Competitive intelligence
Encyclopedia
A broad definition of competitive intelligence is the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence
about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.
Key points of this definition:
A more focused definition of CI regards it as the organizational function responsible for the early identification of risks and opportunities in the market before they become obvious. Experts also call this process the early signal analysis. This definition focuses attention on the difference between dissemination of widely available factual information (such as market statistics, financial reports, newspaper clippings) performed by functions such as libraries and information centers, and competitive intelligence which is a perspective on developments and events aimed at yielding a competitive edge.
The term CI is often viewed as synonymous with competitor analysis
, but competitive intelligence is more than analyzing competitors — it is about making the organization more competitive relative to its entire environment and stakeholders: customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, macro-economic data etc.
collection have been a part of business for many years, the history of competitive intelligence arguably began in the U.S. in the 1970s, although the literature on the field pre-dates this time by at least several decades. In 1980, Michael Porter published the study Competitive-Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors which is widely viewed as the foundation of modern competitive intelligence. This has since been extended most notably by the pair of Craig Fleisher
and Babette Bensoussan
, who through several popular books on competitive analysis have added 48 commonly applied competitive intelligence analysis techniques to the practitioner's tool box. In 1985, Leonard Fuld published his best selling book dedicated to competitor intelligence. However, the institutionalization of CI as a formal activity among American corporations can be traced to 1988, when Ben and Tamar Gilad published the first organizational model of a formal corporate CI function, which was then adopted widely by US companies. The first professional certification program (CIP) was created in 1996 with the establishment of The Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence
in Cambridge, MA, followed in 2004 by the Institute for Competitive Intelligence
.
In 1986 the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) was founded in the U.S. and grew in the late 1990s to around 6000 members worldwide, mainly in the U.S. and Canada, but with large numbers especially in UK and Germany. Due to financial difficulties in 2009, the organization merged with Frost & Sullivan under the Frost & Sullivan Institute. SCIP has since been renamed "Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals" to emphasise the strategic nature of the subject, and also to refocus the organisation's general approach, while keeping the existing SCIP brandname and logo. A number of efforts have been made to discuss the field's advances in post-secondary (university) education, covered by several authors including Blenkhorn & Fleisher, Fleisher, Fuld, Prescott, and McGonagle, among others. Although the general view would be that competitive intelligence concepts can be readily found and taught in many business schools around the globe, there are still relatively few dedicated academic programs, majors, or degrees in the field, a concern to academics in the field who would like to see it further researched. These issues were widely discussed by over a dozen knowledgeable individuals in a special edition of the Competitive Intelligence Magazine that was dedicated to this topic. On the other hand, practitioners regard professional accreditation as more important. In 2011, SCIP recognized the Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence
's CIP certification process as its global, dual-level (CIP-I and CIP-II) certification program. In France, a Specialized Master in Economic Intelligence and Knowledge Management was created in 1995 within the CERAM Business School, now SKEMA Business School in Paris, with the objective of delivering a full and professional training in Economic Intelligence. A Centre for Global Intelligence and Influence was created in September 2011 in the same School.
Global developments have also been uneven in competitive intelligence. Several academic journals, particularly the Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management in its third volume, provided coverage of the field's global development. For example, in 1997 the Ecole de Guerre Economique (School of economic warfare) was founded in Paris, France
. It is the first European institution which teaches the tactics of economic warfare within a globalizing world. In Germany
, competitive intelligence was unattended until the early 1990s. The term "competitive intelligence" first appeared in German literature in 1997. In 1995 a German SCIP chapter was founded, which is now second in terms of members in Europe. In summer 2004 the Institute for Competitive Intelligence
was founded, which provides a post-graduate certification program for Competitive Intelligence Professionals. Japan
is currently the only country that officially maintains an economic intelligence agency (JETRO
). It was founded by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1958.
Accepting the importance of competitive intelligence, major multinational corporations, such as ExxonMobil
, Procter & Gamble
, and Johnson and Johnson, have created formal CI units. Importantly, organizations execute competitive intelligence activities not only as a safeguard to protect against market threats and changes, but also as a method for finding new opportunities and trends.
