President’s Message
organized human network allows the CI knowledge
➣CI: Fueling Competitive Advantage\
Ava Harth Youngblood
Deborah Snow Walsh, Inc.
Up-to-the-minute information, when collected, an-
alyzed, and delivered to decision makers as competi-
tive intelligence, is as vital as oil for running busi-
nesses in the new global economy, where rapid but
informed decision making can literally mean the dif-
ference between survival and surrender. When CI is
lacking, businesses allocate and use their resources
less efficiently. Competitive intelligence, when abun-
dant, fuels the emergence of creative management
responses to competitive challenges.
Much of the talk about “knowledge manage-
ment” so prevalent now in the business press fails to
note that, as important as it is to organize and cate-
gorize information, there’s more to intelligence than
data management. Competitive advantage doesn’t
come from having the information on your desktop.
It comes from looking at the information and seeing
the implications and applications. The human ele-
ment must still be there. This is where analysis, as
conducted by trained CI professionals, comes in.
Savvy enough to understand that the truth often re-
quires reading between the lines and focusing on
what has not been said, CI practitioners know how
to find the hidden deposits of value hidden beneath
the muddy waters of information overload.
CI professionals also understand that building in-
formal networks that embed CI into corporate cul-
ture can be more important than formal structures.
A recently completed benchmarking study by the
nonprofit American Productivity and Quality Cen-
ter, conducted under the auspices of Dr. John
Prescott (CIR executive editor and a former SCIP
president) and Jan Herring (a SCIP Meritorious
Award winner) found that the development of an
Competitive Intelligence Review, Vol. 9(3) 1 (1998)
© 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 1058-0247/98/03001-01
process to tap into the networks of individuals inside
and outside the company. It also confirms that the
breadth of CI knowledge is far greater—and the
costs are significantly less—than producing the
knowledge from scratch.
IN THE ERA OF INFORMATION GLUT,
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE REQUIRES MOVING
BEYOND THE MERE MANAGEMENT OF
INFORMATION; IT DEMANDS FORMALIZING AND
LEVERAGING THE CREATION OF INTELLIGENCE.
The study, Managing Competitive Intelligence Knowl-
edge is a Global Economy, notes, for example, that the
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center is a prime exam-
ple of how companies use human networks to share
CI knowledge. Users appreciate and employ the
large network of contacts available through the CI
group. Because several CI individuals have extensive
experience, they have established and nurtured rela-
tionships with key Xerox people. The human net-
work goes hand in hand with a culture that is em-
bedded in CI.
Why is this important? Because the ability to ef-
fectively use competitive intelligence has never been
greater. It’s been said that the central conflict in eco-
nomics is the battle between past and future—
between the existing configurations of competitive
threats and opportunities, and what will soon replace
them. With a mother lode of technologies ready to
shape the next quarter of a century, there’s reason to
believe that competitive regroupings and realign-
ments will be faster than ever. And with lightening-
fast communications, the challenge to act quickly
will be vital. But this will mean moving beyond
mere information management by formalizing and
leveraging the creation of intelligence, and thus pro-
viding the power for sustained competitive advantage
in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century.