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The Black Magic of Competitive Intelligence: Avoiding the Kodak Trap with Alex Nenadavets
17 Plays3 days ago
Whenever we build a new product, we want to know what our competitors are cooking. But how do you separate actual market signals from the noise?
In this episode of Months and Millions, host Alex Babko sits down with Alex Nenadavets, a Certified Competitive Intelligence Professional who leads Market & Competitive Intelligence at SciPlay (and previously spent nearly a decade at Wargaming). We demystify the "black magic" behind competitive intelligence, proving it’s less about corporate espionage and more about building data-driven instincts for C-level executives.
Alex Nenadavets shares practical frameworks for evaluating new markets and explains why treating disruption as an opportunity early on is the only way to survive.
Key Topics Covered:
- Busting CI Myths: What competitive intelligence actually is (and isn't) and why it must be a company-wide process.
- Red vs. Blue Oceans: How to use top-down and bottom-up approaches to evaluate market sizes for new products.
- Filtering the Noise: How to read between the lines of public announcements and refine third-party data.
- The Innovator's Dilemma: Why companies like Kodak fail despite having the right intelligence, and how to structure your R&D teams to prevent internal cannibalization.
- AI in Analytics: Why AI won't replace analysts, but analysts who use AI will replace those who don't.
Connect with the Guest:
- Alex Nenadavets on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nenadavets/
Listen & Subscribe: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Months and Millions and leave us a review!
Host: Alex Babko | https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderbabko/
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Transcript
Welcome and Introduction to 'Month in Millions'
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey, welcome to Month in Millions, a practical and inspiring show about innovators and emerging tech practitioners. I'm the host of the show, Alex Babko.
Importance of Competitive Intelligence
00:00:24
Speaker
Whenever we work on a new product, we want to be aware what competitors are cooking, how they're doing financially, and how to get ready for anything the future holds for us.
00:00:36
Speaker
There is a special discipline called competitive intelligence that appears to be something at an intersection of analytics, the ability to read between the lines, and gut feeling.
00:00:49
Speaker
Some people tend to think It's flavored with a spinnage, but today we will delve into the nuts and balls of the profession to bust myths around modern intelligence and to learn how to turn market observations into data-driven strategic decisions.
Introducing Alexander Ninadovits
00:01:07
Speaker
My guest today is Alexander Ninadovits, a certified competitive intelligence professional who lives in Austin, Texas, and who helps companies understand trends, remove noise from these observations, and to uncover valuable and practical insights.
00:01:25
Speaker
in such a way that is fluent day-to-day operations and T-level executives. Hi, Alex. Hello, hello. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for this intro. I'm glad you mentioned noise. This is actually why I'm the cornerstone.
00:01:38
Speaker
like What we do is removing noise from the data and like making sure that like we look at the insights and do not pay attention to the... like says the things that not important. Right, right.
Strategic Decision-Making at Wargaming
00:01:50
Speaker
So 100% we will focus today only on the most important things and we'll uncover this black magic.
00:01:56
Speaker
So Alex, I'm very excited about this upcoming conversation. When we've been working with you back in the days at Wargaming, and you were leading the Competitive Intelligence team, and I was leading the Special Projects team. And you helped us a lot to distill insights from data, understand effects from our Special Projects and innovative tech experiments, like define like what can be counted and what really counts.
00:02:20
Speaker
So tell me, what is the black magic of competitive intelligence? Okay. Yeah. Let's start, I guess, with a quick, quick intro from my side, but like my background, uh, and like, we'll, we'll move to, to, to competitive intelligence. And so, yeah, you mentioned that I worked at war game in like almost 10 years, uh, like in competitive intelligence roles, studied design analysts there, like worked on blitz mobile game. Um,
00:02:46
Speaker
as as a product analyst and a competitive intelligence analyst. And before that, also did
Understanding Competitive Intelligence
00:02:52
Speaker
investments. I work for an investment company. also did market research there. and And right now i'm leading CI, MCI. It's called here MCI, Marketing Competitive Intelligence. It's SitePlay. It's Mobile Game Development Studio. and So CI is a process in which company gathers and analyzes information.
00:03:12
Speaker
about its industry, business environment, competitors, and products with the goal of directing its future strategy. So there are several words that it's important to highlight here. ah It's the first word is a company.
00:03:27
Speaker
So it's not c i team doing it. Yes, CI team helps to do it, but usually CI teams are very small. It's like one or two people. Like right now I have like two people, myself and one analyst.
