Generative AI can be an accelerator for competitive intelligence
Northern Light has been talking for over a year about the power of generative AI (GenAI) as a value-added capability for competitive intelligence (CI) research. But don’t just take our word for it; there is academic research to back up our assertion.
In an article in Harvard Business Review, the authors – a distinguished professor at Babson College in Massachusetts and several Swiss scholars – write: “In a rapidly evolving business landscape, having an information advantage is fundamental, but deciphering that vast sea of data to generate such an advantage is often times a very challenging task. Generative AI emerges as an essential compass, guiding leaders through the dense fog of information to illuminate strategic insights.”
Generative AI reveals CI insights
Content creation is often cited as a primary application of generative AI, but that’s only part of the GenAI story. As the article notes, “While generative AI is often pitched as a way to create new content (information in, message out), it can work just as well — or depending on the application, even better — in reverse (message in, information out). And this counterintuitive application of generative AI is starting to enable leaders in marketing, strategy, and competitive intelligence to unearth strategically relevant insights about their competitors from documents made publicly available by those competitors. In other words, generative AI can become the watchful eye that spots useful insights in the field of competitive intelligence.”
RAG helps ensure GenAI accuracy
As a practical matter, there are several approaches to ensuring accurate GenAI results in a competitive intelligence research application. A user can feed the GenAI a particular piece of CI content for review as part of a prompt submitted to the large language model (LLM); or alternatively, a user can invoke GenAI embedded in a search application that uses Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to limit the analysis to curated, high-quality sources of content – in other words, you point your GenAI directly to reliable data through the application rather than the prompt.
As the authors note, “This suggests that generative AI can, without significant effort or external costs, enable close to real-time inference of otherwise hidden information about a company from publicly disclosed documents such as annual reports, quarterly financials, press releases, statements, and social media posts. By combining this information with human interpretation and expertise regarding the market and competition, strategic relationships are made visible.”
Make CI a priority for generative AI
Since CI is a strategic function, the technology used to facilitate it is of interest to senior leaders within an organization. And in the broader push to productively deploy GenAI, members of a company’s C-suite will likely seize on the opportunity to marry GenAI and CI. The HBR article says “top management of companies using generative AI can gain a competitive advantage as they possess a more realistic picture of their markets and competitors.
“By harnessing the capacity of generative AI, leaders can not only anticipate competitors’ moves but also refine their own strategies, ensuring they remain a step ahead in the global chess game of business.”
Northern Light is fully on board with the idea of leveraging generative AI throughout our knowledge management platform for market and competitive intelligence. Expect to see more of it in the months ahead.