The actual importance of these categories of information to an organization depends on the contestability of its markets, the organizational culture, and personality and biases of its top decision makers, and the reporting structure of competitive intelligence within the company.
Strategic Intelligence (SI): focus is on the longer term, looking at issues affecting a company’s competitiveness over the course of a couple of years. The actual time horizon for SI ultimately depends on the industry and how quickly it’s changing. The general questions that SI answers are, ‘Where should we as a company be in x Years?’ and 'What are the strategic risks and opportunities facing us?' This type of intelligence work involves among others the identification of weak signals and application of methodology and process called Strategic Early Warning (SEW), first introduced by Gilad, followed by Steven Shaker and Victor Richardson, Alessandro Comai and Joaquin Tena, and others. According to Gilad, 20% of the work of competitive intelligence practitioners should be dedicated to strategic early identification of weak signals within a SEW framework.
Tactical Intelligence: the focus is on providing information designed to improve shorter-term decisions, most often related with the intent of growing market share or revenues. Generally, the type of information that you would need to support the sales process in an organization. Investigates various aspects of a product/product line marketing:
• Product - what are people selling?
• Price - what price are they charging?
• Promotion - what activities are they conducting for promoting this product?
• Place - where are they selling this product?
• Other - sales force structure, clinical trial design, technical issues, etc.
With the right amount of information, organizations can avoid unpleasant surprises by anticipating competitors’ moves and decreasing response time. Examples of competitive intelligence research is evident in Daily Newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune
. Major airlines change hundreds of fares daily in response to competitors’ tactics. They use information to plan their own marketing, pricing, and production strategies.
Resources, such as the Internet, have made gathering information on competitors easy. With a click of a button, analysts can discover future trends and market requirements. However competitive intelligence is much more than this, as the ultimate aim is to lead to competitive advantage. As the Internet is mostly public domain material, information gathered is less likely to result in insights that will be unique to the company. In fact there is a risk that information gathered from the Internet will be misinformation and mislead users, so competitive intelligence researchers are often wary of using such information.
As a result, although the Internet is viewed as a key source, most CI professionals should spend their time and budget gathering intelligence using primary research — networking with industry experts, from trade shows and conferences, from their own customers and suppliers, and so on. Where the Internet is used, it is to gather sources for primary research as well as information on what the company says about itself and its online presence (in the form of links to other companies, its strategy regarding search engines and online advertising, mentions in discussion forums and on blogs, etc.). Also, important are online subscription databases and news aggregation sources which have simplified the secondary source collection process. Social media sources are also becoming important - providing potential interviewee names, as well as opinions and attitudes, and sometimes breaking news (e.g. via Twitter
).
Organizations must be careful not to spend too much time and effort on old competitors without realizing the existence of any new competitors. Knowing more about your competitors will allow your business to grow and succeed. The practice of competitive intelligence is growing every year, and most companies and business students now realize the importance of knowing their competitors.
According to Arjan Singh and Andrew Beurschgens in their 2006 article in the Competitive Intelligence Review, there are 4 stages of development of a competitive intelligence capability with a firm. It starts from Stick Fetching, where a CI department is very reactive, to World Class where it is completely integrated in the decision making process.
The argument put forth by former SCIP President and CI author Craig Fleisher
suggests that business intelligence has two forms. In its narrower (contemporary) form has more of an information technology and internal focus than competitive intelligence while its broader (historical) definition is actually more encompassing than the contemporary practice of CI. Knowledge management (KM), when it isn't properly achieved (it needs an appropriate taxonomy for being up the best standards in the domain), is also viewed as being a heavily information technology driven organizational practice, that relies on data mining, corporate intranets, and mapping organizational assets, among other things, in order to make it accessible to organizational members for decision making. The CI shares some aspects of the real KM that is ideally and definitely human intelligence and experiences-based for more sophisticated qualitative analysis, creativity, prospective views. KM is essential for effective innovations.