00:03:37
Speaker
So it's really small. And like at Wargame, we had like three people at CI team. And so it's important to involve the whole company into the process. So CI is not like just about, like okay, what's
CI in Strategic Planning and Decision-Making
00:03:52
Speaker
competitors doing? It's about how we're going to react to this, how we're going avoid disruptions from potential competitors, from potential new technologies, and how we react to what our competitors are doing, how we build our roadmap, our LiveOps calendar, which is super important right now, how we build our release calendar, taking the accounts of competitors move, and how we do the investments in the future.
00:04:15
Speaker
um because or how we react to these investments that were done by our competitors, maybe we need to do M&A and a and like you know get a necessary piece of technologies that we don't have right now. And it's also like, you know I also like the second definition of CI, that CI or intelligent is upstream of action.
00:04:37
Speaker
So sometimes you don't see the results immediately, you don't see the value, but the goal of CI is to build this platform intuition and critical thinking. So like prepare you for making decisions. So you collect this knowledge, understand the market. And when it's time, you're ready to make the right decision.
00:04:58
Speaker
It's like, ah you know, you build these instincts and it's not just God's feeling. It's based on what you learn about the markets, what you learn about your competitors. So you can immediately make this decision.
Innovation through CI and Market Opportunities
00:05:10
Speaker
That's why it's ah it's a process. It's a long-term process learning about things. It's not like, okay, we released the report. And we made this section. No, we released a report. We or learned something from this report. And then in the future, we apply this knowledge to to something that we're doing.
00:05:28
Speaker
hey Yeah, well, that sounds really fascinating and they're kind of like on the edge of supernatural ability. But at the same time, i really appreciate like how you systematize all that.
00:05:40
Speaker
So based on your experience, like maybe you can reference some example when ah such ah competitive intelligence outcomes or research results were integrated into the product development pipeline.
Red Ocean vs Blue Ocean Strategies
00:05:56
Speaker
I mean, it's always integrated. Like if you build the right process, like all new features, all new game releases, goes through competitive intelligence. At Wargaming, we had the Greenlight Committee and we are part of this Greenlight Committee. Even before the company invests any money in your idea, your product, it's important to do research and see this product, if this idea has a competitive advantage. Maybe somebody else already tried it and failed or succeeded.
00:06:26
Speaker
Or how we can differentiate from from from what what already exists on the market. CI usually it operates with this like ah red and blue ocean concepts, which... super important you probably know yeah I think it's cross cross industry but let's clarify for people who maybe like yeah so so red ocean is a ocean full of competitors full of sharks um it's ah You have many many companies targeting similar customers.
00:06:58
Speaker
ah You can succeed on this market, just different type of strategies that you need to apply to succeed there. You need to differentiate, ah you need to differentiate by price or differentiate like by innovating something like sustaining, each user usually sustaining innovation. Um, so when you improve some, some small things and target, uh, or like improve the price, um, and blue ocean, it's a ocean, uh, without any fish or without any sharks. Uh, so you just build a new scene and it's usually is the most risky one because there are no benchmarks with nothing. And, uh,
00:07:37
Speaker
when y all said When you actually analyze both concepts and approach both concepts, you also use different methodologies, how you evaluate market. This is actually one of the most important types of item to understand the size of the market.
00:07:52
Speaker
And there are two approaches, like which are standard for the industry, top-down and bottom-up.
Market Evaluation Approaches
00:08:00
Speaker
With bottom-up approaches, usually used for red ocean. it basically collect the data from your competitors from bottom and um understand their performance and see what market share you may take.
00:08:17
Speaker
And with a top-down approach, it's more about, you know, it's for Blue Ocean mostly because you try to understand, like, the whole market and then put limitation on it. For example, like, okay, we have a game.
00:08:31
Speaker
This game, for example, it's going to target U.S. population. So you know the U.S. population. Okay, it's going to target only female. ah specific age to go down, down, down limit. And for example, at the end of the day, you're going to have like, okay, it's female, 35 plus, which like RPG games, ah play on specific devices and like specific art art style.
00:08:59
Speaker
At the end of day, going to have like 2 million after like ah going from top to down. um so yeah this is kind of the main the main concepts when when when when you start working with a new product and like with new idea but yeah coming back to your question about like in roadmap integration um it it's mostly about the company culture how how the process organized is there in some companies you have like one uh creative leader and
00:09:30
Speaker
He has his own God feeling, how it's going to look like and how how it should be developed. Then probably they don't need CI, right? Yeah, they don't need CI. They think they don't need CI. But again, these people sometimes, they feel that they know everything and they have a decision based on guts and like you know their creative minds. But if you build the right process with them, they're also going to read your reports and again, build this upstream of action.
00:09:58
Speaker
and this kind of train their instincts on data. ah And because, um for example, gaming industry, and i think it's applicable to any industry, um like the world is very dynamic, changes all the time. you can be very innovative, very creative, but if you don't follow what's going on, you you cannot build upon it. Like you you need to to have some basis, some fundamentals.
