Controversies in Competitive Intelligence: The Enduring Issues (Fleisher, Blenkhorn, 2003)

Controversies in Competitive Intelligence: The Enduring Issues (Fleisher, Blenkhorn, 2003)

Chosen for their clear, direct relevance to scholars and practitioners in the volatile field of competitive intelligence, the 24 issues evaluated here represent the cutting edge of CI's most pressing concerns. Current, scholarly, pragmatic, and among the first of its kind, this book presents the heart of the field in a way that even the relatively uninitiated can grasp and quickly apply.

The authors cover the latest technological advances and their relation to the tools most valued by CI professionals. They also show that despite its enormous range of possibilities, CI has limits. Navigating the ever-changing organizational and marketplace environments is difficult. A key debate involves what should and shouldn't be done to maximize the beneficial power of CI. Fleisher, Blenkhorn, and the book's contributors present the crucial points of this debate. This book is perfect for practitioners seeking guidance, but also as a supplemental text for students in such courses as marketing strategy and planning, business-to-business marketing, and competitive intelligence itself.

p.3 Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was purported to have stated that "an issue ignored is a crisis invited."

p.5 In general, CI is the process by which organizations gather actionable information about competitors and the competitive environment and, ideally, apply it to their decision-making and planning processes in order to improve their performance.

p.53 Intelligence is an asset, and it can be analyzed, distributed, or manipulated to create competitive advantages in the short- and long-terms for organizations

p.62 competitive intelligence is now viewed as an accepted, legitimate, and necessary activity in today's global business world... Nearly all CI activities are focused on improving the organization's competitiveness as either a primary or secondary goal.

p.66 CI... seeks not just to answer existing questions but also to raise new ones and to guide action.

p.75 the proper use of CI to develop strategy can give a public-sector organization a sustainable competitive advantage.

p.76 CI must monitor... changes in needs, perceptions, preferences, and satisfactions.

p.127 The purpose of CI is to generate actionable intelligence, which hinges on the analysis process (Fleisher, 2001). Without analysis, data would simply be collected, disseminated, and left open for individual interpretation.

p.133-134 there is strong reason to suspect that academic theory can guide practice and aid CI professionals in their quest to understand and predict competitor behavior as well as market actions and reactions.

p.153 Managing complexity requires the ability to produce understanding from deep analysis as well as the ability to make sense of relationships among a broad range of apparently unrelated factors... Best practice in intelligence management is beginning to emphasize the ability to accurately predict the behavior of actors and systems. This requires modeling and simulation capability... Modeling and simulation capability is also critical to the development of intelligent customer interaction systems, which automate some interactions and provide intelligent support to human operators for other interactions.

p.249 A strong forecasting ability is also essential, especially given that the complexity of having to forecast with incomplete or even contradictory data often characterizes CI analysis.