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WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE COMPETITIVE? This sounds like a text book topic, something you would have been asked in an exam years ago. The answer seems obvious enough for those with an economic background but the true value of competitiveness is at times overlooked as it is assumed that once businesses are profitable and are showing signs of growth that they are operating competitively. This is far from the truth; most businesses can operate more competitively. Taking a structured approach to competitiveness will give you the information needed to remain the leader in your industry not just when the economy is secure but most importantly when it is on a decline. The ECA recommends that all businesses use Competitive Intelligence to maintain their market share especially as the world recovers from an economic slowdown.
WHAT IS COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE?
Competitive Intelligence (CI) is a structured business process to collect information and produce insights on your competitors to meet the short and long-term planning needs of the organisation. Its most frequent application is to either develop or fine-tune strategies and plans. Typically CI is structured around an 'Intelligence Cycle' and contains five components: Planning, Research, Analysis, Dissemination/ Action, Feedback. It is a cycle because of the feedback loop, ongoing competitor monitoring, the steady flow of customer requirements and incoming competitor information. This new trend of competitive analysis can provide early warning of new competitive threats, assess the competition's likely response to new strategy options, and helps protect the company's margins and market share. Fine-tuning strategies and business critical activities can define the margin between success and failure. In accessing competitiveness the ECA will look at three categories · Innovation · Entrepreneurship · Productivity
INNOVATON Innovation is the way to drive growth in your organization. Innovation management, what we like to call Innovate on Purpose™, is a structured business process to help people innovate. When we talk about “innovation” we define innovation as putting ideas into valuable action. This means that merely being creative is not enough. An innovative firm must move ideas from the concept stage to the evaluation stage, through a new product development or prototyping process, and then launch a new product or service. Thus, innovation can be thought of as a business process which can be managed just as quality is managed, as the sales pipeline is managed, and as other business processes are managed. The difference is that innovation is the one process that organizations can use to grow. E NTREPRENEURSHIP Every businessman should consider himself an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is always the leader of his industry, as he is the one with the ideas and is more than willing to take the first risk. His path at times is a lonely one however his success is usually the success of a nation as he provides employment, the competitive edge, direction for growth and economic stability; thus he also becomes the hope of the nation. The ECA is committed to the development of the entrepreneurial spirit and believes that this spirit can bring Trinidad out of its economic slowdown and into developed country status. PRODUCTIVITY Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. Paul J. Meyer
Years ago when we spoke of Productivity we looked at a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input. Today productivity concepts have overridden economic analysis and strategy and have risen to be the focus of planning for the 21st Century.
Productivity is more important than the number of hours you work. You might have a tendency to feel that the longer the hours you work, the more hardworking you feel. But it's not about the number of hours you work. It's about the results you generate i.e. the amount of work you accomplish. We must keep in mind that productivity and the growth of productivity must be the first economic consideration at all times, not the last. That is the source of technological innovation, jobs, and wealth. (William E. Simon) These three categories of thought – innovation, entrepreneurship and productivity are all inherent to building competition in Trinidad and Tobago. It is well known that a competitive world offers two possibilities. Firstly, you can lose. Or, secondly if you want to win, you can change. The ECA invites you to take look at how you can enable your business to be as competitive as it can be to. We plan to take an in-depth look at Enabling Competitive Business through innovation, entrepreneurship and productivity at our two (2) day Conference on the 21st - 22nd January 2010.
We invite you and your staff to attend and also invite you to use this venue to promote your services/products through sponsorship. CONFERENCE OBJECTIVE To provide information to the Employer Community on how best they can build and sustain their competitiveness in today’s highly volatile environment. CONFERENCE TOPICS OUTLINE
The following are the topics to be covered during this Conference  Enabling Competitive Business Opportunities for Business Growth in a Recession Indentifying Strategies for Competitive Business Meeting the Productivity Challenge How to Manage Innovation, Risk and Reward The Entrepreneurial Spirit – Creating a Success The Government’s Role/Incentives for Business Corporate Social Responsibility Finding Untapped Growth in Potential Markets v European Union v Caribbean Single Market & Economy v Organization of American States TARGET AUDIENCE The convention is designed to attract Chief Executive officers Executive Management Senior Human Resource Management Human Resource Management Those who have the responsibility for Staff Officials of national and multinational corporations in the Caribbean
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