00:10:23
Speaker
um And so, yeah, yeah. again, i believe like, uh, CI is integrated right now. Like, um,
00:10:35
Speaker
on on any level for for new game development. It's not very, let's say it this way. For game development, not very common to have CI teams. There are CI teams, but not at every company. um i see more and more of this happening.
00:10:51
Speaker
But in other industries like airline industry, pharma industry, biotechnology, retail industry, CI is... is well-known and well-used.
00:11:06
Speaker
um I visited the conference in Atlanta, I think, three years ago. And was huge conference, it was a CI conference I i presented there. And the majority of companies were pharmaceuticals.
00:11:20
Speaker
and airline companies and retail companies and, ah super important for them to have CI because, uh, for, for example, pharmaceuticals, like development, one drug can change completely the industry.
00:11:33
Speaker
Um, so Right, but at the same time, like we' we've been discussing that with my guests in the previous episodes, is that typically like the product development, be it like a game or like a physical product or like anything in between, ah it takes like years, not even like months and millions, like probably like much more, in at least in terms of time, than how you can integrate those insights properly.
00:12:00
Speaker
Because it's still like if someone presented an idea in public domain, then it can be like, I don't know, two, three, four, five years or even more before it actually hits the markets.
00:12:13
Speaker
And then how to how to navigate around that. And that basically takes me to the question of like, what are actual tools that you are using that help you understand what others are doing? Because understand like public...
00:12:27
Speaker
Publicly available information is one thing, but then, of course, there is something behind that that lets you look behind the the closed door. You see that competitors are like announcing something or testing something, but it still can be months and years before it actually hits the market. And how what to what to do with this information is one part of the question. And second is like how to uncover that, that something is happening.
00:12:58
Speaker
So yeah, so you see this idea and the goal, like you you may you may re-engineer came came up with this idea, like you can evaluate the market, potential market for this idea. Say, okay, they're developing this.
00:13:15
Speaker
Like right now, I can give you example. One of our competitors is developing a game based on NFL. um And it's very unusual because so ah NFL targets young males. And...
00:13:30
Speaker
ah the games that they chose the genre targets female players mostly. So it's interesting concept. You're like, okay, how they came up with this idea. And like, they probably taught want to expand the market. and And they probably try to like to attract new users to this market, market to this particular genre.
00:13:51
Speaker
Is it sustainable? You're like, okay, let's, let's overlay this. Let's see if, if this, um, these players may potentially do this. ah And yeah, you kind of build it, build some hypothesis, build scenarios and try to understand um if it's good or not. And you may may run a survey and let's ask, like, do you like this? Where's your current user base?
00:14:16
Speaker
And this is how you can ah kind of approach it. And you also, like... read between the lines always, like from public companies, like they they do have this earning calls and they have investor meetings and they usually create this it's kind of will answer the question and tell tell you like what's the reason behind it.
00:14:46
Speaker
um Sometimes public companies try to show that they want to grow, they're not going to actually grow. So for example, with this idea, I believe they just shown, okay, we're going to grow the market significantly, sending a signal to investors that they're going to grow in the future. But it may not mean may not necessarily mean It's true, like because it just means that they want to pump their shares right now. It's also interesting, saying because like i'm like when I work for Wargaming, Wargaming is a private company, but right right now for site play with Sideplay, the company is public and like competitors are public, and it's seemed very different dynamic.
00:15:26
Speaker
how you how you talk to to investors, how you implement innovations, because you cannot drastically change everything one day or you cannot like do something completely different from what you do right now. So and so it's important to read this between the lines saying, okay, they want to expand the market or they want to give a signal to investors that they want to expand the market.
00:15:52
Speaker
Right, but at the same time, like the companies do not need like to speculate because like otherwise yeah this pumping up market will ah resolve pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah and yeah it's ah it's true too. But again, it's very dynamic and usually they support it by some research. Okay, okay we analyzed this, we tested it. Yeah. and And so it's not very speculative. It's more like, oh yeah, assumption based, let's say this. right So it's all about assumptions.
00:16:25
Speaker
So, okay, that makes sense. so So speaking about the tools, so you mentioned that like you read, you listen to some announcements or read about competitors in media. Are there any other like specific tools or or that that you use?
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah,
Tools for Market Data Analysis
00:16:44
Speaker
yeah. So, um, so we work with data, right. And it's important to have an access to this data. Um, I cannot say about like other industries, but for, for games, uh, there are uh, services and tools that are used by, by CI people. They're well known, like it's a DTI, sensor tower.
