Good books on CI

[Nimalan]

Hello everyone,

I am in the process of recommending and purchasing some good books on CI for our company library. (After all this time finally CI has been given its seperate budget). I have shortlisted a few. Would like your comments and any other good books that may be there.

The criteria being the books should be practical and not very text bookish. The ones reading it will be our company employees - CI analysts and also other analysts who we hope to hook using these books. Lot of examples and techniques which our analysts can begin to use in their day to day work and see results would be ideal.

- John Nolan's "Confidential: Business secrets - Getting theirs. Keeping yours

- Larry Kahaner's Competitive Intelligence : How to Gather, Analyze, and Use Information to Move Your Business to the Top

- Craig Fleisher and Babette Bensoussan's Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods

Any other suggestions or if you feel I could do with some other book other than the ones mentioned. It would be great. And yes budgets are pretty limited!!

Thanks in advance
Nimalan

[Ellen Naylor]

Hi Nimalan,

That's a good start. I would add Craig and Babette's earlier book to your list: Strategy & Competitive Analysis which goes into another whole set of tools than their more recent book on your list. For competitive technical intelligence, I would buy Keeping Abreast of Science and Technology by Brad Ashton and Dick Klavans. A quick read is Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies by Ben Gilad. I am reading What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro. It's on reading body language and I am really enjoying it. Great for in-person elicitation skill development. The Competitive Intelligence Foundation, a part of SCIP also has some great books: Conference & Trade Show Intelligence, Starting a CI Function, and Competitive Intelligence Ethics: Navigating the Gray Zone.

I have a whole bunch of CI books on my website with connections to Amazon for easy browsing. They are broken down into the following groupings:
Competitive Intelligence: General
Strategic Competitive Intelligence
Product Development
Social Networking, Web 2.0
Online, Internet Researching and Competitive Intelligence Software
Knowledge Management
Global Competitive Intelligence
Technical Intelligence
Counterintelligence and Security

I need to update it again, but it's a great start and includes about 130 books http://www.thecisource.com/resources/books

All the best,

Ellen Naylor

[Nimalan]

Good Lord.. thats a whole treasure trove of books.. wish our library was full of these.. I would not miss a single day at work. Going through all these titles Ellen and thank so much. I shall definitely go through the ones you have recommended. I chose Craig and Babette's second book as it was more recent and cheaper (am on a tight budget!!).

I also recommended Kirk Tyson's comprehensive guide to CI but that took up a huge chunk of our budget and also raised questions if an average analyst in our company would read it.

Anyway, thanks for the list.. I shall get them for our library one by one..

Thanks again Ellen.

[Babette Bensoussan]

HI Nimalan - I totally agree with Ellen's suggestions and The CI Foundation book series contain some of the best articles on particular CI subjects so these books are really quite worthwhile.

We also have a book list on our website - www.mindshifts.com.au - of the latest in CI books.

For your info, our first book contains completely different analytical techniques to Business & Competitive Analysis. They are not the same books.

Best
Babette

[Nimalan]

Hi Babette,

Great to interact with you. I am aware that both the books have different analytical techniques. Would kindly request you to help me out here. I can for the time being buy only either one.

Given our organization is an agency which provides CI services for clients we may not get too much into business level decisions. However we would like to look at a competitor or the competitive landscape and do a quick analysis which will add value to our clients (our projects last an average of a month or two).

Given these factors which book do you think would help us more. I'd like to buy that one first and reserve the next one for our next budget.

Thanks again

Have a nice day
Nimalan