Practice 05 · Competitive intelligence
CIX.
Signal separated from noise, with every source graded so you know exactly what you are trusting when you act on it.
Any depth · Ignition through Transformation
01Why it exists
The problem underneath.
The information layer in this field has got materially worse. More content, less of it checked, some of it synthetic, and a growing amount carrying precise figures that trace back to nothing when you follow them.
Competitive intelligence built on that layer inherits all of it. A confident brief assembled from three secondary sources that each cite each other is not intelligence — it is a rumour with formatting.
CIX grades everything. Primary, reputable secondary, vendor, anecdotal, unverifiable — and the last category is named rather than quietly dropped.
What arrives: every signal graded and traced to its origin, monitoring tied to observable triggers rather than a standing report — and an explicit list of what we could not verify, which is often the most useful page.
02The boundary
The ethical boundary, stated
We work only from information that is public or obtained with the knowledge of the person providing it. We do not misrepresent who we are, we do not approach competitor employees under a pretext, and we do not accept material a client cannot explain the provenance of. If that constrains a brief, we say so before the engagement rather than after.
03How it runs
Senior judgement, on a method that already exists.
Runs as a Discovery Lab instance, and pairs naturally with PULSE where the question is about where a competitor moves next rather than where they are.
The person who scopes it delivers it. The structure — the questions in order, the evidence pathways, the review gates — is already built, so the engagement starts from a frame rather than a blank page. The reasoning is captured as the work happens, in your tenant.
And a person signs it. Where the machine sits →
04Fit
Who this is for, and who it isn’t.
It fits
A commercial or strategy lead who has been surprised once and would prefer not to repeat it, or a team preparing for a competitor event they can see coming.
It does not fit
Anyone whose brief requires information that is not obtainable properly. That conversation ends on the first call.
05Proof
Read the output, not a case study.
Our clients have not agreed to be named, and a track record described by the firm that produced it is worth nothing to a buyer doing their job. So we bring the artefact to the first conversation instead — every section of what an engagement hands over, walked through before you commit to anything.