Has industry competitive intelligence become a barrier to change in law firms?

As I have mentioned before, law firms for the most part exhibit herding behavior when it comes to decision making.  They consult what other firms are doing, research news articles and attend conferences to assemble a substantial amount of data from a variety of sources when deciding to make a change in their business.  It could be as small as how much their technology stipend for lawyers should be, to a more significant decision such as which CRM system to invest in.  For several years now, the legal industry has been inundated with discussions on alternative fee arrangements, CRM systems, business development, preferred vendor lists, in house legal procurement, the death (or everlasting life) of the billable hour, and - most of all - how the legal industry is, should or is going to change.  When you think about it, is all of this data gathering and communication too much?  How much and what kind of data is enough to make an informed decision? For legal professionals who are notorious for being "big data adverse," there is certainly a huge focus on compiling evidence in order to make decisions.

I wonder if firms stopped paying such close attention to what others are doing, and instead invested the time and energy into their own internal intelligence, would their ability to not only make a decision, but make the right one for them, increase?  Of course, competitive intelligence should always play an important role in how businesses operate in order to keep track of industry trends and learn from others, but do law firms have too much of a reliance on it?

Perhaps firms can hold "internal conferences" where the heads of the different departments spoke on panels or created presentations on the key aspects of their department, what they do well, what they need to improve upon, what their challenges are going forward and what their needs are for the future?   Obviously something similar to this occurs at year end when formulating budgets for the new year, identifying hiring needs, and conducting employee evaluations and compensation awards, but what if firms used a different format focusing on different goals to compile internal data to make business decisions?  This would be for not only the different practice groups but also for the accounting, finance, marketing, HR, IT, etc. departments.  Many of the business challenges firms are facing right now involve technology, CRM, business development, and hiring.  However, what works for one firm does not necessarily work for another firm.  The business decisions must be customized to what works for an individual firm, with their unique infrastructure, practices, strengths and weaknesses.  Maybe conducting a balanced scorecard internal analysis on the firm as a whole would be beneficial to understanding how to best proceed?

How can firms weigh the need for competitive intelligence with their own internal knowledge in order to make the right business decisions for them, without succumbing to inertia by an overload of data?  Perhaps this correlates back to a ubiquitous problem law firms have in how to differentiate themselves from each other?  By focusing on what other firms are doing - particularly those they consider "peer firms" (which changes depending on who you are speaking to) - aren't firms continuing to categorize themselves in a group and being counterproductive to the idea of differentiating themselves?  Maybe by focusing on their internal intelligence, firms can utilize the data to better understand their differences from others and develop their unique value proposition, which is invaluable to selling their services to clients?