Market intelligence (MI) is industry-targeted intelligence that is developed on real-time (i.e., dynamic) aspects of competitive events taking place among the 4Ps of the marketing mix
(i.e., pricing, place, promotion, and product) in the product or service marketplace in order to better understand the attractiveness of the market. A time-based competitive tactic, MI insights are used by marketing and sales managers to hone their marketing efforts so as to more quickly respond to consumers in a fast-moving, vertical (i.e., industry) marketplace. Craig Fleisher
suggests it is not distributed as widely as some forms of CI, which are distributed to other (non-marketing) decision-makers as well. Market intelligence also has a shorter-term time horizon than many other intelligence areas and is usually measured in days, weeks, or, in some slower-moving industries, a handful of months.
Marketing research is a tactical, methods-driven field that consists mainly of neutral primary research that draws on customer data in the form of beliefs and perceptions as gathered through surveys or focus groups, and is analyzed through the application of statistical research techniques. In contrast, CI typically draws on a wider variety (i.e., both primary and secondary) of sources, from a wider range of stakeholders (e.g., suppliers, competitors, distributors, substitutes, media, and so on), and seeks not just to answer existing questions but also to raise new ones and to guide action.
In the 2001 article by Ben Gilad and Jan Herring, the authors lay down a set of basic prerequisites that define the unique nature of CI and distinguish it from other information-rich disciplines such as market research or business development. They show that a common body of knowledge and a unique set of applied tools (Key Intelligence Topics, Business War Games
, Blindspots analysis
) make CI clearly different, and that while other sensory activities in the commercial firm focus on one category of players in the market (customers or suppliers or acquisition targets), CI is the only integrative discipline calling for a synthesis of the data on all High Impact Players (HIP).
In a later article, Gilad focuses his delineation of CI more forcefully on the difference between information and intelligence. According to Gilad, the commonality among many organizational sensory functions, whether called Market Research, Business Intelligence or Market intelligence is that in practice they deliver facts and information, not intelligence. Intelligence, by Gilad, is a perspective on facts, not the facts themselves. Uniquely among other corporate functions, competitive intelligence has a specific perspective of external risks and opportunities to the firm’s overall performance, and as such it is part of an organization's risk management activity, not information activities.
Competitive information may be obtained from public or subscription sources, from networking with competitor staff or customers, or from field research interviews. Competitive intelligence research is distinguishable from industrial espionage
, as CI practitioners generally abide by local legal guidelines and ethical business norms.
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.
Key points of this definition:
- Competitive intelligence is an ethical and legal business practice, as opposed to industrial espionageIndustrial espionageIndustrial espionage, economic espionage or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security purposes...
which is illegal. - The focus is on the external business environment.
- There is a process involved in gathering information, converting it into intelligence and then utilizing this in business decision making. CI professionals erroneously emphasize that if the intelligence gathered is not usable (or actionable) then it is not intelligence.
A more focused definition of CI regards it as the organizational function responsible for the early identification of risks and opportunities in the market before they become obvious. Experts also call this process the early signal analysis. This definition focuses attention on the difference between dissemination of widely available factual information (such as market statistics, financial reports, newspaper clippings) performed by functions such as libraries and information centers, and competitive intelligence which is a perspective on developments and events aimed at yielding a competitive edge.
The term CI is often viewed as synonymous with competitor analysis
Competitor analysis
Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats...
, but competitive intelligence is more than analyzing competitors — it is about making the organization more competitive relative to its entire environment and stakeholders: customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, macro-economic data etc.
Historic development
The literature associated with the field of competitive intelligence is best exemplified by the detailed bibliographies that were published in the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals refereed academic journal called The Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management. Although elements of organizational intelligenceOrganizational Intelligence
Organizational Intelligence is the capability of an organization to comprehend and conclude knowledge relevant to its business purpose.* an ability to make sense of complex situations and act effectively...
collection have been a part of business for many years, the history of competitive intelligence arguably began in the U.S. in the 1970s, although the literature on the field pre-dates this time by at least several decades. In 1980, Michael Porter published the study Competitive-Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors which is widely viewed as the foundation of modern competitive intelligence. This has since been extended most notably by the pair of Craig Fleisher
Craig Fleisher
Craig S. Fleisher is a researcher and author who has written or edited several important books in the field of business and competitive intelligence and analysis...
and Babette Bensoussan
Babette Bensoussan
Babette Bensoussan is an author and competitive intelligence specialist, who has written several books on competitive intelligence and analysis. She runs a Sydney, Australia based consulting firm, The MindShifts Group Pty...
