Horizontal VS Vertical watch
The frontier between markets is increasingly blurred, we talk about flying cars, food made with a 3D printer, cribs reproducing the oscillation of cars, etc. We also talk about the digitalization of jobs, with the giants of the digital world conquering new sectors of activity such as transportation, accommodation, payment, insurance, food, delivery … No sector is spared by these changes, which have an unprecedented impact on the world today.
Technologies are moving from one area to another with lightning speed and each time they produce a real revolution, putting historical activities in difficulty.
A few years ago, markets were siloed and it was very complicated for a new player to emerge, due to the costs of investment in infrastructure or research and development. The value chains were known, very well defined and each player had a well defined place.
At that time, a so-called vertical watch, i.e. monitoring of one’s sector of activity, was perfectly appropriate and effective. The market was not changing much, and the list of competitors and technologies to be studied was listed. At that time, monitoring was “simple” to carry out.
Nowadays, it is unthinkable to focus exclusively on one’s own field, as markets are no longer compartmentalized, everything becomes possible, and one can very quickly go from being a leader to a follower in just a few years.
To identify these changes before they impact your activities, it is essential to switch to a so-called horizontal watch, i.e. to cross-reference information from different sectors of activity by carrying out transversal research.
To imagine the workload that these transversal analyses require, imagine a vertical watch as a single iceberg, responding to the famous Pareto’s law, which shows that 80% of information is invisible. In this illustration, horizontal monitoring consists of performing analyses, not on a single iceberg, but on several, in order to identify correlations in the form of weak signals that herald major changes.
Technologies are moving from one area to another with lightning speed and each time they produce a real revolution, putting historical activities in difficulty.
A few years ago, markets were siloed and it was very complicated for a new player to emerge, due to the costs of investment in infrastructure or research and development. The value chains were known, very well defined and each player had a well defined place.
At that time, a so-called vertical watch, i.e. monitoring of one’s sector of activity, was perfectly appropriate and effective. The market was not changing much, and the list of competitors and technologies to be studied was listed. At that time, monitoring was “simple” to carry out.
Horizontal intelligence exponentially multiplies the axes of reflection and analysis, which offers an almost infinite playground in the possibility of combining several sectors of activity and several technological innovations.
If one wishes to embark on such an adventure, the use of artificial intelligence and data visualization technologies are essential, but they only partially meet the need. You need to combine the use of these technologies with human intelligence and the ability to imagine improbable associations in order to discover real treasures of innovation that will allow you to stay one step ahead of your competition.
In this horizontal intelligence approach, the association of intelligence cells with innovation cells makes sense and becomes a real competitive advantage for your company.