Competitive Intelligence: Reading Markets Before Your Rivals Do
A structured program covering market analysis methods, competitive research, and data-driven decision making for business contexts.
- Practical frameworks used in real business settings
- Hands-on exercises with actual market data
- Immediate feedback after each module quiz
What this program covers
There is a lot of data available about any market. The problem is rarely access - it is knowing what to look for and what to ignore.
The intelligence gap in most businesses
Most teams do a competitor analysis once, put it in a slide deck, and forget about it. Markets shift faster than annual reviews. This course teaches you to build a lightweight, repeatable intelligence process that keeps your picture of the market current without becoming a full-time job. We cover primary and secondary research methods, source evaluation, and how to distinguish signal from noise in industry data.
Concrete skills you will practice
You will run a real competitive teardown of a company you choose, using a structured framework. This includes analyzing pricing strategy, product positioning, customer reviews, hiring patterns, and public financial signals. By week 3 you will have a working intelligence dashboard in a spreadsheet that you can adapt for your own organization.
A note on expectations
Competitive intelligence is not corporate espionage - it is disciplined observation. You will not find magic shortcuts here. What you will find is a systematic way to reduce uncertainty before making strategic calls. The instructor, Tadeo Wierzbicki, has spent 11 years doing this work across retail, SaaS, and manufacturing sectors.
- Weekly live sessions with Q&A
- Peer review of your teardown assignment
- Access to a private resource library with 60+ curated sources
Program structure
Each stage builds on the previous one. The sequence is deliberate - theory first, then application, then reflection on what the data actually means for a business decision.
Modules combine short reading segments with interactive quizzes. You get scored feedback immediately, not after a waiting period.
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Module 1 - Intelligence vs. information: building the right questions
Defining your intelligence requirements before you start collecting anything. -
Module 2 - Secondary research: where to look and how to evaluate sources
Industry databases, regulatory filings, job postings, patent records, and press archives. -
Module 3 - Primary research methods
Customer interviews, win/loss analysis, and expert network conversations done ethically and efficiently. -
Module 4 - Building a competitor profile
Structuring findings into a usable profile that captures strategy, not just features. -
Module 5 - Maintaining an ongoing intelligence process
Setting up monitoring systems, alert workflows, and regular review cadences without overengineering. -
Module 6 - Presenting intelligence to decision-makers
How to communicate uncertainty honestly while still giving actionable direction.