One,
Competitive Intelligence (CI) generally refers to all the information about competitors and competitive environment that competitors need to maintain their competitive advantage, such as the origin and price of raw materials, the quality of technical equipment and personnel, management level, market scope and marketing methods. In addition, it also includes environmental factors, such as political environment, geographical environment, humanistic and social environment and so on. Broadly speaking, it also includes related intelligence activities.
In the modern international economic environment, competitive intelligence activities are targeted intelligence activities of specific economic organizations and even government agencies. Its connotation includes at least four elements: it is accurate information reflecting the products, technologies and business activities of similar economic organizations participating in market competition; It has extremely high commercial value and can bring huge economic benefits to the obligee; It is the result of analogy, evaluation, analysis and content reorganization of initial information; Powerful people often have to protect all or part of their existing information from being used by others for their own interests.
Therefore, competitive intelligence has the nature of trade secret, which casts a mysterious color on some intelligence work. No matter how people look at this kind of work morally, in the increasingly fierce market competition of users, market share and resources, people finally accepted this invisible and powerful commercial warfare weapon.
Second, the background of competitive intelligence
The term competitive intelligence appeared in the early 1980s. Although intelligence activities associated with competitive activities widely exist in a wide range of fields of human society, as a theoretical, practical, organizational and professional concept of competitive intelligence, it has only a history of more than ten years.
The background of competitive intelligence is the intensification of global commercial war. 1990 The collapse of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the "Cold War" between the East and the West. The world is in a relatively peaceful environment, and countries are competing to develop their economies. The field of international intelligence has turned to a fierce business intelligence war. For example, 1993, someone threw a document collected by France aimed at American high-tech and big companies into the yard of the American embassy in France, causing an uproar; From 199 1 to 1992, the United States sued three Japanese companies for patent infringement cases and recovered nearly $430 million in compensation.
Experts believe that traditional intelligence activities and market research are difficult to meet this demand in the environment of intensified global business competition, and intelligence activities with the theme of "competitive intelligence" have been pushed onto the historical stage.
Third, the development status of international competitive intelligence
1. International competitive intelligence service has developed into an industry.
Since 1980s, the competition among enterprises has intensified. According to the survey of global enterprise competitive intelligence activities conducted by SIS International Company in 1993, 74% of enterprises have formally established competitive intelligence departments, and 50% of them have a budget of more than 654.38 million US dollars.
The scope of competitive intelligence activities is getting wider and wider, and there are more and more participants. In addition to the competitive intelligence department within the company, there are intelligence dealers, information technology operators, intelligence experts with special skills, and even academic research institutions, industry associations, governments and international organizations. The increase of cooperation in competitive intelligence activities and the formation of competitive intelligence market have made competitive intelligence activities develop from market intelligence services to an industry.
2. International competitive intelligence education has always attracted much attention.
With the gradual expansion of competitive intelligence activities, the demand for theoretical and methodological guidance is becoming more and more urgent. Moreover, with the deepening of competitive intelligence activities, the original economics education and information technology education can no longer meet the needs. Therefore, it is an urgent requirement for social competitive intelligence practice to carry out competitive intelligence education and provide special theoretical and methodological guidance. For example, the Swedish military research institute will be military C.
The principles and methods of command, control, communication and intelligence are applied to enterprise competitive intelligence. Boston University teaches "competitor analysis" in MBA program. The University of Technology Sydney has also offered some competitive intelligence courses and case study lectures involving traditional enterprise intelligence activities. In Europe, many of the seminars organized by SCIP involve the characteristics of competitive intelligence serving enterprise management decision-making.
3. Competitive intelligence activities are developing towards organization and specialization.
The American Association of Competitive Intelligence Professionals was first established in 1986. It has more than 2,500 members, publishes Competitive Intelligence Review and SCIP News, and has become a global SCIP promotion group, which has developed all over the world. SCIP was established in Europe on 1990. After that, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Japan and Australia all set up SCIP organizations. In June, 5438+0994+ 10, China established the Information Research and Competitive Intelligence Committee of China Science and Technology Information Society, and began to study and apply competitive intelligence in an organized and relatively standardized way. It can be seen that the competitive intelligence industry is becoming a global profession.
