external-insightslisted

# External Insights Two documents get produced when someone asks what is going on with a company. The first is a pile of links and a paragraph that could have been written from the company's own homepage: founded in this year, serves these industries, recently announced a partnership. It is accurate, it takes an afternoon, and it changes nothing, because nothing in it is news to the person who asked. The second is worse. It contains a fact that was true eighteen months ago: a leadership appointment that was reversed, a product that has since been retired, a funding round that was actually a debt facility. The executive repeats it in the room. A gap in a brief costs nothing, because the executive simply asks the question. A wrong fact costs the credibility of everything else in the document, and it is repeated with confidence precisely because it came from a brief. Insight is information that changes what someone will do in the next meeting. Everything else is background. This skill collects widely, verifies strictly, and delivers narrowly. ## When to use this, and when not to Use it before a meeting with an external party, before outreach or a pitch, when a competitor or client needs monitoring over time, when an industry shift needs to be understood well enough to act on, and when a leader asks what is happening with a named company. Do not use it to size a market or map a competitive set for a strategy decision, which is `market-research`. Do not use it to write the o