In your industry, no matter which one it is, there’s no time to waste in communicating and employing best practices in your firm. One of the characteristics that is consistently positively correlated with long-term company financial success, is the ability to obtain, communicate and implement the latest breakthrough ideas. This is not to suggest that you should set up a corporate espionage group to do anything illegal, but you should set up such a group or function to do everything humanly possible and legal to obtain as much competitor intelligence as possible, as quickly as possible. Information tends to be worth a lot less when it is old and stale, so make sure that your “information procurement” group is operating on the cutting edge. Why should you reinvent the wheel when you can appropriate (again, legally, of course) the latest good ideas from your competitors, suppliers, customers, etc? Reward your team for keeping their ears to the ground to pick up and employ the latest best ideas..
