What’s Up in MI? – Recent developments in the Field of Market Intelligence

Cutting Edge Information report: Global CI departments’ budgets surpass USD 1 million   

According to a study by Cutting Edge Information, "Pharmaceutical Competitive Intelligence: Expanding the Role and Reach of CI", the competitive intelligence function has grown both in size and strategic influence in recent years. Furthermore, budget levels have expanded accordingly - a similar study conducted by Cutting Edge Information in 2005 found that the average CI budget was only USD 335,000. Today, the average budget for US departments alone averages USD 448,000. In the 2005 study, the highest reported budget was USD 1 million, whereas the most resource-rich department today commands a USD 2 million annual budget.

Source: Cutting Edge Information press release, 3 June 2008   

Web News Aggregators Rise Despite Papers Woes

The ability to get news on a mobile device increasingly interests people, and several vendors provide content that’s been presented in context to quickly help make sense of the messages.

The need for context becomes apparent if one considers the multitude of newspapers, broadcasters, wires, and blogs available to everyone. Recently, sites have emerged that try to make it easier for people to navigate through the thicket.

Easy navigation is especially important as more readers get their news to smart phones while on the go. These "aggregator" websites cull together news from famous sources like the BBC as well as some otherwise unknown vendors.

Some of the English-language aggregator sites have been listed below:

• Daylife (http://www.daylife.com)
• Newser (http://www.newser.com)
• Topix (http://www.topix.com)
• Google News (http://news.google.com) and Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com)
• "RSS" feeds
• NewsCred (http://www.newscred.com) 



Abstracted from Information Week, 28 August 2008