in the know
Are You ‘In the Know?’
Cynthia Cheng Correia, Knowledge inForm, Inc.
How well are you in the know
regarding your organization’s activities,
intelligence use, information (human
and published), resources, and other
key areas? How well is your competitive
intelligence (CI) team in the know?
Your intelligence users? Your overall
organization?
This article kicks off a new column
in which we explore what it means to be
in the know, who is or should be in the
know, how to generate more knowledge
to support intelligence, and how to
employ an organization’s knowledge
systems and processes for CI – in short,
how knowledge management (KM) can
enhance your CI practices.
As a specialized area of practice,
CIKM (seek‘em), as coined by Ben
Gilad, can span the same breadth and
depth as KM, ranging from personal
knowledge management (PKM) to
state-of-the-art enterprise-level KM.
This column will address practices,
perspectives, and issues along the
spectrum (after all, CIKM isn’t just
for large firms with corresponding
resources).
KNOWLEDGE CREATED AND
ACCESSED
Some view KM skeptically as
another fancy label for what companies
and professionals have been doing for
ages or as internal competition to CI.
Like CI, knowledge management has
been practiced in some form well before
its formalization and explosion in the
90s. And like other business activities
and functions that benefited from
formalization and systematization (such
as finance, strategy, marketing, etc.),
KM offers us better ways to practice as
workers and organizations wrestle with
42 www.scip.org Competitive Intelligence Magazine
new and sophisticated tools, techniques,
practices, systems, and expectations.
The Information – or Knowledge
– Age requires you to develop a deeper
understanding in how people, processes,
technologies, and culture interact;
and specifically how information,
knowledge, and intelligence are
created, accessed, and used. And CI
is not exempt from this need: what
CI manager, researcher, or analyst
wouldn’t want to target and collect
information more quickly, organize
data and information for more efficient
and sound analysis, see managers apply
intelligence more consistently, etc. –
particularly when you wear all three
hats! Consider these examples:
A knowledge audit at a consumer
products company uncovered
valuable internal reports that had
never been shared with the CI team.
It also identified colleagues who are
knowledgeable about competitor
activities, but the people involved didn’t
know what they had, didn’t consider the
broader value of what they know, and
didn’t realize that anyone cared to know.
A service firm applying KM to
their CI process and workflow more
effectively re-used information and
analysis, as well as improved search and
retrieval by establishing a repository.
It also provided access to key internal
human intelligence and dissemination
of intelligence to those who can use
it by participating in communities of
practice (CoPs).
COMPETITION WITH CI?
The perception that KM
generates internal competition to CI
or necessarily undermines intelligence
security arises from a fundamental
misunderstanding of KM based on
inferences or assumptions disassociated
from KM principles and practices.
Viewing KM as simply a department,
technology, information or content
management, or as practices that
inherently exposes an organization
to vulnerabilities, falls short of
understanding KM’s position as a
complementary process to CI. It also
misses the opportunity to fortify and
organization’s KM process through CI.
KM, if misapplied, can hurt an
organization as much as it can help. For
example, an over-emphasis on sharing
without proper measures to protect
competitive assets opens a company
to leaks, as too much control can
discourage the types of internal sharing
that can help generate vital intelligence.
To take full advantage of KM for CI
requires an adequate understanding
of both disciplines and a balanced
approach towards both.
KM is interdisciplinary and
involves a range of corporate functions
and activities: human resource
development and corporate training,
all forms of research and analysis,
strategy, business development,
operations, customer service, IT, etc.
(…and competitive intelligence!).
KM cultivates and harnesses internal
knowledge of all types through
processes, tools, and activities so that
organizations can apply their knowledge
and competitive assets more quickly,
efficiently, and effectively.
MUTUAL SUPPORT
Common activities involve learning
and development, information and
content management, communication,
and process and workflow

Sidebar: Applying KM to your CI practice
Understand your
organization’s formal and
informal KM processes &
tools. As with most social facets of
an organization, there are sponsored
and unsponsored activities and roles,
and sometimes the latter can be
a significant aspect in knowledge
exchange and creation.
Educate and collaborate
with your KM team or
information center, which may
include knowledge services.Your
KM team or manager may come
from library or information science,
IT, education & training, or other
non-business or non-CI background.
Initiating your effort by helping
them understand what you do and
by exploring ways you can work
together will help direct you towards
a common effort and language.
If you don’t have formal KM,
adopt practices at the team
or personal level. KM takes many
forms, have varying levels of maturity,
and practices exist outside formal
KM programs.
enhancement. While CI can involve
these activities, they are frequently
contained within the intelligence team
or effort, sometimes to the point of
creating unnecessary intelligence silos,
restricting the impact and benefits of
these efforts to the organization.
When CI ignores an established
KM program – or good KM principles
and practices – this undermines both CI
and KM efforts. Typical consequences
include: duplicating activities,
procurement, and resources; gaps in
research and collection; and generating
unnecessary internal competition.
Dove-tailing CI and an established
KM process enables management
Volume 11 • Number 3 • May-June 2008 www.scip.org 43
Understand your
organizational and team
culture, as well as barriers and
enablers to KM. Barriers may
include trust issues, time constraints,
common vocabulary, etc.; enablers
may include a driving need, material
and non-material incentives, a key
sponsor, etc.
If the “KM” concept isn’t
understood or embraced in
your organization, adopt KM
practices under a different
terms or concepts. (Many CI
practitioners are familiar with issues
involving labels and perception.) The
practice is more important than the
label.
and the organization to learn more
quickly from the intelligence generated
and to allow its practices to respond
accordingly. This can also consistently
engage contributors and users; create
learning communities around key
functions, products, and issues; and
coordinate efforts and resources.