00:17:04
Speaker
Um, that's a kind of the main tools. They're also like, tools like Playliner, liquid and grid, uh, and Game Refinery ah for for social casino business where I'm doing right now. It's Eyeless and Krychik.
00:17:19
Speaker
um as They collect information. um And of course, your goal as a CI practitioner also like to collect these tools and like, you know, build dashboards. So you integrate it using Tableau and using API from these tools and like in kind of collected database. And sometimes you also match this data with your internal data.
00:17:43
Speaker
um I use AI a lot too, because AI helps too you to read the reports and also distill some facts, some insights from the reports. it's it's it's ah It's impossible to read all the reports. They're released every day and you need to to have like unlimited time to read all of them and not very sustainable. like i I use a lot cloud right I don't know you're familiar, I think you're familiar with it. And ChatGPT, of course, and um and some other stuff like bots in Telegram to collect some data.
00:18:22
Speaker
um But again, um ah coming back to the definition, say it's about gathering information. and building the context around it.
00:18:32
Speaker
That's why ci cannot be automated for gathering information, but it cannot be fully automated because you still need to have the context and having these disclaimers because when you deal with third-party data, and most of these data tools that I mentioned, they collect third-party data, right? And when you when When I say collect cert-party data, it means in in the majority of cases, they estimate this data.
00:18:59
Speaker
So as risk there should be some disclaimer how you should read this data. The basic example, Data.ai collects the data ah on by using a specific methodology.
00:19:12
Speaker
and Maybe somebody listening from the gaming industry like say, like okay, there is App Store ratings, App Store rankings, your app number one, number two, and specific day.
00:19:22
Speaker
And what DATI uses, they take this data from App Store and they match it with real data, which they collect directly with publishers, the signed contract publisher. So as they collect it, randomize it, and when different apps reach similar positions, they know, like ah they can estimate how much they they they need to do to reach this position.
00:19:44
Speaker
And so it's important to know this because sometimes the app reaches number one and there are no benchmarks for it because number one can mean 10 million, but it can also mean 20 million or 60 million.
00:19:57
Speaker
There is no no ceiling here. And also what they do, since it like because they use rankings um and because they kind of have a tradition to to report it net. So basically...
00:20:13
Speaker
they remove the 30% commission that App Store takes. So you don't see the full date you see after the commission. And sometimes companies report the data growth and they're like, okay, let's compare it with with these data providers. And they don't read the methodology and like, okay, it's it's off, it's completely wrong. Like, okay, you need to know the context, how this data is collected, how is it how it's refined and how it should be compared.
00:20:41
Speaker
um And I always tell people like, duncan like you need to read the methodology first and also it's better to compare the dynamic of the data, not like the actual numbers.
00:20:53
Speaker
So again, um we're using ah i wouldn't say that we're using tools. We're more talking about data sources and and the tools for refining the data. It can be Tableau, it can be some AI tool, and it can be something for visualizing the data because presenting data is also an important part of my job. um And it's actually a big part because um being public and educating people about the data for me is a big thing. So again, it's creating this community around you, like that like interested in the data and also sharing shares the data and the experience with you.
00:21:34
Speaker
um So I do like every quarter, I do at least one presentation to the whole company and one presentation to the leadership. he Right. I see.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's very insightful. And ah that takes us actually to the next part of the question that I had initially is the data and noise in that data, right? Because like you can get tons of data and a lot of that is just like blah, blah, blah, or like some assumptions or some hypothesis that are like...
00:22:08
Speaker
untethered from reality. So ah how you make sure that the information that you take into consideration is reliable, can be trustworthy, and how do you how do you filter the noise?
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, as I mentioned, like... um It's hard because you deal with third-party data and you like they're like yeah it's hard to distill sometimes. But what what's my approach, and I think it's it's pretty common too, you yeah we need to use several data sources. It's important.
00:22:38
Speaker
So you double-check. um And you always, also like I mentioned, that yeah you work with third-party data, but you also have an access to first-party data, your internal data, and you build models to compare third-party data with how it matches.
00:22:52
Speaker
um you yeah So several sources. You also talk to people. like I have other CI practitioners in my network and we we usually talk and like just discuss stuff. I don't see any problems with that, to be honest. You mentioned CI is espionage, but in reality, it's not not not such a thing. And one of the principles for CI is we are not getting trade secrets.
00:23:19
Speaker
and Sometimes it happens. was joking about it. Like, yeah, sometimes get people get drunk and share stuff, but this is not the goal. So distilling the facts from this noise, it's like, you know, it's using various sources, no magic here, and talking to people.
