ABSTRACT
Carl von Clausewitz talks about a “defensive campaign can be fought in offensive encounters.” He makes the convincing statement that there must be an attack or counter-attack component to defense. The company eventually righted itself and defended its position and recovered a good deal of its market share. Clausewitz’s prudent approach that “the defensive form of conflict is not a simple shield, but a shield made up of well-directed movements” is valid. The underpinning for those advantages should rely on ongoing intelligence about the unique characteristics and changing behaviors of the markets. For example, Caterpillar, the giant construction and mining equipment maker, collects, stores, and dissects huge volumes of digital information, also known as big data. For Caterpillar’s management, the ongoing flow of intelligence provides fresh selling opportunities for marketing and solid intelligence for service engineers to preempt and solve potential equipment problems. And meaningful data is available to product developers for new product designs and applications.