COOPERATIVE VALUE
While organizations’ CIKM
requirements and strategies take into
account industry, company, and
other factors, CI and KM cooperate
in two primary ways. (See Rothberg
2004, Rothberg 2006 for additional
information).
in the know
Integrate KM practices, tools, and
techniques into CI functions or
workflow.
KM supports CI in a variety of
ways, depending on the breadth and
depth of the KM process in your
organization. In a highly developed
KM program, you can draw upon a
rich body of resources: knowledge
maps, CoPs, knowledge repositories,
sophisticated search and retrieval
systems, custom corporate/expert
directories, learning systems, project
or functional wikis, etc. When
appropriately applied to support CI,
any of these can enhance its practice.
When you have a developed KM
program, begin by adopting one or
two new techniques or tools at a time.
Adopting too many can inhibit the
effective integration of KM into CI,
particularly in a team-based setting.
Assessing your CIKM needs, selecting
pilot techniques and tools, then
building upon CIKM capabilities also
enables your CI program to maintain its
focus on intelligence generation.
What if you don’t have a formal
or established KM process? The same
recommendation applies. Many
organizational KM programs begin with
the targeted adoption or piloting within
a particular function. CI, as a business
processes, is a great place to start.
Incorporate intelligence awareness
into the organization’s knowledge
processes and communities.
This awareness builds upon the
KM infrastructure in place and can be
applied in two ways:
• to generate and sustain internal
intelligence sources and
contributors.
• to protect knowledge assets from
discovery and exploitation by
competitors.
Typically you initiate and sustain
intelligence awareness through
requirements definitions, then by
introducing training, which serves to
establish processes and systems that
in the know
enable employees to contribute or
protect. For example, a firm’s KM
learning program’s training services
may include or incorporate courses
for its customer service staff on how
to interact with external contacts in
ways that will not leave the company
vulnerable. It can also work with the
CI staff to train trade show attendees on
CI defense or create a module that helps
staff identify potentially important
information and with whom to share it.
What if your organization doesn’t
have a training program or a formal
KM program? Your organization can
start by building awareness among
managers through presentations and
meetings, establishing communication
protocols, or enlisting company
thought-leaders or key social networks.
As in CI, a vital prerequisite to the
success of new enterprise-wide KM
initiatives is management support.
Unlike CI, successful KM initiatives can
be established from the bottom up (or
from the middle) when a committed
group sees its value and can help achieve
the critical mass and management
support required over time.
FOSTER ETHICAL PRACTICES
Coordinating CI and KM can
foster ethical practices, as well.
Ideally, ethics and ethical values are
recognized and supported as a part
of the organization’s culture, and not
simply defined as or governed by a set
of codes, policies, or guidelines. Other
considerations beyond organizational
values (such as personal values, broader
cultural values, situational factors,
etc.) can affect how your company
establishes and interprets ethics. So even
crafting the most comprehensive sets of
ethical policies should only be a start.
The strongest policies are a part of
an ethical culture in which:
• all employees internalize the
organization’s core ethical values
and understand the ethics policies
• key boundaries are outlined
44 www.scip.org Competitive Intelligence Magazine
• regular training is required have any areas of interest or thoughts
• established protocols and resources relating to KM in CI, please drop me a
address any questions, concerns, or note at ccc2@knowledgeinform.com.
interpretations that will inevitably
surface.
References
Grounded in established principles, Rothberg, Helen N. and Erickson, G.
KM can systematically, thoughtfully, Scott (2004). From knowledge to
and consistently incorporate each intelligence: creating competitive
of these activities, while keeping advantage in the next economy.
organizational culture as a central Butterworth-Heinemann, Boston.
consideration. It can also promote Rothberg, Helen N. and G. Scott
ethical understanding by applying Erickson (2006). ‘Stacking the
learning techniques like story telling, strategy deck with “CIKM”
post-project interviews and debriefings, (Seek’em),’ Competitive Intelligence
lessons learned, etc. Since ethics requires Magazine, July-August p6-11.
continuous organizational learning and
employee engagement, incorporating
ethical training and communication
as part of KM activity helps to ensure
that the ethical values, practices, and Cynthia Cheng Correia is Principal of
benefits span the organization. Knowledge inForm, a consulting and
training firm specializing in competitive
intelligence and knowledge/information
HOW TO START management for CI. She teaches and
So, if you’re considering applying advises on CI and KM at Simmons
KM in your CI practice, how do you College and California State University,
start? Some good ways are outlined in Northridge. Cynthia is a member of
the sidebar. the SCIP Boston Chapter Steering
While adopting KM practices Committee, the In-coming Chair of
and tools rarely requires significant SLA’s CI Division, and founding Editor
resources, it does require planning of Intelligence Insights, a publication
and engagement. If you can partner of the SLA CI Division. Cynthia is a
internally with a knowledge manager, frequent speaker and author of books and
take full advantage of it. If you articles on intelligence topics. She can be
have no KM program and limited reached at ccc2@knowledgeinform.com or
resources, then consider adopting some 617.479.7862.
modest but effective techniques or
tools, or employ personal knowledge
management (PKM), which we will
discuss in a future column. An effective
KM effort doesn’t attract a spotlight,
but it will be evident in improved
workflow, processes, individual and
organization learning, and products and
services.
Finally, I’ve only touched the tip of
the CIKM iceberg. In future columns,
I’ll explore some of the specific issues
mentioned here, practical ways to apply
KM techniques and tools to support
and enhance each intelligence function,
current CIKM trends, and more. If you