, who through several popular books on competitive analysis have added 48 commonly applied competitive intelligence analysis techniques to the practitioner's tool box. In 1985, Leonard Fuld published his best selling book dedicated to competitor intelligence. However, the institutionalization of CI as a formal activity among American corporations can be traced to 1988, when Ben and Tamar Gilad published the first organizational model of a formal corporate CI function, which was then adopted widely by US companies. The first professional certification program (CIP) was created in 1996 with the establishment of The Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence
Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence
The Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence is a first of its kind global educational organization solely dedicated to bringing professional training to the then fledgling field of competitive intelligence...
in Cambridge, MA, followed in 2004 by the Institute for Competitive Intelligence
Institute for Competitive Intelligence
The Institute for Competitive Intelligence was founded to provide post-graduate professionals a solid and flexible Competitive Intelligence training program to become a certified CI-Professional...
.
In 1986 the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) was founded in the U.S. and grew in the late 1990s to around 6000 members worldwide, mainly in the U.S. and Canada, but with large numbers especially in UK and Germany. Due to financial difficulties in 2009, the organization merged with Frost & Sullivan under the Frost & Sullivan Institute. SCIP has since been renamed "Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals" to emphasise the strategic nature of the subject, and also to refocus the organisation's general approach, while keeping the existing SCIP brandname and logo. A number of efforts have been made to discuss the field's advances in post-secondary (university) education, covered by several authors including Blenkhorn & Fleisher, Fleisher, Fuld, Prescott, and McGonagle, among others. Although the general view would be that competitive intelligence concepts can be readily found and taught in many business schools around the globe, there are still relatively few dedicated academic programs, majors, or degrees in the field, a concern to academics in the field who would like to see it further researched. These issues were widely discussed by over a dozen knowledgeable individuals in a special edition of the Competitive Intelligence Magazine that was dedicated to this topic. On the other hand, practitioners regard professional accreditation as more important. In 2011, SCIP recognized the Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence
Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence
The Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence is a first of its kind global educational organization solely dedicated to bringing professional training to the then fledgling field of competitive intelligence...
's CIP certification process as its global, dual-level (CIP-I and CIP-II) certification program. In France, a Specialized Master in Economic Intelligence and Knowledge Management was created in 1995 within the CERAM Business School, now SKEMA Business School in Paris, with the objective of delivering a full and professional training in Economic Intelligence. A Centre for Global Intelligence and Influence was created in September 2011 in the same School.
Global developments have also been uneven in competitive intelligence. Several academic journals, particularly the Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management in its third volume, provided coverage of the field's global development. For example, in 1997 the Ecole de Guerre Economique (School of economic warfare) was founded in Paris, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. It is the first European institution which teaches the tactics of economic warfare within a globalizing world. In Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, competitive intelligence was unattended until the early 1990s. The term "competitive intelligence" first appeared in German literature in 1997. In 1995 a German SCIP chapter was founded, which is now second in terms of members in Europe. In summer 2004 the Institute for Competitive Intelligence
Institute for Competitive Intelligence
The Institute for Competitive Intelligence was founded to provide post-graduate professionals a solid and flexible Competitive Intelligence training program to become a certified CI-Professional...
was founded, which provides a post-graduate certification program for Competitive Intelligence Professionals. Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
is currently the only country that officially maintains an economic intelligence agency (JETRO
JETRO
is an independent government agency established by Japan Export Trade Research Organization as a nonprofit corporation in Osaka in February 1951, and reorganized as the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1958 to consolidate Japan's efforts in export promotion...
). It was founded by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1958.
Accepting the importance of competitive intelligence, major multinational corporations, such as ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil, is an American multinational oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Its headquarters are in Irving, Texas...
, Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
, and Johnson and Johnson, have created formal CI units. Importantly, organizations execute competitive intelligence activities not only as a safeguard to protect against market threats and changes, but also as a method for finding new opportunities and trends.
Principles
Organizations use competitive intelligence to compare themselves to other organizations ("competitive benchmarking"), to identify risks and opportunities in their markets, and to pressure-test their plans against market response (war gaming), which enable them to make informed decisions. Most firms today realize the importance of knowing what their competitors are doing and how the industry is changing, and the information gathered allows organizations to understand their strengths and weaknesses.The actual importance of these categories of information to an organization depends on the contestability of its markets, the organizational culture, and personality and biases of its top decision makers, and the reporting structure of competitive intelligence within the company.
Strategic Intelligence (SI): focus is on the longer term, looking at issues affecting a company’s competitiveness over the course of a couple of years. The actual time horizon for SI ultimately depends on the industry and how quickly it’s changing. The general questions that SI answers are, ‘Where should we as a company be in x Years?’ and 'What are the strategic risks and opportunities facing us?' This type of intelligence work involves among others the identification of weak signals and application of methodology and process called Strategic Early Warning (SEW), first introduced by Gilad, followed by Steven Shaker and Victor Richardson, Alessandro Comai and Joaquin Tena, and others. According to Gilad, 20% of the work of competitive intelligence practitioners should be dedicated to strategic early identification of weak signals within a SEW framework.
Tactical Intelligence: the focus is on providing information designed to improve shorter-term decisions, most often related with the intent of growing market share or revenues. Generally, the type of information that you would need to support the sales process in an organization. Investigates various aspects of a product/product line marketing:
• Product - what are people selling?
• Price - what price are they charging?
• Promotion - what activities are they conducting for promoting this product?
• Place - where are they selling this product?
• Other - sales force structure, clinical trial design, technical issues, etc.
With the right amount of information, organizations can avoid unpleasant surprises by anticipating competitors’ moves and decreasing response time. Examples of competitive intelligence research is evident in Daily Newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
. Major airlines change hundreds of fares daily in response to competitors’ tactics. They use information to plan their own marketing, pricing, and production strategies.
Resources, such as the Internet, have made gathering information on competitors easy. With a click of a button, analysts can discover future trends and market requirements. However competitive intelligence is much more than this, as the ultimate aim is to lead to competitive advantage. As the Internet is mostly public domain material, information gathered is less likely to result in insights that will be unique to the company. In fact there is a risk that information gathered from the Internet will be misinformation and mislead users, so competitive intelligence researchers are often wary of using such information.
As a result, although the Internet is viewed as a key source, most CI professionals should spend their time and budget gathering intelligence using primary research — networking with industry experts, from trade shows and conferences, from their own customers and suppliers, and so on. Where the Internet is used, it is to gather sources for primary research as well as information on what the company says about itself and its online presence (in the form of links to other companies, its strategy regarding search engines and online advertising, mentions in discussion forums and on blogs, etc.). Also, important are online subscription databases and news aggregation sources which have simplified the secondary source collection process. Social media sources are also becoming important - providing potential interviewee names, as well as opinions and attitudes, and sometimes breaking news (e.g. via Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
).
Organizations must be careful not to spend too much time and effort on old competitors without realizing the existence of any new competitors. Knowing more about your competitors will allow your business to grow and succeed. The practice of competitive intelligence is growing every year, and most companies and business students now realize the importance of knowing their competitors.
According to Arjan Singh and Andrew Beurschgens in their 2006 article in the Competitive Intelligence Review, there are 4 stages of development of a competitive intelligence capability with a firm. It starts from Stick Fetching, where a CI department is very reactive, to World Class where it is completely integrated in the decision making process.
