Competitive Intelligence or Espionage?

Electronic eavesdropping, spying, stealing or buying secrets, honeycombing, putting a sleeper on your competitor's payroll, etc. These are not Competitive Intelligence. Those clandestine activities may be lauded in national intelligence circles, but they are misguided criminal acts in the business world.

Contrary to what some people think (unfortunately including even many corporate executives), competitive intelligence stresses professionalism and ethics, and has nothing whatsoever, to do with espionage or some other vices we’ve heard about.

Competitive intelligence expert, Gina Imperato¹ of Fast Company Magazine exclaims:

Don't even joke that .. intelligence means "spying" on the competition ... Forget James Bond. And forget the occasional racy headlines about industrial espionage. We're talking about new approaches to good old-fashioned business dish: a heads-up on a new product, information on a rival's cost structure, a read on an ally's changing strategy.

The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) with over 6,000 members makes it clear that competitive intelligence demands the highest levels or ethics, morals and adherence to the spirit and letter of the law. The very high ethical requirements of competitive intelligence are explicit in SCIP's Code of Ethics.

Certainly, many businesses and organizations are rising up to the occasion of pursuing more intelligence-based strategies.

Ardent users and pioneers of modern competitive intelligence include:

	Amoco® (now BP®)
	Motorola®
	Procter and Gamble®
	Kellogg®
	Xerox®
	Avnet®
	NutraSweet®
	Merck®
	Intel®
	Microsoft®
	GE®

The above intelligence-active companies are to mention but a few. They have dominated the competitive situations in their markets year after year, and have had the means to predict and counter (when they want to) every competitor’s move in their various industries and markets. Certainly, there's so much that competitive intelligence can do for you.

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Reference

1. Gina Imperato on "Competitive Intelligence - Get Smart" in  Fast Company Magazine, Issue 14, 1998 p. 269. Internet: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/intelligence.html. Retrieved December, 2006.
 

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