Capture Opportunities

In companies of all types and sizes, C-suite-sponsored Customer Experience initiatives and mobilization of employees across functions drive customer satisfaction and engagement. Intelligence professionals possess the skill set required to help Customer Experience teams maximize the impact of their programs to impress the C-suite. CI pros can help these programs deliver!

Key takeaways:

Learn how to leverage core competencies in collection, processing, analysis and management of customer feedback.
Understand how to capitalize on your unique ability to champion customer insight in your organization.
Know best practices to address the real challenges associated with customer experience collaborations—you’ll manage them with confidence.

After this presentation, you’ll realize the impact you can create with the C-suite and your Customer Experience teams when you help them shine!

Delivering CI as a Core Function: A Live Case Study in Action

How do you build competitive intelligence as a core, trusted competency of an organization? This session will focus on highlighting a real world example of how a competitive intelligence function emerged and matured within a fast-paced SaaS company. The facilitators will engage the audience to discover their own organizational capabilities, understand clear measurement best practices, and breakdown the differences between a service aptitude vs. partner relationship. Facilitated by Clara Brunkhorst, Senior Competitive Research Analyst at iCIMS, and Ed Allison, a 15-year practitioner and founder of Compelligence, this session will answer questions such as:

“What type of activities do you do first?”,
“What are the impact of systems and processes in a CI Program?”, and
“How do I get more organizational support, funding, and executive awareness?”

How to Get (and Keep) Executive Attention

Michael Shea will share his approach to bending the ear of the executives who ultimately must make critical decisions. More information on this valuable session to come!

How to Navigate the Corporate Game: An Intelligence Practitioner’s Cheat Code

Alysse Nockels will show us how to win at the corporate game – a game not unlike Nintendo’s famous “Super Mario Brothers”. More details coming soon on this exciting topic!

Evening Activities

On Tuesday, we will spend the evening at The Sett at Union South on the University of Wisconsin – Madison campus (across the street from Camp Randall Stadium).

BREAKFAST & NETWORKING

The Process of Reinvention

Tom Leydorf from Chickasaw Nation Industries will lead us through a case study of both professional and personal reinvention. More details to come!

Hiding in Plain Sight – The Case for Embedded Intelligence

For many years, intelligence practitioners have struggled to define their roles and justify their funding as separate stand-alone verticals with in organizations. In 2017, we have surpassed information parity and find ourselves in a state of information overload and technology fatigue. Good competitive intelligence, cuts through the clutter and tired technology, and adds a human element to help organizations avoid surprises, gain or maintain competitive advantage and make decisions. CI can, and should touch all areas of the organization, there is no area of commerce that would not benefit from forensic business research and analysis. As CI continues to evolve we need to change the narrative from a stand-alone to an embedded function that is a series of competencies rather than a profession unto itself. In this way, CI becomes the first step in a long series of strategic and tactical decisions from R&D to Marketing, Sales to Customer Service. It is time CI comes out from behind the shadows to hide in plain sight.

Reinventing the Collaboration of Industry and Government: FDA Case Studies

Does a burdensome regulatory environment exist at your organization? In the relationship between your firm and a government regulator, is your company’s side of the exchange consistently a reactive one? If a regulator understood important nuances of your business, could time-consuming enforcements be reduced or eliminated?

A collaborative environment creates improved interactions between government agencies and those they regulate. In this thought provoking keynote, industry veteran Jackie Torfin will reveal how government and industry can (and must) effectively collaborate as she highlights successful (and unsuccessful) examples.

Key takeaways:

• Learn about the traditional compliance operations practiced by the FDA, and discover burdensome inefficiencies in such process via real-life examples.
• Discover the influence collaboration can have on long-established methodologies.
• Realize that even well-entrenched, dysfunctional transactions can be challenged and renewed with simple collaborative exchange.

The Future of Organizational Learning: Thriving in Chaos

How do modern organizations become stronger as the adapt and change? Most organizations don’t. Bill Krist and Rob Shook will explore the topic of building resiliency inside your organization. More details to come!

LUNCH

Capitalizing on Disruption: From Market Intelligence to Management Action

A cloud of uncertainty hangs over the 2017 global economic outlook, as the business impact of political shocks from Brexit to the election of Donald Trump remain unresolved, while emerging markets struggle with domestic tensions and soft global demand. Yet the implications for companies with global ambitions are clear: strategic planning must incorporate more insightful market intelligence to challenge management’s assumptions and ensure that plans are resilient against risk.

In this plenary session, emerging-market advisory firm Frontier Strategy Group’s Head of Research, Joel Whitaker will facilitate an interactive discussion about how disruptive events impact companies doing business internationally. We will review FSG’s Events to Watch for 2017, the next wave of potential disruptive events to the global economy. We will also discuss proven ways for intelligence organizations to monitor scenario signposts and help intelligence consumers swiftly close the gap from ideas to action when surprises strike in the market environment.

Funnel Forms and CI Signals for Antifragile Reinvention

Groundbreaking work on design thinking (Martin, 2009) and antifragility (Taleb, 2012) sets the foundation for this cutting-edge framework, packed with actionable insights for leveraging chaos as a force for enhancing your firm’s innovative capacity in turbulent times. Designing for Antifragile Reinvention requires a new vocabulary and toolkit. We’ll explore how these resources will help you identify gaps in your current innovative capacity and develop a roadmap for building Antifragile Reinvention into your firm.

