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By clearly mapping the pathway for managing the early stages of any marketplace analysis project, its definition, scope, framing, focus, perspective, context, imagination and data choices – the odds of generating important strategic insight can be greatly increased for executives as well as analysis teams.

A marketing analysis team should pay specific attention to how it organizes the analysis context’a process called “Structuring”.

A working definition of insight: new marketplace understanding that makes a difference to the organization’s thinking, decision making and action.

10; Nothing constricts the insight structuring process as much as lack of imagination!

The choice of analysis scope, framing, focus, perspective or methods is a critical part of the marketplace analysis structuring process that increases the possibility of distinctly different strategic inferences emerging. The article is a much needed guide to mastering strategic insight for executives and marketplace analysts.

Several leading companies have employed scenarios to better understand both current competitors’ potential moves as well as the possible emergence of new rivals. They have learned several principles and some ways to avoid various pitfalls. Competitor scenarios examine three broad aspects of marketplace strategy: in which product‐customer segments the competitor chooses to compete (scope); how it competes (competitive posture); and what it seeks to achieve (goals). Competitors are always at the heart of every significant analysis of the competitive or industry context. Experienced managers use competitor scenarios as a source of learning about the broader competitive context and of the implications for their firm’s strategy and operations. Competitor scenarios work best when they produce knowledge and insight that broadly informs and prepares decision makers to act rapidly as competitive conditions change. There are two distinct types of competitor scenarios that originate in two quite different forms of what‐if questions: unconstrained what‐if scenarios and constrained what‐if competitor scenarios. Unconstrained or open‐ended questions encourage scenario developers to pose any question that occurs to them pertaining to one or more rivals’ marketplace strategies. Such questions are limited only by the experience, imagination and creativity of those involved in thinking about the possible strategies of rivals. Unconstrained competitor scenarios are ideal for answering: How might new types of competitors come into the market? A distinct class of competitor scenarios revolves around invented competitors, that is, competitors that do not exist today but which could exist at some point in the future. Invented competitors shift the frame of reference to one or more rivals that, by definition, are strikingly dissimilar to any rival managers have had to contemplate to date. In contrast, constrained competitor scenarios ask: What would the competitor do if a specific set of marketplace or macro environmental end‐states or conditions were to arise? In almost all cases, competitor scenarios lead to rich insight into the firm’s own strategy alternatives‐and sometimes to alternatives not previously on the firm’s radar screen.

Defines a useful context for the concept of market insight and explains how “small data” can illuminate new pathways to such insight and potentially to better market strategies.

Using an illustrative case the article provides a guide to transforming “small data” into important strategy shaping insights.

By paying careful attention to such small data opportunities, fully assessing their inferences and vetting them thoroughly, strategist and marketers can discover insights that Big Data cannot deliver.

Small data as a source of learning is not just neglected but disparaged in many organizations. The importance of such small data escalates when we recognize that they frequently serve as the early indicator of marketplace change that may not be observable by other means.

This article shows how scenarios provide a powerful methodology to identify, connect, and assess the critical strategic and knowledge uncertainties they inevitably contain within them, the seeds of any organization’s future marketplace opportunities. Although these two types of uncertainties are quite distinct, scenarios furnish a proven means for senior managers and others to surface and grapple with these uncertainties as a means not just to learn about plausible futures that may confront them but also to better understand the current and emerging competitive context. The outcome is the capacity to upgrade the quality of the inputs to all phases of strategy development and execution.

In this interview John C Camillus, author of Wicked Strategies: How Companies Conquer Complexity and Confound Competitors shares his approach to identifying “wicked problems” that firms can then explore to find growth opportunities.

The “wicked strategies” approach that Camillus proposes is designed to convert disruptive technologies into innovative business models, reconcile conflicted stakeholders by engaging them in co-creation of value and transform an unknowable future into a desired one through the alchemy of a Feed-Forward Framework.

Camillus’ proposed Feed-Forward Framework enables and employs the process of experimentation.

Camillus’ multi-level approach starts by discerning unique “wicked problems,” then applies a “Feed-Forward Framework” that analyzes multiple stakeholder interests and develops scenarios to discover and test possible opportunities and robust strategies.

The role of the corporate headquarters that Camillus proposes differs from the approach that is conventionally employed – it focuses intensely on human resources and competency development.