00:23:36
Speaker
So making sure make sure you... you double check everything several times before you share it, if it's critical. um and And you use your experience too. um you After like spending some time the industry, you understand some some rules in this industry, some laws that affect this industry, like, you know, seasonality trends. So when you see something unusual, like, okay, it's probably, maybe it's problem with the data. Like, go talk to vendor or different vendors to double check it, and you go to see a practitioner something like,
00:24:09
Speaker
Hey, guys, are you seeing the same that I'm seeing right now? CI, sometimes it's not about releasing something, like, you know, recommending to release something, but sometimes it's recommended not to do it.
00:24:22
Speaker
In many cases, it's it's not about, like, not releasing this game, not releasing this feature, not following this trend. ah Because, yeah, you are basically saving money, sometimes, company, this way.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's actually like a very good topic because how because like what's what you provide is like kind of like critical thinking, the ground for critical thinking and like some data-driven approach to towards that.
00:24:52
Speaker
But at the same time, the real and meaningful innovation is quite always quite often and like a breakthrough. And like, like I mean...
00:25:04
Speaker
that no one would be ah expecting or like no no one would be predicting. yeah It just happens, right? yeah And the how then CI balances with that?
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, this is great question. And um I think this is also like about company strategic approach, like how a company distributes yeah its resources, like you know this 80-20 rule. youre like you know And for the majority of companies, it applies.
00:25:31
Speaker
we ah We use 80% of our resources to to maintain our current products, make sure they're successful. And 20% we're going to spend on innovation. And in this case, like for this innovation part, CI may...
00:25:46
Speaker
may give you some guidelines, some some things, but at the end of day, it's about creative process. It's about like you know coming with something completely new, something that doesn't exist. We can help you to tend identify if it exists or not, but at some point, we cannot tell you if it's good or bad. You need to try it.
00:26:05
Speaker
And I always tell, like, I will not give you a silver bullet. um It's, ah you know, because innovation is about trying. And for so for for game stuff, I always tell that game development is combination of data and art.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah, you use the data to make decisions, to find the direction. But in the end at the end of the day, it's about your creative solution, creative ideas that are going to distinguish you from other markets and going to, you know, bring something unique to the market.
00:26:35
Speaker
And also speaking about innovation, even if we speak about like this 80% of resources, there are different types of innovation, different types of disruptions and different types of approaches you you use. Like there is sustaining innovation, for example, like making something, some product better.
00:26:53
Speaker
um Right. and like Like incremental innovation. Yeah, incremental. So basically GTA releases a new game every like four years. And they just make it better.
00:27:04
Speaker
as you don't You'll not see many innovations there. And it usually profits similar customers and and it may help to improve some margins. But at end of the day, like it's just better art style, ah better better sounds, better and better music. You'll not see many innovations there.
00:27:23
Speaker
There are low-end disruptions. And when like you know somebody comes to you says, okay, we want to release the same product, but it's going to cost less.
00:27:34
Speaker
much less. For example, free-to-play model is a low-end disruption. ah like It's completely different model and like okay and you analyze it differently. There is market for people that play that purchase games, but potential is really... They represent 5% of the population. Potential is 95% who also want to play games, but they can't because they don't want to spend money like straight away.
00:28:02
Speaker
So when you look at it and like you you you analyze it, you also get to the right, yes, this idea looks weird and it's because there are no such games in the market, but potentially it looks good because um it gets like there is audience for this potential. Right. So was there like an example in in your practice when you, kind of like with your insights, helped to uncover this kind of blue ocean? Yeah, yeah. So one of the one of the recent examples...
00:28:29
Speaker
um ah oh yeah I can give you one interest industry example that's very common in like books but and give you one from my practice. ah The example from from CI practitioners is is like a classic example, it's Kodak.
00:28:45
Speaker
ah So Kodak, they had really good CI team. um And the CI team forecasted um the disruption coming from digital photography.
00:29:00
Speaker
And they informed the the the team about digital photography coming to the market. And actually, Kodak did a patent on digital photography.
00:29:11
Speaker
But they decided, okay, we're getting really good margins from the current products. We don't want to touch it right now because it's going to disrupt our own business. And this is actually a very important thing, why innovation is not happening in big companies very often. um we We want to put it aside and enjoy these margins that's happening in our traditional business right now.
00:29:36
Speaker
But meanwhile, like this disruption happened from competitors. They also like came up with this technology and disrupted Kodak. Kodak filed for bankruptcy while they had the technology, but they didn't listen to CI.
00:29:50
Speaker
and And I always tell when when you build something innovative inside traditional companies, you need to to create a separate unit. for This is super critical because when your innovative product competes with traditional product, with traditional business model and inside your company, it's going to fail.