Key Takeaways:

1. How to adapt Martin’s Knowledge Funnel to assess current reinvention capacity.
2. How Design Thinking and Design Intelligence expands our capacity for Antifragile Reinvention.
3. Proactive and Reactive strategies for a blended approach to Antifragile Reinvention.

Lessons Learned in Building a Strategic Intelligence Capability for a Conglomerate

Review the steps—and missteps—taken growing a successful SI function in a conglomerate with wildly disparate businesses and cultures.

A successful strategic planning function requires…wait for it…strategic planning! Accompany Terry, Diane and Sukhy as they recount the missteps and blind alleys they traversed in building Lubrizol’s strategic planning capabilities. A bit of history will lead to lessons learned (the hard way). We will then explore arriving at key strategic deliverables for the function and how we are going about operationalizing those deliverables.

No two businesses are the same and the “what” that we have developed for Lubrizol may not be the “what” you need for your business. However, the “how” and “why” we got there may provide you with some useful tools that, if nothing else, will help you avoid what NOT to do. Think journey, not destination.

BREAK & NETWORKING

Discover Innovation Intelligence with Lean Startup Methods

Is your industry and company being reinvented? If so, you and your CI program need reinvention too! Practitioners have critical skills that apply directly to the transformative innovation initiatives companies undertake to remain competitive in periods of high uncertainty and change, yet innovation programs often seem to be more about theater than rigor and evidence. Innovation Intelligence integrates intelligence principles with the lean innovation / lean startup methodology to place added emphasis on ecosystem dynamics, information source strategies, bias and blind spot detection and mitigation, and rigorous business model stress testing.

Key takeaways:

• Learn a faster path to actionable insights and higher quality innovative decision-making.
• Discover fundamental elements of lean startup methodology and how it correlates with principles of CI.
• Examination of an active case will allow hands-on experience in an active learning environment.

G2 Lifetime Achievement Award Presentation

The G2 Lifetime Achievement Award is given to a practitioner and leader who has a disproportionate impact on the intelligence field.

This year’s winner:
Terry Thiele
Director, Strategic Intelligence
The Lubrizol Corporation .

Evening Activities

It wouldn’t be a RECONVERGE:G2 event without the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and make new friends. We have exciting events planned. Stay tuned for additional details.

BREAKFAST & NETWORKING

Intelligence Shark Tank

This favorite RECONVERGE:G2 session returns! The Shark Tank is a process during which teams representing a variety of companies defend an intelligence function proposal at their organizations to three judges who will either accept or reject their ideas. Each team has 15 minutes to make a case, and the judges have 15 minutes to ask questions.

Participants:
Spencer Broughton and [REDACTED] Shawn Oreschnick and Connor Hamel
Brooke Stevens and Kathleen Lindberg

Coaches:
Alysse Nockels, Craig Fleisher and Nat Brooks

BREAK & NETWORKING

Jim Mathews Award and Fellowship for Intelligence Excellence

The Jim Mathews Award, started in 2012 by Aurora WDC and to celebrate the 6th award year in 2017, was created to remember and acknowledge the lasting professional contributions to the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) made by Mr. James (Jim) Mathews, who passed away in October 2011.

This year’s winners: [REDACTED], Mercyhurst University
Connor Hamel, James Madison University

LUNCH

Intelligence Applications for the Business Model Canvas

While the business model canvas has typically been used by startups, this workshop uses the business model canvas approach in conjunction with CI tools to help organizations of all types to understand which components of their business model are at risk. The workshop is designed to highlight the strategic application of CI. More details to come.

Learning Game: Customer-Centric Leadership for Intelligence Practitioners

This interactive workshop is actually a competitive game based on a robust simulation designed by Wharton Labs. In the game, you are the CMO of your company and your goal is to drive market valuation through good customer-centric choices. Customer-centric means one thing: knowing the value of each and every customer so there will be data to analyze and budget decisions to make. Don’t worry about whether you are a quantitate geek or not. We play in teams. Our session will open with some fundamental concepts you need to play the game. Then each team will log into the game. At the end we’ll review the decisions you made, the effect of those choices and identify the winner. You will come away with a firm understanding of true customer-centricity and its power to revolutionize business.

BREAK & NETWORKING

Extreme Makeover: Reinventing Your Individual Value Proposition as an Intelligence Leader

If you are like many intelligence professionals, you can occasionally (often?) struggle to get the attention of those people inside your organization who need to hear what you have to say. There seems to be a disconnect between the value you see and the value they hear. The bridge over that gap is an effective value proposition. The ingredients are simple: Your value relates to a specific target audience, through the application of a specific set of skills, to deliver a tangible benefit, that is superior to their next best alternative. Or FIT-U, for short (For, It’s, That, Unlike). In this workshop, you will learn how to apply this tested formula to your own professional career. Once you learn this simple but powerful tool, you will quickly see an improvement in your ability to deliver results for your organization – and for your own professional future.

Adjourn