Acknowledgments

I, Craig Fleisher, want to express my gratitude and thanks to a number of friends and colleagues without whose help the book could not be written. My first expression of gratitude goes out to my co-author Babette Bensoussan, who worked alongside me for the last few years in developing this text. Second, a big dose of thanks goes out to Sheila Wright, my colleague and fellow SCIP Board member who researches and teaches competitive intelligence and marketing courses at Leicester Business School (De Montfort University, UK), and who was a magnificent and timely help in polishing Part 1, as well as being a particularly helpful sounding board for my ideas. Go Tigers! My highly capable research assistant Jennifer White did a marvelous job in helping me uncover and organize the materials as well as develop PowerPoint slides for each of the technique chapters, and Sanjay Gupta assisted in reviewing and commenting upon several chapters—particularly the one on business model analysis, which he helped develop, as did my long-time research assistant Victor Knip, who was his usual hard-working self.

I also want to thank the many individuals who helped review these chapters and provided valuable advice. I'd particularly like to thank long-time competitive intelligence and related professionals Brad Ashton, Albert Cruywagen, Bill Fiora, Alex Graham, Arik Johnson, Timothy Kindler, Victor Knip, Martha Matteo, Rainer Michaeli, John Prescott, Pascal Savioz, Pat Shaw, Fred Wergeles, and Melanie Wing. Thanks to many excellent MBA students in my various CI courses at the University of Windsor, University of New Brunswick, and Wilfrid Laurier University. The book also benefited from feedback from students and workshop attendees at the University of Sydney and Sydney Graduate School of Management (Australia), Nihon University (Japan—special thanks to my friend and colleague Yoshio Sugasawa), Stellenbosch University, Graduate School of Business Leadership at UNISA (thanks to Peet Venter), University of Pretoria and North-West University in South Africa (special thanks to Wilma Viviers). They offered me a wonderful sounding board for discussing many of the book's ideas. Additionally, I want to acknowledge David Blenkhorn, who co-taught CI courses at WLU with me, where I also benefited from teaching related strategy courses with my colleague Kenneth Harling, and Conor Vibert of Acadia University, with whom I regularly discuss these concepts. Additionally, several valuable workshops and conferences held under the auspices of Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), CBIA (South Africa) and its long-time leader Steve Whitehead, my friends Mike Kuhn and Marie Luce-Muller of IBIS South Africa, Frost & Sullivan, KMWorld, and Marcus Evans Conferences, in particular, have also allowed me many opportunities to hone these ideas. Last but not least, I want to express my appreciation to various agencies that provided funding and other forms of support along the way in developing this book, including the Canadian Council for Public Affairs Advancement, National Research Council (Canada), National Research Foundation (South Africa), Odette School of Business, Dean Allan Conway, and the Windsor Research Leadership Chair and Odette Research Chairs—University of Windsor.

I, Babette Bensoussan, readily acknowledge that I am right on the cutting edge of the still relatively new competitive intelligence market in Australia. This positioning has not only presented me with a multiplicity of challenges when compiling this book, but it has also placed me in a somewhat unique professional situation.

While I have been privileged to witness and indeed help create the emergence of this field in Australia and Asia over the past decade, the fact remains that relevant expertise is still very thin on the ground locally. This situation has, however, provided me with a wonderful opportunity to tread new ground, refine implementation frameworks and ideas, and help excite the Australasian business environment about the value that competitive intelligence can deliver when it is applied professionally and comprehensively.

Putting this book together in these market circumstances has been personally fulfilling and challenging at the same time. I have been propelled largely by my keenness to make competitive intelligence a more fundamental consideration in both Australian and Asian businesses. Turning that keenness into hard copy, however, would not have happened without the knowledge that everyone who knew about my efforts added a dimension and fully supported me—even with just a few words of encouragement to keep me focused during the tougher times.

There are several people and groups of people to whom I owe a note of thanks for their contribution—whether direct or indirect—to the existence of this book. May I firstly acknowledge and express my thanks to my co-author Dr. Craig Fleisher, who has shared my vision so completely in both this and our first book. I would also like to extend heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Dr. Graham Godbee, whose expertise in competitor cash flow analysis delivered that chapter with style. In addition, my continuing appreciation to my undergraduate and postgraduate students over the years at Sydney's Graduate School of Management both in Sydney and Guangzhou, China, and Queensland's Bond University who have—possibly unknowingly—given me additional impetus to commit my ideas to paper; to the SCIP organization for helping to build and consolidate my international professional profile and allowing me to test my analytical ideas in practical situations, and to the Australasian business community, who continue to provide the clay with which I work.

With everything in life, you do it all with a little help from your friends—and there are several who stand out. For support in getting this manuscript finalized, I owe heartfelt thanks to Kerrie Tarrant, Carolyn Schmidt, and Korina Ashbrook—what a team—thank you. To my dearest friends—Cyndi Allgaier and Christine Bull—ladies, without your ongoing encouragement, where would I be!

Last but certainly not least, we thank the excellent staff at FT Press and Pearson who helped us all along the way, particularly Martha Cooley, Betsy Harris, Russ Hall, Michael Ablassmeir, Paula Sinott, and Megan Colvin. It was a genuine pleasure to work with each of you.