Distinguishing competitive intelligence from similar fields
Competitive Intelligence is depended on the Intelligence Cycle which is the basic principle of the national intelligence activity. The website of the CIA is providing a comprehensive explanation of this key principle. This is a five steps process aiming towards creating value to the intelligence activity, mainly to the decision-makers. It took CI a few years to comprehend that operating in the business field to value the corporation with better understanding of the external threats and opportunities, comprises numerous constraints, mainly ethical and legal which are obviously less relevant while operating for governments. This process of emerging CI since the 1980s and building up its strengths is described by Prescott. Competitive intelligence is often confused with, or viewed to have overlapping elements with related fields like market research, environmental scanning, business intelligence, and marketing research, just to name a few. Some have questioned whether the name of "competitive intelligence" is even a satisfactory one to apply to the field In a 2003 book chapter, Fleisher compares and contrasts competitive intelligence to business intelligence, competitor intelligence, knowledge management, market intelligence, marketing research, and strategic intelligenceThe argument put forth by former SCIP President and CI author Craig Fleisher
Craig Fleisher
Craig S. Fleisher is a researcher and author who has written or edited several important books in the field of business and competitive intelligence and analysis...
suggests that business intelligence has two forms. In its narrower (contemporary) form has more of an information technology and internal focus than competitive intelligence while its broader (historical) definition is actually more encompassing than the contemporary practice of CI. Knowledge management (KM), when it isn't properly achieved (it needs an appropriate taxonomy for being up the best standards in the domain), is also viewed as being a heavily information technology driven organizational practice, that relies on data mining, corporate intranets, and mapping organizational assets, among other things, in order to make it accessible to organizational members for decision making. The CI shares some aspects of the real KM that is ideally and definitely human intelligence and experiences-based for more sophisticated qualitative analysis, creativity, prospective views. KM is essential for effective innovations.
Market intelligence (MI) is industry-targeted intelligence that is developed on real-time (i.e., dynamic) aspects of competitive events taking place among the 4Ps of the marketing mix
Marketing mix
The term "marketing mix" was coined in 1953 by Neil Borden in his American Marketing Association presidential address. However, this was actually a reformulation of an earlier idea by his associate, James Culliton, who in 1948 described the role of the marketing manager as a "mixer of ingredients",...
(i.e., pricing, place, promotion, and product) in the product or service marketplace in order to better understand the attractiveness of the market. A time-based competitive tactic, MI insights are used by marketing and sales managers to hone their marketing efforts so as to more quickly respond to consumers in a fast-moving, vertical (i.e., industry) marketplace. Craig Fleisher
Craig Fleisher
Craig S. Fleisher is a researcher and author who has written or edited several important books in the field of business and competitive intelligence and analysis...
suggests it is not distributed as widely as some forms of CI, which are distributed to other (non-marketing) decision-makers as well. Market intelligence also has a shorter-term time horizon than many other intelligence areas and is usually measured in days, weeks, or, in some slower-moving industries, a handful of months.
Marketing research is a tactical, methods-driven field that consists mainly of neutral primary research that draws on customer data in the form of beliefs and perceptions as gathered through surveys or focus groups, and is analyzed through the application of statistical research techniques. In contrast, CI typically draws on a wider variety (i.e., both primary and secondary) of sources, from a wider range of stakeholders (e.g., suppliers, competitors, distributors, substitutes, media, and so on), and seeks not just to answer existing questions but also to raise new ones and to guide action.
In the 2001 article by Ben Gilad and Jan Herring, the authors lay down a set of basic prerequisites that define the unique nature of CI and distinguish it from other information-rich disciplines such as market research or business development. They show that a common body of knowledge and a unique set of applied tools (Key Intelligence Topics, Business War Games
Business War Games
Business war gaming or business wargaming is an adaptation of the art of simulating moves and counter-moves in a commercial setting. Unlike military war games, or fantasy war games which go back hundreds of years to the days of Prussia and H.G...
, Blindspots analysis
Blindspots analysis
Blindspots analysis is a method aimed at uncovering obsolete assumptions in a decision maker’s mental scheme of the environment....
) make CI clearly different, and that while other sensory activities in the commercial firm focus on one category of players in the market (customers or suppliers or acquisition targets), CI is the only integrative discipline calling for a synthesis of the data on all High Impact Players (HIP).
