I agree with you about associative skills, and especially the term “slightly skewed.” You want someone who looks at the world a little differently, who won’t settle for the conventional explanation.

This is starting to sound distressingly like an Apple commercial.

>>You called passion, “technolust,” which is the right description for competitive analysis of gadgets, but not so much for food services

You’re right, it’s passion.

passion must be mitigated by basic people skills….The ability to maintain objectivity needs to be assessed as well

Agreed on both. Between the two, I think objectivity is the most essential. It’s possible to work with a brilliant analyst who has poor people skills (lock them up, feed them through a slot in the door). If you’ve ever watched the cable TV show House you’ll know this personality, although in the real world they usually find a way to self-destruct eventually.

But an analyst who loses objectivity is just a fanatic.

Two of the key things I look for in interviews are associative skills and passion. The mechanics of competitive analysis can be taught, and logic can be tested. However, often the ability to tease out strategic insights and market trends depends not just on critical reasoning skills, but the ability to make associative jumps from other contexts. Sometimes teasing this out during the interview process is straightforward, like discussing whether history is about to repeat itself (ex: comparing the mistakes made by early 1980′s PC vendors or early 1990′s software vendors with equivalent mobile players today and seeing if the analogies fit). I also like to pull out standard rumors and see whether the candidate has thought them through (ex: “do you think Apple is launching an [insert ThinkSecret rumor of the day here], and why?”) but then see if they can work through wider implications (ex: “if Apple does that, what should MTV/BMW/Hasbro/Staples/Nokia do about it?”). Really strong candidates are always looking at the world around them from a slightly skewed perspective and can pull insights from retail, airlines, theme restaraunts, gaming, etc. and make connections to mobile devices or Internet services or whatever. If the discussion can bounce around strategic market positions for three different industries and end up with an argument for why company X really should launch an MVNO, you’re on the right track.

The other thing to look for is passion mitigated by communication skills and objectivity. I know a handful of strong analysts who are not passionate about their subject area, but they are the exceptions. Generally speaking, people work harder and better in areas that deeply interest them, and competitive analysis requires a fair amount of work that is delightful only to people who delight in it. You called passion, “technolust,” which is the right description for competitive analysis of gadgets, but not so much for food services (“foodie”), automobiles (“car guy”), or pharma. True passion cannot be taught, it will not last if it is a recent development, and is usually mistrusted by everyone else in the corporation. That last one is why passion must be mitigated by basic people skills. This person is going to be talking to internal and external customers – there’s a difference between being passionate and being a kook. The ability to maintain objectivity needs to be assessed as well; all too often passion becomes dogma, and while a super-passionate bigot can be a great cheerleader for your brand, you’re actually looking for an analyst.

-avi

Thanks for the comment! I’m very glad that you’re finding the book interesting.

How do you know if you’d make a good competitive analyst? That’s a very good question, and I’m not sure that I have a quick answer. The temptation is to say, “if it’s right for you, you’ll know it.” But that’s a cop-out, so let me try to give some ideas…

Good competitive analysts generally like solving business puzzles. A lot of the work involves collecting tidbits of seemingly unrelated information and assembling it into an insightful picture. If you don’t like puzzling out things, you probably won’t enjoy the job.

You need passion for your industry. That’s the “technolust” thing I’ve mentioned in some of my posts. If you don’t have that, you won’t have the patience to study your industry to the extent needed. For example, it would be torture to spend all day testing a product if you didn’t like playing with that type of product.

You have to be comfortable influencing rather than controlling. Competitive analysts advise and prod and nag galore, but in the end they are staff rather than line management. That drives some people crazy (it’s why I eventually moved from competitive analysis to strategy; I wanted to make decisions rather than just giving advice).

You also have to be comfortable with people viewing you as a peon. You influence most effectively when people think they came up with ideas on their own. So the more effective you are, the less credit you’ll be given. You have to be able to find your own rewards in the job.

>>Is blogging a good sign of a competitive analyst? Or would you want to avoid bloggers?

A good competitive analyst needs to be able to write well. So blogging is a very, very good sign.

>>how would you use blogs to determine whether its writer would make a good analyst?

I’d look at what they write from two perspectives:

1. Does this person analyze the industry naturally? Do they have good jugment at identifying which issues matter and which ones don’t?

2. How smart are they? Do they come up with interesting and original insights? This is a critical question. There are a lot of people who are passionate about an industry and have very strong opinions, but aren’t all that insightful. It’s very important to differentiate between these enthusiasts and genuine analysts.

If you answer “yes” to both of those questions, the person is a promising candidate.

Thanks again for the great question, Barbara. I’m going to add a section on this topic to the finished book.

It also makes me wonder if I should become a competitive analyst. After all, that’s what my blog is somewhat about. That thought, in turn, makes me wonder about the plethora of “industry blogs” out there, even just the ones restricted to my industry.

Is blogging a good sign of a competitive analyst? Or would you want to avoid bloggers? If the answer is neither (as I suspect it is), how would you use blogs to determine whether its writer would make a good analyst? Alternately, how could a blogger look at herself and determine whether she would be a good analyst?