00:30:08
Speaker
It's going to fail in 99% cases. It should be a separate unit with separate like unit economy, like the budget and stuff. um And that's kind of that's kind of how it's positioned.
00:30:20
Speaker
um For me, like, ah so the Kodak, like I always tell the story about the Kodak, like when people like tell me what's the value of CI. It's like, hey, you need to listen to CI to see the value of it. And you to listen consistently because um ah this is important for innovation.
00:30:40
Speaker
And for my industry, like the recent examples that we did uncover, it's a new business model coming from um from competitors. It's called sweepstakes model.
00:30:52
Speaker
um so So social casino business, ah it's free-to-play games that simulates casino experience. There is also traditional casino games in Vegas. You go and play slots and you can win money there. In social casino, you cannot win money.
00:31:09
Speaker
Sweepstakes came up with approach where you can play social casino games. ah but win money legally. What they did is they introduced new type of currency which you cannot win but receive as a gift.
00:31:24
Speaker
ah So basically, you ah you can um play play with your gold coins like in traditional free-to-play games.
00:31:35
Speaker
And when we are when you're running out of coins, you can pay money ah pay and buy more coins still within social casino, like business model, within free-to-play business model, but you receive additional coins as a gift.
00:31:50
Speaker
these coins are called sweep coins. And with these sweep coins, you can also play games. But since you didn't purchase these coins, it's not complete considered gambling.
00:32:01
Speaker
but you can exchange these coins into real money. So when they came up with this idea, you do not buy these coins, but you can win real money. And they completely, like they're disrupting the market right now. And CI, like my team, quickly identified this model and we proposed actions, how we can do it. Like right now, this model this this model is on um on the trend to to be larger than the total social casino market. We identified it two years ago.
00:32:32
Speaker
And... like And it's it's right now it's up to company how they react and they reacted in their way. But I'm glad they listened and they reacted somehow. But this is an example. like you know You identify quickly some new models and you do it like... One of the ways how you do it, you talk to your most valuable customers, interview them, and you also talk to customers that laugh and i identify reasons why they laugh. This is super important like ah because usually...
00:33:01
Speaker
they so They try to target your most valuable customers and also they try to target customers that are not very loyal, like they're on the brink of something, like of living.
00:33:13
Speaker
And you kind of ask the reasons why they left. Like, okay, I want to win money, real money. I play the same games but have an option to win money. And...
00:33:25
Speaker
And it's all it's also interesting about the disruption. i always try to tell people about this. Disruption happening to your to your industry, to your to your market, is always an opportunity at the beginning.
00:33:40
Speaker
So it's when you identify it's early, it's an opportunity for you to be flexible, to invest in this, like to make sure you can implement its the necessary changes.
00:33:50
Speaker
not Then it becomes a strategy. um if you do not react to it, it becomes a threat for you. And let's say this this is how the industry disrupted. Again, coming back to this codec example, it was an opportunity for them to release a new product and, you know, get this market.
00:34:08
Speaker
But they decided to pass on and, like, it became a threat. So, yeah. Yeah, I see. Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that. um Actually, are ah you touched an interesting point about the um how to make this innovation happening, how to enable that.
00:34:30
Speaker
Because I remember like when we were experimenting a lot like with VR, with AR, with spatial computing back in the days at Wargaming, and that was always like a very, very much an uphill battle.
00:34:43
Speaker
Because like why are you doing that? it's just like, well, because we need to understand the technology. we need to be like are on the first lines of Mashable, of The Verge, of like you name it, just like because like the company experiments with that and so on.
00:34:57
Speaker
ah So what is your like recommendation to the innovation and emerging tech practitioners to prove the value ah when it's it's a bit too early, but still like you need to do that because otherwise you will just like lose this train and it will just like it will turn from opportunity to a threat.
00:35:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um So there are different like approaches and they're more like strategic approaches. Again, we discussed this eighty twenty rule. At some point, it's some companies like, okay, we just spend this money on innovations.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yes, we are we're going to fail in ninety ninety percent case, but we take it. It's important for us to have it because one percent we have 1% chance to succeed and come up with something sin big, right?
00:35:43
Speaker
So it's... ah And I always tell, like if you want to build the right R&D department, it's really hard. It's really hard. It's really challenging to to show the value because you know innovative products are risky and they do not look obvious.
00:35:58
Speaker
become It becomes obvious, right? They do not look successful before they... they become successful. And, um, so it's a, it's a strategic, strategic approach and it's more like how the company it wants to grow.
00:36:13
Speaker
And, um, at some point the company to take this as a loss and, uh, just to spend this money on innovations. Um, and, um, And it's critical. The majority of startups fail.
