Recently, I’ve received some enquiries regarding my expertise in anti-corporate activism analysis, in competitive intelligence, and in the analysis of online media. Since this is an unusual profession, I can certainly understand the curiosity. I appreciate all of your questions and hope that I have responded satisfactorily. Knowing that FAQs are popular on many sites, I am today writing an FAQ of sorts.
Today, I write this post to help future enquirers and to give you some background on my previous experiences. In this post, you will learn about my credentials and the experiences I have had which have built my expertise in anti-corporate activism analysis, in general, and in digital anti-corporate activism analysis, in particular. You could say that this post serves as my “annotated resume.”
Educational Background
My specific experience for my profession began just before I received my MBA in Marketing from Rider University. While completing that degree, I worked as a Research Assistant for the Marketing Department. In that capacity, I extended what I learned from the classroom into the real world. Having learned much about performing objective research, with special attention paid toward the reliability and integrity of sourcing, I performed many market research studies across different product and service areas. Upon completing my MBA, I served several years as a faculty member at Monmouth University and at Georgian Court University. Between both of those schools I taught international economics, finance, and marketing courses.
Out-of-the-Ivory-Tower
After several years as an educator, I received an offer from a consulting unit of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. This consulting unit was the Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (TAAC) which was a U.S. Department of Commerce program administered by the NJEDA. In my role there as a Senior Project Officer, my responsibility was to work with New Jersey manufacturers who were getting “hammered” by foreign competition. Specifically, I was tasked with the duty of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of those manufacturers with the intention of creating strategic plans to accentuate their positives and eliminate their negatives.
It was at NJEDA that I first formally became involved with competitive intelligence. When writing the strategic plan (or the “adjustment plan” as it was called there), it was necessary for me not only to analyze my client’s strengths and weaknesses, but it was imperative for me to analyze those of the competitor, as well. Please note that those competitors were, of course, foreign. This was during the late 1980s, before the Internet became the research avenue it is today, and gaining critical, public-domain, information even on American companies was difficult. So, you can probably imagine that obtaining information on foreign companies was even more difficult. However, from my experience as an academic researcher, I knew how to dig and from my training as an MBA, I knew for what to dig. So I dug. And from my efforts I was able to uncover much information that went into my analyses and the creation of effective strategic plans for my TAAC clients.
My Own Shop
In 1991, after having good success with the foreign competitive intelligence function at the NJEDA, I decided to open up my own shop, a competitive intelligence consultancy. At that time, competitive intelligence as a business discipline was just coming into its own and it looked like a great business opportunity. It was.
The Becker Research Company, Inc. was one of the original competitive intelligence companies in the United States. During the company’s tenure, it was a market leader. At Becker Research, my staff and I worked on hundreds of competitive intelligence projects for Fortune 100 type clients. We met the demand for competitive information and strategic recommendations concerning the competitors, foreign and domestic, of many of America’s top companies. Becker Research was involved in and delivered critical competitive intelligence for several major due diligence projects, many competitive manufacturing benchmarking studies, and almost countless competitive product introduction forecasts.
By the late 1990s, the Internet was in full bloom and that network was changing the way business was done. This was one of those historic transformations that I got to experience up close and personally. The opportunities offered by this transformation were unprecedented. Realizing another good potential business, I opened a second consulting practice, eBusiness Analysts, which offered competitive analysis services and strategic counseling in the area of e-business and e-commerce. My understanding of the Internet’s power in business gelled in that period of time and it was then that I wrote my first two books, Fast Food for eBusiness Marketers (High Street Press: 1998, currently out-of-print) and Dangerous Competition (iUniverse: 2001). eBusiness Analysts performed well but ultimately became a victim of the dot bomb crash of 2000.
A Transitional Time
At that point in my career, even though Internet fever had risen and fallen, I knew that the Internet was not going away and that it’s impact on business would not fade. We weren’t going back to business without an Internet. I could foresee that a tool such as this, one which networked human communication so easily, would have effects on business more profound than most could ever realize. So, I decided to continue to do business in Internet related areas. Some who were licking their dot com bomb wounds then called this masochism. I looked at it as a prudent strategic decision. My foresight proved correct.
So in 2001, after eBusiness Analysts and after selling the assets of The Becker Research Company, Inc., I opened The Kahuna Content Company, Inc. In its early days, Kahuna Content was an independent supplier of Internet content, both text and images. Although, Internet “fever” had burst, the “illness” was still there. Many sites were upgrading their strategies and in doing so were seeking solid, quality content. The number of content suppliers at that time was low. Kahuna Content helped fill the void. During those first years of Kahuna Content, I increased my knowledge on how the Internet worked, how business could benefit from it, what people wanted from it, why they wanted what they did, and how people could use the Internet as a social tool. One of my tasks during those early Kahuna Content years was to supply images. To do so, I called upon my photography skills which I had been developing on the side (pun intended) since high school, becoming even better at that art which some call a science. In addition to web articles, Kahuna Content also supplied various photography and imaging services. As a sideline, I dabbled in art photography, participating in many group shows, winning national awards, and securing four solo gallery exhibitions. And during that time I authored my third book, “Conehenge – The Story of a Jersey Schlub,” which I did to poke a little fun at how business is conducted in New Jersey.
What Happens Next?
So far in this post, you have read a condensed version of some of my experiences leading up to the analysis of anti-corporate digital activism. But, there is more. What happens next?Well, I will be happy to tell you. But, because I prefer to keep blog posts no longer than about 1500 words (one of the many lessons I learned in Kahuna Content’s early days), and because I am rapidly approaching that limit, I will break here, thank you for reading thus far, and pick up this story in my next post, “You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume – Part 2.”
In that next post, you’ll learn how I built my current profession upon the sum of my experiences and knowledge in competitive intelligence as well as upon my activities in Internet related businesses.
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Part 2 of this post, “You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume,” will be published on Tuesday, March 2, 2010. If you are reading this before that date, please subscribe to the FREE RSS feed so that you will be notified when the post publishes. To subscribe to the feed, just click here. If you are reading this after that date, simply click here to go to “You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume – Part 2.”
