This is easier said than done. Nearly everyone agrees that the main problems are carving out the time to gather information and selecting from a mammoth array of sources and techniques for doing so. Choose wrong, and your view of the world could be dangerously skewed. Company planners had failed to monitor the region's larger economic picture and had no idea that the prosperity bubble was about to burst. Perhaps we at CIO should understand this challenge better than most.
Information gathering is, in the language of the day, our core competency.
In fact, the lessons some executives recounted to me about their own intelligence strategies were much like those I learned as a foreign correspondent. Take, for example, the Caltex Petroleum manager in Asia who took a seat on the board of the ballet and other cultural institutions when he lived in-country reporting to distant U.S. headquarters. Certainly he did this to enjoy the cultural rewards but also to stay alert and sensitive to the environment where his business operated and to make informal contacts that would prove valuable later on. Mix with the locals. And no one is about to give up the low-tech personal networking that executives still use for tips on their industry, the economy and their changing world.