Introduction and Welcome

Rainer Michaeli opens the conversation by welcoming Tracy Berry as a presenter at the upcoming ICI conference. He invites her to share her professional background and explain what brings her to this year's event.

Tracy Berry's Background Overview

Tracy Berry introduces herself as the principal of Berry Insights, a consulting firm with offices in France and the United States. She expresses her enthusiasm for participating in the upcoming conference in Frankfurt in June and provides a brief overview of her career trajectory before elaborating on the details that follow.

Career at the Department of Defense

Tracy Berry's career in intelligence began immediately after graduating from college, when she was recruited to work for the U.S. Department of Defense. She remained in that role for twelve years, during which she developed the full skill set of a trained intelligence analyst.

Her work at the Department of Defense encompassed the entire intelligence lifecycle: collection, analysis, fusion, reporting, and dissemination. This comprehensive grounding in structured analytical methodology would later prove directly transferable to the field of competitive intelligence (CI).

Transition to CI Consulting

Upon discovering competitive intelligence as a distinct professional discipline outside of government intelligence work, Tracy Berry recognized the relevance of her existing skills and made the transition to the private sector. After leaving the Department of Defense, she founded her own consulting firm and began serving clients across a wide range of sectors and industries.

Throughout this period, the core tenets of competitive intelligence remained consistent: rigorous research, structured analysis, clear reporting, and a thorough understanding of client needs. Tracy Berry notes that at the time, the internet was available as a research tool, but artificial intelligence was far from practical application — making disciplined manual analysis the cornerstone of all deliverables.

She also describes a period during which she stepped away from consulting to manage equestrian events on the west coast of the United States, before eventually returning to corporate competitive intelligence approximately twelve years ago.

Corporate CI – Building CI Functions

Over the course of the past twelve years, Tracy Berry has worked for four different companies. In each organization, she either established a new CI function or significantly revamped an existing one. Through this experience, she developed a set of repeatable best practices for standing up a CI program.

A central element of her approach is the 30-60-90 day plan, which provides a structured framework for the critical early months of a new CI function. Complementing this is a method she refers to as "30 and 30 interviews" — a process in which thirty stakeholders from across the organization are interviewed using a consistent set of questions. The responses are then used to formulate the requirements and strategic priorities that will guide the CI program going forward. The specific questions used in these interviews will be explored in detail during her workshop at the conference.

US vs. European CI Functions Compared

In response to a question about the differences between CI functions in the United States and Europe, Tracy Berry offers observations based on her consulting experience with European clients.

She notes that while European CI functions may sometimes be less mature in their development, they tend to be positioned more strategically within the organization. In European firms, CI functions are frequently embedded in the office of the CEO or within a dedicated strategy function — locations that provide executive sponsorship, organizational visibility, and recognition of the function's strategic importance.

By contrast, CI functions in U.S. companies are often placed within product marketing — a positioning that Tracy Berry considers suboptimal. Without the right organizational home, a CI function lacks the sponsorship and institutional backing necessary to operate at full effectiveness and to have its output acknowledged as strategically valuable.

Workshop Preview and Role of AI in CI

Looking ahead to her workshop at the conference, Tracy Berry clarifies that the session will not be focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence and competitive intelligence, as other presenters will be addressing that topic.

She does, however, acknowledge that AI has meaningfully influenced her own practice. Specifically, AI has helped streamline certain workflows embedded within the 30-60-90 day plan — workflows that previously required entirely manual approaches. Tracy Berry notes that this evolution in her methodology will be reflected in the content she shares at the workshop, giving attendees insight into how AI can serve as a practical efficiency tool within a structured CI program, even outside of dedicated AI-focused initiatives.

Rainer Michaeli closes the conversation by inviting attendees to look forward to the workshop and thanks Tracy Berry for her time.