From 1999 through 2003 I was working as a Contracting Officer for the U.S. Dept. of Education and was running multiple Technical Evaluation Panels. As I sat in the room with panel after panel and listened to them deliberate on the merits of each proposal they had reviewed and scored (why they had scored the way they did, what they liked, what they didn’t, etc.) it became clear to me that I wasn’t just running procurements I was filling up on a treasure trove of knowledge that would someday find a home in a competitive intelligence company devoted to helping businesses be more successful. Over the course of five years with the Government I listened, studied and mentally archived hundreds of such discussions for future strategic value -- when I left the Government I was ridiculously adept at predicting how members of a Technical Evaluation Panel would “view” each proposal, what would speak to them, what would turn them off and how they would score each proposal. Upon entering the private sector in late 2003 I put into practice what I had gleaned from my days in government and realized improved win rates for the deals in which I participated. In the years between 2003 and 2014 I continued to refine the behavioral analytics, business rules and decision-making modeling. During this time the growing interest in and use of social media platforms and the public web as an information base was gaining momentum. It took a while for their use to get mainstream enough and the data robust enough that an application of the models developed would lead to true insights rather than just lots of information. CompetitionSmart was branded and launched in 2014. We are excited to be at a place where years of analytical model development, proven use cases and client-focused, successful consultants who all share the same vision can deliver dramatic results for our clients based on a level of intelligence and insight that was needed but wasn’t possible even a few years ago.