In a later article, Gilad focuses his delineation of CI more forcefully on the difference between information and intelligence. According to Gilad, the commonality among many organizational sensory functions, whether called Market Research, Business Intelligence or Market intelligence is that in practice they deliver facts and information, not intelligence. Intelligence, by Gilad, is a perspective on facts, not the facts themselves. Uniquely among other corporate functions, competitive intelligence has a specific perspective of external risks and opportunities to the firm’s overall performance, and as such it is part of an organization's risk management activity, not information activities.
Ethics
Ethics has been a long-held issue of discussion amongst CI practitioners. Essentially, the questions revolve around what is and is not allowable in terms of CI practitioners' activity. A number of very excellent scholarly treatments have been generated on this topic, most prominently addressed through Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals publications. The book Competitive Intelligence Ethics: Navigating the Gray Zone provides nearly twenty separate views about ethics in CI, as well as another 10 codes used by various individuals or organizations. Combining that with the over two dozen scholarly articles or studies found within the various CI bibliographic entries, it is clear that no shortage of study has gone into better classifying, understanding and addressing CI ethics.Competitive information may be obtained from public or subscription sources, from networking with competitor staff or customers, or from field research interviews. Competitive intelligence research is distinguishable from industrial espionage
Industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, economic espionage or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security purposes...
, as CI practitioners generally abide by local legal guidelines and ethical business norms.
See also
- Society of Competitive Intelligence ProfessionalsSociety of Competitive Intelligence ProfessionalsThe Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals - is a global nonprofit membership organization designed to enhance the skills of knowledge professionals in order to help their companies...
- Due diligenceDue diligence"Due diligence" is a term used for a number of concepts involving either an investigation of a business or person prior to signing a contract, or an act with a certain standard of care. It can be a legal obligation, but the term will more commonly apply to voluntary investigations...
- SWOT analysisSWOT analysisSWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses/Limitations, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture...
- Business intelligenceBusiness intelligenceBusiness intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....
- Economic and Industrial EspionageIndustrial espionageIndustrial espionage, economic espionage or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security purposes...
- Competitor analysisCompetitor analysisCompetitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats...
- Legal case managementLegal case managementThe terms Legal case management or matter management refer to a subset of law practice management and cover a range of approaches and technologies used by law firms and courts to leverage knowledge and methodologies for managing the life cycle of a case or matter more effectively...
- Creative competitive intelligence
- Market researchMarket researchMarket research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...
- Marketing analysis
- Open source intelligenceOpen source intelligenceOpen-source intelligence is a form of intelligence collection management that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence...
- Porter's Four Corners ModelPorter's Four Corners ModelPorter’s four corners model is a predictive tool designed by Michael Porter that helps in determining a competitor’s course of action. Unlike other predictive models which predominantly rely on a firm’s current strategy and capabilities to determine future strategy, Porter’s model additionally...
- Location intelligenceLocation intelligenceLocation Intelligence is the capacity to organize and understand complex phenomena through the use of geographic relationships inherent in all information. By combining geographic- and location-related data with other business data, organizations can gain critical insights, make better decisions...
- Industry or market researchIndustry or market researchIndustry or market research is the acquisition of corporate intelligence on a broad range of issues including:* Macroenvironment**economy**government**law**technology**ecological* Market analysis and competitor analysis**market definition**market size...
- Sourcing (personnel)Sourcing (personnel)Sourcing in personnel management work refers to the identification and uncovering of candidates through proactive recruiting techniques.- Historical context :...
- Information brokerInformation brokerAn information broker, also known as an independent information professional or information consultant, is a person or business that researches information for clients...
- Trend analysisTrend analysisTrend Analysis is the practice of collecting information and attempting to spot a pattern, or trend, in the information. In some fields of study, the term "trend analysis" has more formally-defined meanings....
- Industry informationIndustry informationIndustry classification or industry taxonomy organizes companies into industrial groupings based on similar production processes, similar products, or similar behavior in financial markets....
- Commercial intelligenceCommercial IntelligenceCommercial Intelligence is the highest and most comprehensive form of legal, ethical open source intelligence as practiced by diverse international and localized businesses....