The CI Summit: 2020

The Future of CI: From 2020 to What’s Next

September 15-16, 2020

Missed this Summit? Watch the recordings!

The Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows is thrilled to present this inaugural program of our CI 20/20 Summit Series! Designed for the CI practice community, the CI 20/20 Summits are designed to tackle burning questions, dive into the issues of the day, and help CI practitioners connect with leading and forward-looking thinkers, innovators, and colleagues in competitive intelligence and related fields. Our Summit Agenda and session descriptions will tell you more about this inaugural event, and our Summit Questions page answers some common questions.

Watch the recordings!

Day 1: September 15

The CI 20/20 Summit series are virtual events. Please use the U.S. Eastern Time or Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) columns to calculate the time in your timezone.

Keynote Address: Preparing Our Minds for Intelligence Work

Liam Fahey, Co-Founder & Partner, Leadership Forum and Author, The Insight Discipline

Intelligence is always a product of our minds.  Yet, we rarely ask critical questions about the mind-intelligence linkage: How do we prepare our minds to do better intelligence work? How do we fertilize our minds to craft superior inferences and insights? How do we enhance the “collective mind” of those involved in intelligence work? How do we identify our personal “state of mind” and its influence on intelligence work?  Why does the prevailing mindset in many organizations inhibit quality intelligence work? Dr. Fahey will explore with us these — and your — questions and share with us insights from his current work.

Session 1A: 30 Years of CI: What Have We Learned?

As the Competitive Intelligence Fellows celebrates 30 years for Fellowship, CI practitioners and our intelligence users face unprecedented challenges. What have we learned over the decades? What has endured in our practices? What will we carry forward? Join our panel of CI Fellows as we look at the best of CI and where we are today.

Panelists:

  • Dr. Craig S. Fleisher, Chief Analytics Officer and Director, Learning & Development for Aurora WDC
  • Dr. John Prescott, Thomas O’Brien Chair of Strategy and Professor of Business Administration at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh
  • Kirk Tyson, Managing Director, Tyson Heinz

Session 1B: Strategy Models for a Disruptive Time

The pandemic, social shifts, and institutional challenges have required companies and organizations to re-think, regroup, and react. Many have been impacted. Some have been better prepared; others were not. How should leaders and companies chart their courses through disruptions? What do CI practitioners need to understand to advise and support our organizational leaders more effectively? Are there new strategy models that work better in this environment? Take fresh look at corporate strategy and foresight with our expert panel!

Panelists

  • Arik Johnson, Founder & Chairman, Aurora WDC
  • Dr. Helen N. Rothberg, Professor of Strategy, School of Management, Marist College and faculty member of Academy of Competitive Intelligence

Session 2A: The Next 30 Years of CI: Vision, Scenarios, and Perspectives

Disruptions to industries and the macroenvironment have steadily shaped business, CI practices, and workplaces. Many of these changes have accelerated through innovations, current global crises, and our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world. What do CI practitioners and thought leaders see in the coming decades for CI? How do we prepare for these changes? Can we help shape the future of CI? Join this thought-provoking discussion with CI leaders and fellow participants!

Panelists

  • Rostyk Hursky, Director of Impact and Strategy, Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation
  • Luis Madureira, Managing Partner, ÜBERBRANDS
  • Kenneth Sawka, President, Martin+Crumpton Group LLC and Lecturer, Master of Arts in Strategic Intelligence Analysis and Master of Arts in Homeland Security programs, Northeastern University

Session 2B: The Impact of Technology & Innovation on Competitive Intelligence

Neural networks, predictive technology, data visualization, deep fakes…these and other capabilities are being propelled by AI, big data, and other advances. We begin our discussion on technology and innovations in our CI 20/20 Summit Series by looking at the impact and state of these advances on CI. What are key developments in CI and related practices? What is driving this transformation? How do CI practitioners keep up on tools – and the skills necessary to use them? How are roles changing for intel practitioners? A roundtable of CI experts will educate and engage participants in a dialog about these issues.

Panelists

  • August Jackson, Senior Director of Market and Competitive Intelligence, Deltek
  • Jay Nakagawa, Director, Competitive Intelligence, Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), Dell EMC
  • Alysse Nockels, Director, Competitive Intelligence, Tanium

Day 2: September 16

The CI 20/20 Summit series are virtual events. Please use the U.S. Eastern Time or Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) columns to calculate the time in your timezone.

Session 3A: Intelligence Creation in an Uncertain World

Our current business, social, and geopolitical environments present unique challenges to competitive intelligence and foresight. How are CI practitioners understanding these rapid advances and their impacts on our organizations, industry, and customers? How far are we looking…and should look? How are we adapting our intelligence practices to fill gaps, provide rapid response, stay on top of developments? How can we train the analysts of the future, manage data and respond quickly to disruption? Our expert panel discuss these questions…and yours!

Panelists

  • Richard Caldwell, Sector Manager, Strategic Landscape Assessments, Northrup Grumman
  • G. Scott Erickson, Dana Professor and Chair, Marketing, Graduate Study in Business, Ithaca College
  • Kristan J. Wheaton, Professor of Strategic Futures, Center For Strategic Leadership, US Army War College

Session 3B: New Approaches to HUMINT and SocMINT: Adapting to our Virtual Environment

The global pandemic has forced organizations and teams to work virtually in all aspects of intelligence generation, including collection. From working with expert human sources to attending virtual trade shows to harnessing social media, CI practitioners have needed to adapt quickly to novel methods and platforms. How are we adapting? How are we overcoming intelligence gaps presented by working virtually? What are we learning from this?  What are new ways to accelerate human and social media intelligence despite these new barriers? Explore these questions and yours with our panel of leading practitioners!

Panelists

  • Amir Fleischman, Managing Director at Cicom Global
  • Suki Fuller, Analytical Storyteller and Founder, Miribure
  • Ellen Naylor, President, The Business Intelligence Source

Session 4A: Building Nimble CI Organizations and Processes

Intelligence managers and teams have needed to become more adaptive and act more quickly in the face of unprecedented volatility in our industries and macroenvironments. Take a look at how CI programs, processes, and teams are evolving to accommodate new requirements and challenges…What makes a nimble CI program or team? How can your organization build a more adaptive CI function? How do managers and team members work more flexibly within the CI department?  How can you be prepared to implement new ideas in times of increasing demands? Join our panel of seasoned nimble CI managers for these questions and more!

Panelists

  • Phil Britton, Associate Research Director for the Business Services Division, Sedulo Group
  • Troy Pfeffer, Independent Consultant
  • Victoria Richard, Marketing Manager (Marketing Intelligence), Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Session 4B: Expanding Perspectives & Minimizing Intelligence Biases Through Diverse Teams

It’s well established that acquiring a range of perspectives, applying divergent thinking, and managing biases are vital to generating robust and sound intelligence…but how well is your organization doing this? How do we understand differences and anticipate changes in culture and other social factors? Are you prepared to understand the perspectives of competitors, (potential) customers, the public – even our intelligence users? How well do we minimize intelligence and management surprises? Supported by research, we have known how we can improve our intelligence and reduce risks to our intelligence efforts…but how well do we apply these best practices? Our panel of expert practitioners will show you how!

Panelists

  • Cynthia Cheng Correia, President, Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows and Managing Director, Knowledge inForm
  • Suki Fuller, Analytical Storyteller and Founder, Miribure
  • Michelle Settecase, Associate Director, and Sr. Analyst and Knowledge Leader for Women. Fast forward, Ernst & Young LLP