Um dos pontos mais dificeis de se acompanhar em inteligencia competitiva sao os chamados "sinais fracos". Por estarem longe do chamado monitoramento diario, eles sao, por vezes, relegados ao esquecimento, atitude essa que pode impactar negativamente no processo decisorio de uma organizacao, uma vez que estar longe nao quer dizer que nao seja estrategico.Nesse contexto, as redes sociais sao uma grande fonte de sinais fracos, e as empresas podem utiliza-los para perceber os desejos e as necessidades dos seus clientes, as possibilidades de inovacao no seu mercado e a perceber o que os seus competidores estao fazendo.No artigo The strength of weak signals, de Martin Harrysson, Estelle Metayer, e Hugo Sarrazin, eles mostram que as empresas estao comecando a reconhecer e capturar o valor desse tipo de informacao. Eles apresentam alguns principios que as organizacoes podem seguir para compreender e aproveitar o poder dos sinais fracos e entender que eles sao estrategicos o suficiente para exigir a atencao da alta gerencia.A publicacao original pode ser encontrada em http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/High_Tech_Telecoms_Internet/The_strength_of_weak_signals?cid=other-eml-alt-mkq-mck-oth-1402&p=1Boa leitura!*-*-*-*-*-*The strength of weak signalsSnippets of information, often hidden in social-media streams, offer companies a valuable new tool for staying ahead. February 2014by Martin Harrysson, Estelle Metayer, and Hugo SarrazinAs information thunders through the digital economy, its easy to miss valuable weak signals often hidden amid the noise. Arising primarily from social media, they represent snippetsnot streamsof information and can help companies to figure out what customers want and to spot looming industry and market disruptions before competitors do. Sometimes, companies notice them during data-analytics number-crunching exercises. Or employees who apply methods more akin to art than to science might spot them and then do some further number crunching to test anomalies theyre seeing or hypotheses the signals suggest. In any case, companies are just beginning to recognize and capture their value. Here are a few principles that companies can follow to grasp and harness the power of weak signals.Engaging at the topFor starters, given the fluid nature of the insights that surface, its often useful to get senior leaders actively involved with the social-media sources that give rise to weak signals. Executives who are curious and attuned to the themes emerging from social media are more likely to spot such insights.1 1.See Martin Harrysson, Estelle Metayer, and Hugo Sarrazin, How social intelligence can guide decisions, McKinsey Quarterly, November 2012. For example, a global manufacturer whose high quality and low prices were the topic of one customers recent social-media post almost certainly would not have examined it but for a senior executive who was a sensitive social listener and found its implications intriguing. Did the company have an opportunity, the executive wondered, to increase prices or perhaps to seek market share more aggressively at the current prices?To find out, the executive commissioned research to quantify what had started out as a qualitative hunch. Ultimately, the low-price perception turned out to be an anomaly, but the outsize perception of the products quality was widely held. In response, the company has started funneling marketing resources to the product in hopes of building its market share by