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Competitive Analysis: A Juxtaposition
by Emmie van Halder
Taskforce Europe

www.taskforceeurope.com

Competitive analysis has always been considered invaluable in the biotech industry. Management, business developers and scientists spend hours scanning the stream of newsletters, industry magazines and articles. The Internet has made the gathering of information easier, but not necessarily of greater value. There is no structure to the information that is gathered and, as a result, the real gem in this information overload might easily be missed.

In this article, we will identify the need for competitive analysis and then present a structure that can help companies save costs in this area and yield higher and improved results.

Why competitive analysis? First of all, it is critical to know the research landscape of your particular field. This includes areas competitors are focusing on; how crowded is the field and in which stage is the research. Secondly, it is critical to know the intellectual (IP) landscape. This is a complete discipline on its own, where the large Life Sciences IP firms should play a role. So instead of working with a firm that just writes your patent, make sure that your patent lawyer understands the landscape, or patentscape™, as our patent law firm Needle & Rosenberg calls it (www.needlerosenberg.com). You need to know the relevant blocking patents, which patents have been filed but are not being used and could be licensed, and where that patent is that would just complement your patent suite.

Thirdly, competitive analysis is a vital tool in attracting the cream of the crop for your research projects. Obviously, publications offer information, but often the most important research will not be published until it is patented, thus you need more up to date information to find the right people. There are specialized recruiting firms that work in these areas, but be certain when evaluating them that they are well established in your particular area. Attending and presenting at key scientific conferences is another tried and true of meeting the most important scientific figures in your field.

The fourth reason for complete competitive analysis is for mergers and acquisitions. Often an overall and global analysis will be the basis of an M & A strategy. Unless publicly traded, financial information is often difficult to come by. Again, there are specialty firms and services that can assist you in this area. This is also where your business network will be extremely valuable.

How to effectively implement competitive intelligence. First of all make one person responsible for the competitive analysis and not have other employees spending their time scanning incoming newsletters. For a larger company, I suggest a full time intelligence officer. For smaller companies this falls under business development. In addition to gathering intelligence, this dedicated person can also generate a company specific newsletter that can be directed to the relevant people.

To assist individuals in effectively sifting through and processing all the available competitive information, there are a number of extremely useful new tools. I will discuss three of them:

1. In order to gather as much company specific information as possible, one could use a self-learning system of artificial intelligence. This means that you install a service, which scans and tracks all the information the person has been looking at. This information is stored and becomes a self-learning machine. It offers a layer over search tools and creates a wealth of intelligence. So instead of too much information to deal with, you only receive what you need.

2. Another invaluable system is the software provided by a Dutch company, Collexis. (www.collexis.com) Collexis offers a hyper intelligent search engine, which contains all medical publications worldwide. Not only is the Collexis software intelligent enough to determine ambiguities, it also deals with the myriad of acronyms in this industry. The system will translate from practically any language into English allowing you access to much more information than only the West produces. The result is a three dimensional view of research, and saving valuable time, whilst coming up with better intelligence.

3. Last but not least I recommend the web clipping service from Allresearch. (www.webclipping.com) Allresearch offers the electronic version of the old-fashioned clipping service; if something is posted on the web, Allresearch will find it for you. The last time I checked on a press release we posted on 400 news wires, Allresearch showed over 10.000 postings of the article on newsletters we had never even heard of.

Notwithstanding the importance of these tools and the electronic information stream, the thing that really discerns the excellent from the good competitive intelligence officer, is his or her network. Being the first one to pick up industry gossip, determining the level of accuracy in a press release, and knowing what to look for, are all qualities of the mature and well-connected intelligence officer.