00:36:26
Speaker
And same with you know any any internal products, ideas that you have in the company. it's they going to fail. Most are going to fail. ah But it's it's a venture business. so like You need one one great idea to to be successful, to pay all these losses that you you got.
00:36:44
Speaker
And... Although one of the recommendations that always make, yeah, try to fail fast. It's a lean approach, right? yeah um It kind of evolved through the year right now, especially for the games market because At some point, like with games, you need to spend more time to test the idea because the market is different. But it's still, try to test it early, get like some quantitative data. data like when you When you have an idea, you can talk to people, ask about this idea. Yes, people don't know what they need. but you can build like a page and run a Facebook ads for this page and see how they react to it. Will they click? Will they get interested in this idea? So like doing this early and finding this early metrics is critical like because if you don't have any metrics, you you have some assumptions not supported by anything. Yeah, you can have some industry data like the market size, but at the end of the day, the potential customer reaction is super important. And I will tell like your new like teams that are doing R&D and doing like new new ideas, like try to get early metrics as soon as possible.
00:38:01
Speaker
ah You look at Supercell, for example, like and how they do it. like They kill almost all ideas. they say Out of 100 ideas, they they kill 98.
00:38:12
Speaker
but then they receive receive release two games that like a blockbuster. ah It's important to mention here is that not all companies can do this. You need resources, you need to have to have a sustainable business model from traditional products like your cows, like revenue cows to to support it. um But this is the reality and this is how the market works, unfortunately.
00:38:42
Speaker
yeah Yeah, you're right. ah so So, yeah, you mentioned that like what is required like from the company perspective, from strategic incentive perspective, but what skills do you think a CI professional would need to have?
00:38:59
Speaker
Oh, that's good one. Let's see. So um right now, I think ah like there is no like traditional CI education.
00:39:11
Speaker
There are some courses like I got certified in CI. There is this like full-jilled university in Boston. um And the guy that built it, like he's a CI practitioner. But again again, he is more focused on traditional industry, not gaming.
00:39:28
Speaker
And at the end of the day, to be a CI analyst, you need to be interested, very curious person. you You need to be very curious. you need For the gaming stuff, you need to play games.
00:39:39
Speaker
You need to understand how the games work, how ah how the gaming market works. So it's more about practice. I think it's it's hard to to teach this kind of stuff. It's more process learning stuff.
00:39:54
Speaker
Uh, but, uh, you also need to pay attention to details. You need to be data savvy. So understand how to work with data, how to work with metrics, how to analyze the data, how to visualize the data.
00:40:06
Speaker
Um, and, uh, yeah, you need to pay attention to details. i always tell people like, do not rush the decision, look from different angles, different sides. And, uh,
00:40:17
Speaker
I have a junior analyst and let's tell her like, Hey, don't rush it. Look, look like different segments, look at from different angles. Think like how, how would compare, why competitors did it? Like, um, what's the logic behind it? Don't come up with, uh, with the first idea, you know, this concept of, uh, uh, David Kahneman about, uh, thinking, thinking, uh, fast, uh, how the brain makes decision. And, uh,
00:40:47
Speaker
And so always try to analyze the logical fallacies that we have. Logic is important, super important for CI. and But yeah, i don't to be honest, I don't have like a general rule, ah like what what what characteristics you you need to have. But I like when i when i hire an analyst,
00:41:13
Speaker
Um, I always give, uh, him or her a dataset and some background around this dataset and ask, like, give me some conclusions, what you see, and what kind of recommendations you're going to make based on this data. Um, and it usually shows like the critical thinking.
00:41:31
Speaker
usually shows how you distill the data into insights and, um, Yeah. And when you also onboard new users, especially the gaming industry, but I think it's part of any industry, you need to know your product really well.
00:41:45
Speaker
So always tell people you play like first week, you just play games, play our games and then come to me. and We discuss the games, what you see, what you notice there, what did you improve in these games?
00:41:57
Speaker
Remember times at Wargaming, you need to reach tier five before you even start working on anything. At least it was at the beginning when I joined. So speaking about the disruption and and eventually Gen.AI,
00:42:16
Speaker
You remember all Gen.AI tools with the Google releasing this tool that turns like anything into podcast, for instance. like You can get your grocery grocery store check and then turn that into a story, basically. Yeah. um if you like show the data sets to this tool, potentially can also like tell some story. yeah yeah but Of course, like with the proper training, with proper context, it can tell more meaningful story. yeah So do you feel like the disruption from like from the technology push?
00:42:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah, definitely. I can see the disruption. um If you're asking about like how it's going to impact CI, would say this. and ella it's This is not my quote, but I think um it's it kind of describes what I think.
00:43:09
Speaker
I think people, as at at this point, AI will not replace analysts, but AI will replace analysts that do not use AI.