The establishment of American Association of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) has greatly strengthened the intelligence work of enterprises.
The first is to set up a "cost center" within the company (enterprise) to help the enterprise assess the situation, adapt to the changes in the external environment, and determine the current long-term business objectives. Secondly, the post of chief information manager (equivalent to deputy general manager) is set up to communicate the relationship between the top decision-making level and information management level of the enterprise and participate in the long-term planning and overall goal decision-making of the enterprise. According to a sample survey of 500 large enterprises in the United States in the late 1980s, 40% companies have set up this position.
Of course, a country's economic take-off is based on science and technology. Only when science and technology are advanced can the products produced be competitive. However, at what price, when and where can this product get more profits, but it is not a problem that scientific and technological information itself can solve. Therefore, in order to strengthen their own competitiveness, countries are strengthening the means and ability to obtain and analyze economic information, market information and business information.
It is in this context that the American Association of Competitive Intelligence Professionals came into being, which has played an inestimable role in American scientific and technological progress, economic growth and participation in international competition.
Methods to improve the professional ethics and quality of competitive intelligence analysts
3. 1 Establish a legal system of fair competition
China's "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" and "Regulations on the Protection of Trade Secrets" regulate the legal issues in China's competition work, but they are not perfect enough, and many acts that undermine fair competition cannot be followed and prohibited according to law. In addition, the judicial organs and administrative departments are lax in enforcing the law and fail to investigate and deal with unfair competition, which provides an opportunity for the illegal acts of competitive intelligence practitioners. Therefore, we must speed up the legislative work of competitive intelligence, improve relevant laws and regulations, and strengthen law enforcement.
3.2 develop professional ethics standards
At present, the development of China's relevant legal system is not perfect, and it is unrealistic to regulate competitive intelligence analysts only by legal means. Therefore, enterprises or organizations can formulate professional ethics suitable for their own intelligence activities to regulate internal personnel. For example, China Competitive Intelligence Research Association (scic), as the only national professional organization of competitive intelligence in China, adopted the Code of Ethics for Professional Conduct of Members of Competitive Intelligence Branches formulated by SCIC in early 2006.
3.3 Professional ethics education to build the comprehensive quality of professional intelligence personnel.
On the one hand, it is necessary to educate competitive intelligence practitioners in ethics and norms, and enhance their moral awareness and professional ethics. On the other hand, we should pay attention to the quality education or training of professional knowledge and related abilities for competitive intelligence practitioners. Mainly includes: (1) knowledge quality. In addition to the basic knowledge of document informatics, professional and related knowledge, foreign language knowledge, computer, network communication and multimedia knowledge, intelligence analysts should also have knowledge of management, economics, sociology, law, public relations and other disciplines to complete the multi-level and diversified development and utilization of information resources. (2) ability and quality. First of all, we should have strong information absorption ability, enhance information awareness, keep a keen perception of new things, new knowledge and new theories, and be able to carry out creative information reorganization and processing according to certain scientific principles. Secondly, we should have comprehensive analysis ability, including comprehensive consideration of industry competitors or potential competitors, policies, economy, culture and other factors. Finally, we must have certain management and public relations skills. Modern management modes such as IRM (information resource management) and CIS (enterprise identification system) introduced by modern enterprises enable intelligence analysts to exercise their management ability in the competition, establish interpersonal intelligence networks with the help of various public relations activities, expand the social impact of intelligence competitive intelligence activities, and make users trust and rely on intelligence analysis, thus transforming effective information into real productivity.
3.4 Develop the qualification certification system.
The qualification certificate of competitive intelligence analyst should become the industry's access control for employees, the standard, basis and certificate for employees to engage in competitive intelligence analysis, and the basis for recruiting and hiring competitive intelligence analysts for relevant competitive intelligence analysis majors. In foreign countries, competitive intelligence analysts must have certain qualifications. To obtain the qualification certification of competitive intelligence analyst, you must pass the examination or grade certification. When formulating China's qualification certification system, it should not be regarded as a simple examination system, but should pay attention to the combination of training examination and practical work to effectively improve the practical work ability of personnel.