Tag Archive for 'foreign direct investment'

The Importance Of Monitoring Capital Investments in Your Industry? – Case 1

Published
by
Ian Smith
on October 16, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Economic Intelligence
. Closed

Last week, the notion of tracking capital investments in your industry was introduced.  An abundance of details can be collected about the sector, competitors and various investment projects.  To demonstrate this, consider the following case scenario.

As one of several competitors in the energy sector, you are interested in knowing the level of foreign direct investment flowing into Canada from specific countries in 2008 and 2009.

Using information from E&B DATA’s Information Observatory, the following details are available:

Within the past 22 months, foreign direct investment in the energy sector in Canada originated from the following top five countries.

  • France
  • Germany
  • Spain
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

Figure 1 presents that the majority of the investments in the sector came from the United Kingdom with 46%.


Figure 1: Source of FDI in Canada for energy sector in 2008-2009 by percentage

Drilling down further into the data reveals that some of the investments from the United Kingdom were made by TCI Renewables Ltd. and REG Ltd. (Renewable Energy Generation) via their Canadian subsidiaries - Air Energy TCI, Venterre and AIM PowerGen Corporation. Below is a sample of the announcements made by these investors.

These companies were contacted to validate the amount of the investment that was made and the number of jobs that were created.

Next week’s case:  As a major competitor to Xstrata, you would like to investigate the number and the type of investments (ie, new facility, expansion, modernization) that the company has made during the past three years.

The Importance Of Monitoring Capital Investments in Your Industry?

Published
by
Ian Smith
on October 9, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Economic Intelligence
. 0 Comments

One of the effects of an economic downturn is the change of the level of capital investments from around the globe.  With the shortage of credit made available to companies looking to grow via building new facilities, expanding operations and modernizing equipment, investing a significant amount of money has slowed down until conditions improve.

Announcements of billion dollar projects may be a source of pride for some companies however; it is a source of strategic intelligence for competitors, if used correctly.  Such raw investment intelligence may be collected as a larger part of a competitive intelligence monitoring system.  Being able to manage such a system and produce meaningful intelligence on an ad hoc basis is a definite plus for any company.

E&B DATA, a source for capital investment information in Canada, has been monitoring capital investments since 2000 via its Investment Observatory.  The company is well aware of the importance of tracking capital investments within any given sector.

Over the next five weeks, five real life cases will be presented to demonstrate the use of the database of capital investment information.  In particular, the posts will discuss cases such as:

Case 1 - As one of several competitors in the energy sector, you are interested in knowing the  level of foreign direct investment flowing into Canada from specific countries.

Case 2 – As a major competitor to Xstrata, you would like to investigate the number and the type of investments (ie, new facility, expansion, modernization) that the company has made during the past three years.

Case 3 – What is the level of greenfield investments that has been made in the pharmaceutical sector in the province of Ontario in 2007?

Case 4 – You are interested in the amount of capital investments made in the clean technology sector in 2007-2008.

Case 5 – As a small automobile manufacturer, you would like to discover which of your large competitors are receiving financial support from various levels of government.

E&B DATA Tracking 5000+ Capital Investments in Canada Since 2000

To learn more about E&B DATA Investment Observatory, click here

Samepoint - A Powerful Social Media Search Tool

Published
by
Ian Smith
on October 2, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence, Internet tools, Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 Search
. 1 Comment

Content on Web 2.0 is no longer a laughing matter.  Yes, everyone enjoys a funny or cute video on YouTube however, the amount of strategic intelligence or competitive intelligence that is made available on web 2.0 is growing. What is one of the best ways to access this intelligence?  Use Google?… Use Bing?… Use Samepoint?

Samepoint???

SamePoint is a search tool that digs for information amongst the “social conversations” that are taking place on blogs and social networks.  Figure 1 shows the index page of Samepoint.

Figure 1: Index Page of Samepoint
(Click on the image to enlarge)

Testing out the tool with the keywords, “foreign direct investment”, Samepoint will provide results or “social mentions” on such social media platforms as Wikipedia, Ning and blog applications.  In addition, on the same page, you will see on the right hand side a series of Tweets that are classified as, “Recent Conversations”.  Figure 2. illustrates this point highlighted in yellow.

Figure 2: Results from Twitter on the Samepoint Result Page
(Click on the image to enlarge)

The value added feature of Samepoint is the ability to conduct an array of different queries based on the type of web 2.0 application.  Here is the exhaustive list of the applications.

  • Real-Time
  • Bookmarks
  • Wikis
  • Q&A
  • Networks
  • B2B Networks
  • Groups
  • Life Casting
  • MicroBlogs
  • Reviews
  • Podcasts
  • Documents
  • Video
  • Images
  • News

Figure 3 demonstrate the results (”mentions”) Samepoint supplies for a search on B2B Networks using the keywords, “Foreign Direct Investment”.

Figure 3: “Mentions” of “Foreign Direct Investment”
(Click on the image to enlarge)

To begin using Samepoint, visit www.samepoint.com

Google Advanced Search For Economic Intelligence?

Published
by
Ian Smith
on September 29, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Economic Intelligence
. 1 Comment

When was the last time that you used Google Advanced Search for your economic intelligence needs?

