ts decades of dominance in retail, its mighty purchasing power to maintain its position in the market. Some critics aver that Sears managers disdained to notice Wal-Mart's incursion into their merchandising territories: well into the 1980's, Sears position papers did not even list that company among competitors to be watched." 6Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, later noted in his autobiography, "One reason Sears fell so far off the pace is that they wouldn't admit for the longest time that Wal-Mart and Kmart were their real competition. They ignored both of us, and we blew right by them." 7In some cases, cases such as this, company culture can lead to grave misunderstandings about the external environment; or about the nature of reality. Ernest Hemingway, when asked what is needed to be a first rate writer, brashly said "To be a truly good writer, you need an automatic crap-detector."What's needed is a competitive intelligence system that looks at the reality of exterior events, and a management willing to look at what lies before it. 4. Managing Historical and Tacit Information"The ignorance of how to use knowledge stockpiles exponentially."Marshall McLuhanThe blueprints, diagrams and written programs for building an atomic bomb are kinds of explicit knowledge, but the tweaks made during the construction process are tacit knowledge. A signed agreement is explicit knowledge; what was said by the participants up to and during the signing is tacit. Both can be vital corporate knowledge, but we do a better job of capturing explicit knowledge."Los Alamos, NM -- When John Richter retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory three years ago, he took with him nearly the equivalent of China's entire experience with nuclear weapons... As wizards like Dr. Richter retire, they are taking with them invaluable expertise about just what makes bombs work.There are only about 50 people in the U.S. who, like Dr. Richter, possess both the know-how to m...
