The warning signs are often there. The difficult part is telling a successful company that its next big idea might be the wrong one.

Tim Banting, founder and principal analyst of So What? Now What?, joins Simon Dudley on B4Obvious—Before It Was Obvious for a conversation about competitive intelligence, unified communications, technology strategy and the uncomfortable business of seeing change before people want to acknowledge it.

Tim’s journey begins with the British Army’s Royal Signals and work alongside intelligence analysts during the Cold War. Watching small signals become meaningful patterns helped shape the approach he later brought to market intelligence: look beyond the announcement and work out what it means—and what somebody should do next.

The conversation follows his move through Cisco and Microsoft into industry research, including Current Analysis and Omdia, before establishing his own business. Having worked on both sides of the research relationship, Tim offers a perspective on how vendors buy intelligence and how analysts turn information into useful advice.

Tim and Simon revisit changing approaches to enterprise telephony, expanding product portfolios, softphones and Cisco’s Umi consumer telepresence bet. They discuss what happens when companies become insulated from customer reality, and why selling another feature is not the same as solving another problem.

Microsoft, Skype, Lync and Teams provide further examples of a collaboration market that kept changing direction. The discussion also considers AI-generated content, authenticity and the value of judgment when information is increasingly easy to produce.

For younger professionals, Tim explores practical education, trades and the idea of T-shaped skills: deep expertise in one area combined with the communication and commercial abilities that make that expertise useful.

In this episode:
- Military intelligence, weak signals and identifying consequential patterns.
- Competitive intelligence inside Cisco and Microsoft.
- Vendor strategy, customer needs and the danger of corporate bubbles.
- Unified communications, IP telephony and changing collaboration platforms.
- The difference between reporting news and delivering actionable insight.
- AI, career resilience and developing T-shaped skills.

Listen if you work in competitive intelligence, product strategy, AV, IT or unified communications—and want to ask better questions before the market makes the answers obvious.

Follow B4Obvious for candid conversations about business decisions and industry change. Hosted by Simon Dudley.