The Google Advanced Search feature is an option often ignored by users on a daily basis. Many individuals take the function for granted but it is handy to have.  Competitive intelligence researchers will tell you that using the function will lead to finding information that you would not have expected to be on the web within seconds.

In case you have not dared to use the the advanced feature before, Figure 1 illustrates the search interface of Google Advanced Search.

Figure 1: Google Advanced Search Interface
(Click on the image to enlarge the screen shot)

The main objective of using such an interface is to filter results and hopefully provide relevant information in a specific format for your needs.  Some of the things that you can do with Google Advanced include:

  • Specify the number of results you may see per page
  • View results in different languages
  • Access documents in a variety of formats (ie, MS-Word, MS-Excel, .pdf)
  • Search within a site or domain name (ie, restricting a search to one specific website)

Case Example: Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

You are in a  rush to find a current and detailed report regarding foreign direct investment in the United States and the regular Google search is not doing the trick.  What do you do?

Solution: By turning to the advanced search option, you can submit a query in which Google can attempt to find a document that was publish in the past year.  In addition, you may specify that would like the document to be in .pdf..  (Most reports are stored in .pdf for online readership)

Submitting the query with the two criteria will provide you with the following page of results with the relevant hit highlighted in yellow in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Listing of Results For Query - United-States “Foreign Direct Investment ” filetype :.pdf in the past year
(Click on the image to enlarge the screen shot)

This hit leads to the report in .pdf, “Foreign Direct Investment in The United States” published by the Organization for International Investment in March 2009

For addition details on search operators for Google Advanced Search queries, please click here

Social Media Marketing and Economic Development: A Business Case Study

Published
by
Ian Smith
on September 24, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Economic Development, Investment Attraction, Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Strategy
. 1 Comment

At the same time E&B DATA released, “Web 2.0 And Business Attraction: Canadian Cities Online Marketing Index”, a second document was placed online.  A case study dealing with social media marketing for  economic development was published.

The business case study presents how social media marketing applications were adopted by Entreprise Chaleur, an economic development agency that represents 15 communities on the northeast coast of New Brunswick.

Location of The Chaleur Region

Source: Entreprise Chaleur

The use of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, key success factors and a status report of the initiative for foreign direct investment attraction as of September 2009 are the main topics that discussed in the case.

To download the case study, “Entreprise Chaleur - Social Media Marketing Applications For Economic Development”, please click here.

Do you believe that websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube can play a key role in your investment attraction strategy for your cities or region? Tell us by leaving a comment below.

Real Time Searching With Addictomatic

Published
by
Ian Smith
on September 9, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence, Economic Intelligence, Internet tools, Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 Search
. 0 Comments

This tool is not new however; it is very handy for individuals who need to conduct real time searches when it comes to the web 2.0.

Addictomatic permits users to perform internet searches taking into account the content available on a wide array of web 2.0 or online social media platforms such as Digg, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr just to list a few.

Screenshot of Index page of Addictomatic

Here is screenshot of the result page for a search query using the keywords, “foreign direct investment”.

Please click on the image to enlarge

It is recommended that you test out this tool to see the long list of resources that are consulted to supply you with relevant results.

Addictomatic is available at http://addictomatic.com/

The Many Faces Of Google For Economic Intelligence: Part 4 - Google Groups Search

Published
by
Ian Smith
on August 4, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence, Economic Intelligence and Internet tools
. 0 Comments

In the first couple of posts in the series, The Many Faces Of Google For Economic Intelligence, we examined how relevant applications such as Google Alerts, Google Finance and Google Blog Search are to economic intelligence for economic development projects.

This post will elaborate on the benefits of using Google Groups Search for information gathering online.

Google Groups are platforms in which individuals may have discussions on various topics.  As of July 2009,  Google Groups has searchable archives of more than 700 million Usenet postings from a period of more than 20 years.

Intelegia - Tools For Thought - Google Groups

Please click on the image to enlarge.

Case Study:

You are interested in thoughts of individuals and related information regarding the past levels of foreign direct investment in India.

Solution:

By simple inputting the keywords such as “foreign direct investment” and “India”, you can access discussion posts such as past newspaper articles and analysis reports.

The Many Faces Of Google For Economic Intelligence: Part 2 - Google Finance

Published
by
Ian Smith
on July 15, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Economic Intelligence
. 0 Comments

In the previous post, The Many Faces Of Google For Economic Intelligence: Part 1 - Google Alerts, we explained how the application can be a tremendous time saver and an effective monitoring service based on keyword(s) appearance on the web.

This second post of the series will examine Google Finance, a portal for business information.

Google Finance maybe considered as a poor man’s version of Hoover’s Online however. it provides the bare essentials on a company such as:

  • Description
  • Latest News
  • Listing of Top Executives
  • Key Financials
  • Related companies
  • Historical stock prices

The majority of the information on Google Finance provides data on public companies around the world.

Google Finance

Please click on the image to enlarge.

Case Example:

You are just about to meet with representatives from a large company in the alternative energy sector that is ready to make a significant investment in the northern of your state.  Due to a lack of time, you were not able to read up on the potential investor and you only have a half a day to so.  What do you do?

Solution:

Via Google Finance, you can access the following  details pertaining to potential investor:

  • Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow (on a quarterly or annual basis)
  • Competitors
  • Recent news

These details can be put together to create a brief document that can be read in minutes.