Can you? For my chosen field of constant excitement, and even more exciting overnight work – mobile devices/ consumer electronics, yes! That’s what I do and I see results. If you have other tips, please share them too!
- Talk to your suppliers. They supply you and your competitors, and the more you talk, the more you learn.
- Talk to your suppliers’ suppliers, e.g. key components suppliers like chipset vendors. They know who they are selling to too, and at what volume too. And they want you to buy from their customers as well, in the event of non-direct purchasing.
- In addition, chipsets and other key components decide what can be done. If you got Sony, Samsung, and OV image sensors’ next year roadmap, you can bet on what your competitors could have for cameras. No surprise.
- Also, always ask for connections for innovation. E.g., I spoke to one of our key chipset vendors to scout VR innovation ideas. And they revealed that they doing some innovation projects with a startup, and gladly connect us up!
- Talk to your customers (or via your salespeople)! I got a few interesting internal roadmaps from really nice clients. And last time I am thick-faced enough to ask them for a GfK report I don’t have and they gladly complied.
- Talk to industry analysts. Even though they cannot divulge what other companies said directly, with all 3 above you can solve many puzzles. If your company doesn’t subscribe to them, most are happy to discuss and exchange info and prediction. Also, many are glad to give “samples”.
- Add “leaked roadmap” or similar wording to your Google News or favourite news aggregator!
- Past behaviour (trend) is a good indicator of the future. Many companies, when they have a winning product (line), started to have “baggage” and continue to stay with their winning features/ strategy. Hence, it could be easier to spot the trend and hence predict future products. Also, if your competitor has a flashing CEO etc. who actually influences product creation, you can guess what he will influence next. You can see an example here
For more on my actual practice of beating competitors, please also see “How can you beat your competitors” here.