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Finding people. Sources of competitive intelligence Business contacts Recruiting Frequently, asking people questions is much more productive than searching paper records: it can be faster, you may get an explanation along with the answer, and it provides access to unpublished gossip.
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Finding people Sources of competitive intelligence Business contacts Recruiting Frequently, asking people questions is much more productive than searching paper records: it can be faster, you may get an explanation along with the answer, and it provides access to unpublished gossip. Much of this lecture is probably to be used only when the situation seems hopeless.
Finding experts Journal articles: academics who study the area and may be technical experts. Trade shows: active workers Newspapers, magazines: identification of promising individuals. Headhunters (executive recruiters) use social networking.
“Six degrees of separation” Stanley Milgram: any two people can be connected through a chain of not more than five friends. For example, me to Vladimir Putin: I know Raj Reddy, who knows the President of India, who knows his own foreign minister, who certainly will have met Putin.
Six degrees of separation Actually, the original experiment is rather doubtful. Only about 30% of the envelopes Milgram gave his subjects arrived; it’s unclear whether the rest were lost thorough inability to make progress or just conventional laziness. But people seem to resonate with the idea: it’s popular, it became a play and a movie, other studies confirm it, and it’s most likely to be true within a particular community (e.g. those who make cheese or computers). Columbia, with 60,000 testers, found that social search usually works with 5-7 responders. And, of course, “friendster.com” is doing this commercially.
Directories of experts Online directories of experts exist, e.g. for lawyers looking for expert witnesses, but most of these people want to be paid. See for example experts.com or expertpages.com. Similarly roundtablegroup.com or various lists at FindLaw. Other directories target journalists: see for example Profnet Experts, at profnet1.prnewswire.com which tries to help those looking for a fast, snappy quote. I think they have an ideal business: they charge both sides. In general, people who specifically sell lists of names are normally going to charge for that, and the expertise may not be sufficiently business-oriented (targeting either lawyers or public-policy journalists).
Tracking people’s research Citation searches: Google Scholar, CiteSeer, ISI, … Online bibliographies (e.g. DBLP) Individual and research group publication lists Online resumes: almost everyone, today Searches of this sort turn up academic experts, who have the advantage that they’re not as likely to want money to talk, but they may not be as clued into the business issues.
Theoretical CS Genealogy Alonzo Church Doctorate from Princeton University in 1927; Adviser: Oswald Veblen Students: William Boone (Princeton University, 1952) Martin Davis (Princeton University, 1959) Alfred Foster (Princeton University, 1930) John Kemeny (Princeton University, 1949) Stephen Kleene (Princeton University, 1934) Simon Kochen (Princeton University, unknown year) Michael O. Rabin (Princeton University, 1957) Bob Ritchie (Princeton University, 1961) Hartley Rogers (Princeton University, 1953) Barkley Rosser (Princeton University, 1934) Dana Scott (Princeton University, 1958) Raymond Smullyan (Princeton University, 1959) Alan Turing (Princeton University, 1938)
Finding a trade show Often searching convention center sites is easier. There are also specialized lists: techweb.com is good for hi-tech.
Individual conference session “The League of Extraordinary Experts" Q&A Roundtable on Pathogen Detection and Control
Names show up in odd places These are the “attendee comments” from a conference that didn’t publish its attendance list. "Thanks so much for including my wife and I in the Broadband Leaders Retreat. We had an absolute blast! I never would have had enough time in my busy day to talk to so many vendors! The atmosphere was outstanding.” John Dreiling, VP Services and Operations, Charter Communications “ I want to thank you for the great weekend. Everything went like clockwork. You truly are a professional. Carole and I had a real good time, and it helped take the edge off the nasty winter.” Richard Semmel, VP Operations, Blue Ridge Cable
November 11, 2004 Vernon J. Spaulding Joins ESE Inc. ESE has recently hired Vernon Spaulding as their VP Sales & Marketing. Vern has over 20 years of sales, marketing, and engineering experience within the field of process automation based on his management positions at Cutler-Hammer, Rockwell Automation, and Adaptive Micro Systems, his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and his graduate degree in business administration. Through these companies, Vern has developed several process competencies within many industry’s including Printing, Consumer Products, Paper, Automotive, and Food & Dairy. In addition to working at ESE, Vern also teaches several MBA courses at Ottawa University including: Managerial Economics, Project Management, and Business Strategic Planning. Vern also supports the Institute of Industrial Engineers as their VP Lean Division. Vern’s focus at ESE will include integrating all of ESE’s automation solutions with Lean Enterprise methodologies. This integration will produce a means for ESE to help customers methodically identify and remove waste from their processes.
Look for newspaper biographies Factiva, etc. useful here. Searches can be tedious: the paper may have used labels like “profile”. 25 years and still partners Franchesca Stevens For the Journal 1,030 words ; 19 May 2003 Albuquerque Journal Business Outlook Dion's thrives on sharing the work and the fun FOCUS ON BUSINESS Dion's founders Jon Patten and Bill Scott joke about achieving "worldwide pizza domination by the year 3000."
Corporate directors online This is usually in the annual report and the SEC filings. For example, on the Kraft Foods website:
And from the SEC filings Kraft foods, DEF 14A filing with the SEC.
Other online information In fact, perhaps more than you might like is online. For example, http://herndon1.sdrdc.com/fecimg/query.html will tell you to which political candidates anyone contributed.
Conclusion Lots of names are online. This is an easier job than headhunting; all you want is someone to talk to. You don’t care whether they are decent managers, willing to relocate, have salary demands, etc. On the other hand, you have little to offer whomever you are calling, so you need to be good at judging the conversation: how much small talk and how fast to approach the real subject. Honesty is often going to work: “perhaps we can offer you an alternate supplier for… what would you want to see in such a product?” But it will help, as always, if you can name a common acquaintance who introduces you.
