Tools For Thought - Intelegia

Have you taken a look at what Google has in their product / service pipeline?

Google Labs provide users with the ability to test new search applications.  Here is a nifty tool that may interest competitive intelligence researchers and analysts.

Google News Timeline is an application that plots search results of news on a dateline.  News content may come in the form of articles and video clips.  Figure 1 illustrates Google News Timeline for the query: Kraft + Cadbury.

Figure 1: Plotting Results For News Search, “Kraft” + Cadbury
Please Click On Image To Enlarge

The timeline that is provided can be navigated by clicking on the arrows located on the top left and right hands side of the page and as well as the Window sidebar.

Although the application is in the beta testing phase, it could be useful in profiling competitors’ past, present and future strategic initiatives.  By having the ability to view important strategic intelligence on a timeline, analysts can be able to anticipate a specific strategic move and how it will be implemented.

In the case of Kraft, researchers can discover that on December 19, 2009, Kraft hired an acquisition expert from Heineken.  By profiling, Jean-François van Boxmeer, competitors of Kraft can have an idea of his strategies that was used in the past and what could be put into place for the Cadbury acquisition.

Google News Timeline is available at newstimeline.googlelabs.com