00:43:20
Speaker
yeah that my take on this. And I think it's applicable to other industries and other areas. So you need to use to have it in your tool set and And at this point, like you know we still have this hallucination in ChatGPT. They come up, they can lie to you, come up with some ideas that are not real. come up Right now, ChatGPT learned to fake the links.
00:43:46
Speaker
And this is amazing. like You ask... Yes, I face it every day. Yeah, yeah you ask it to to send send me a link that proves the source and can create an article and send you a link.
00:43:58
Speaker
which is which is amazing. But that's why I believe the human factor is important. like you yeah so But I mean, from data representation, from data interpretation, it's still like maybe like a pretty helpful tool. Yeah, it's very helpful tool. And I think we'll see lots of disruption data science because of this. Because with data science, sometimes, in many cases, the context is not super important. I mean, it's still important, but it can... like You don't need context to build the predictive model, for example.
00:44:31
Speaker
And it can build really good model. AI can build really good models. and ah But again, you need to know what models to build and like you need analysts, prompt engineers. It's called prompt engineers. It's very modern work. to do it.
00:44:48
Speaker
Yeah, again, I expect lots of disruption ah and i always tell my team, like hey, you need to learn this. You need to learn how it works. You need to understand what's the discrepancies it may have with the disadvantage it has. And, but you should also imagine it's going to improve.
00:45:04
Speaker
Um, it's already improving. It's getting better. Um, so it's important for the career and, uh, as a CI practitioner, like looking at the future, you need to be prepared for this. We hired, uh, as I play hard, the person responsible for AI.
00:45:21
Speaker
And at this point, these people, I think more about like writing the right policies. People do not abuse it. We do not like share any confidential information. But also it's about like finding the tools that's going to be good for us and can bring some efficiencies.
00:45:38
Speaker
um And it's a big topic. you You probably know it's like huge topic. how what What can be improved there, how it can be used. Yeah, like the responsible AI. yes Oh, yeah. And it's also controversial.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's also controversial because of like we have all these layoffs and like people are scared that the AI will replace them. And it's probably going to replace some people its and set truth.
00:46:04
Speaker
and But again, um if you're in tech or if you're in game dev, constantly learn. And you if you like advance i your knowledge, if you're not stale, you'll be prepared.
00:46:21
Speaker
so Alex, I think I have ah one question remaining. okay. So Alex, what's next? What's next? It's a big one. So next next to tomorrow is Friday, right? So this is next. um I would say, like you know predicting the future is really hard. and But what I like about predicting the future is creating scenarios. and like And in this kind of case, you um you know you need to explore different options. And when you explore different options, you'll be ready to end up some.
00:46:56
Speaker
That's kind of my approach. So you shouldn't focus on just one fact, it' one disruption is going to happen. You need to think about different ways. There are many options. ah banks that use use this approach, like many many innovative companies, they okay, let's think about some crazy stuff that's going to happen next.
00:47:16
Speaker
and put like, okay, we're going to believe that this crazy stuff going to happen, but let's think, okay, it's scenario like that's not very realistic, but think about some realistic scenarios. So they have like a set of scenarios are going to happen. they Okay, we thought about it. we We kind of prepared something for it, and this is the best approach.
00:47:38
Speaker
Speaking of games, what's next? um Games become... more and more data-driven. ah Games become more like service products. You know, this Victor's concept that the game never dies. I think this is we're going to see.
00:47:57
Speaker
we We're going to see um games becoming more and more... ah um in our different entertainment options. You see Netflix, uh, games right now, they invest in a lot a lot of money, even Tesla decided to invest in games. Like Elon just announced. It's like, like they're, they're going to build this studio. Uh, and we're going to see like movies based on gifts more and more. We're going to see TV series based on games.
00:48:27
Speaker
Uh, we'll see more celebrities, uh, uh, advertising games. And, uh, And I can see right now more services using gamification. It's an old concept, but um you're going to see it more.
00:48:42
Speaker
um But what what I like about the games, they're unpredictable. So we're going to see blockbusters that you never a thought about. ah You're going to see new business models that you never thought about.
00:48:56
Speaker
um And this is the beauty of the gaming industry. That's why I like it. That was Alexander Ninadovits, a competitive intelligence professional and a person who can read between the lines to provide reliable insights.
00:49:10
Speaker
Thanks for coming to the show. Yeah, thank you for listening. Thank you for spending time with me. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the show. You've been listening to The Month and Millions, a practical and inspiring show about innovators and immersion tech practitioners.
00:49:25
Speaker
Please subscribe to make sure you don't miss a new episode. I'm Alex Babko, and you've been listening to The Month and Millions. Goodbye.