{"id":5527,"date":"2024-02-22T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T18:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=5527"},"modified":"2024-02-08T11:57:51","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T19:57:51","slug":"what-if-you-come-across-juicy-competitor-information-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=5527","title":{"rendered":"What if you see juicy competitor information?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Has this happened to you?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many of us belong to industry associations and find ourselves at conferences and trade\"\" shows with time to spend with competitors.\u00a0 Some of these are old friends, some even former associates.\u00a0 It is natural to want to associate with these people for many reasons, certainly socially. Most CEOs want to obtain information about their competitors in the most subtle and non-obvious ways.\u00a0 And of course, most are willing to trade information to get information.<\/p>\n

A fair example<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my former industry, I became an informal centralized source for knowledge about the revenues of each of the many competitors, with a special skill for asking just the right questions to obtain the information.\u00a0 How many employees does the firm have today? Are you profitable yet?\u00a0 Can you guess what percentage your revenue comes from recurring sources such as maintenance revenues?<\/p>\n

In return for the answers to these several questions, I was usually able to guess a company\u2019s gross revenues within a few percent and would state my guess to the CEO.\u00a0 His reaction would guide me to increase or decrease my estimate appropriately.\u00a0 He\u2019d be a bit amazed with the quick fancy math work, and I would have yet another piece of the puzzle helping me to gauge the total size of the industry in annual revenues and the growth and size of competitors.<\/p>\n

[Email readers, continue here…]<\/em><\/span>\u00a0 All of this was immensely helpful in strategic planning and marketing, even though to this day I do not think those CEOs were aware of the value of the information so easily given.\u00a0 And none of this is especially considered a trade secret, violating the unspoken covenant between competitor CEOs that there is a limit to such exchanges.<\/p>\n

The other kind of example<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"On the other hand, often a salesperson or marketing manager would show up at my office door with a complete package of a competitor\u2019s materials, including price lists, a proposal with discount percentages clearly shown and a list of feature functionality meant to reinforce the proposal.\u00a0 The source of this information was typically the purchasing decision-maker for a friendly customer or candidate customer.\u00a0 The question is one of ethics, since the competitor certainly did not volunteer any of the information, which would have been the competitor employee\u2019s violation of confidentiality and cause for being fired.<\/p>\n

How should you respond?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What does a CEO do with this wonderful, rich information dropped at his door at no cost or obligation? Few would destroy it and ask all to forget that it was ever in their hands. Most would absorb the information and then admonish those who had seen it to not repeat to anyone that it was in their hands.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve been in business for long enough, you\u2019ve seen your share of this gray market information.\u00a0 My advice is to be very careful, think of the golden rule, never use this information publicly, and certainly never reproduce it, let alone disseminate it internally.<\/p>\n

And a warning\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

As to sharing information to get information, CEOs and executives are bound by a duty to their corporations not to share trade secrets with anyone who has not signed a confidentiality agreement, including consultants to the company.\u00a0 For CEOs on the corporate board, it is a large part of the \u201cduty of care\u201d, a legal requirement of board members to protect the assets of the corporation first and foremost, one of those assets being the trade secrets of the corporation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Has this happened to you?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many of us belong to industry associations and find ourselves at conferences and trade shows with time to spend with competitors.\u00a0 Some of these are old friends, some even former associates.\u00a0 It is natural to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-protecting-the-business"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}