What is competitive intelligence?

[Sally Church, Ph.D]

"There are no secrets, only information you don't yet have."

Source: from the Drop.io Blog


I thought that was a very pithy, if apt, description of CI.

[Max Nelson]

Here's the definition with which I generally work:

A systematic program of legal collection, analysis, and management of information regarding the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of business competitors that can effect an organization’s plans, decisions, and operations, conducted by using information databases and other "open sources" and through ethical inquiry to provide organizations with early warning of changes in the competitive landscape to enhance marketplace competitiveness by understanding competitors and the competitive environment.

[Tadeusz Lemańczyk]

Hello, Sally, there is only one question what Adam Curry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curry ) had in mind when he was coining that phrase. I'm afraid that applying the word "secret" to that phrase he meant "Something unknown or unrevealed or that is known only by initiation or revelation; a mystery; chiefly pl., the hidden affairs or workings (of God, Nature, Science, etc.)", not "Some fact, affair, design, action, etc., the knowledge of which is kept to oneself or shared only with those whom it concerns or to whom it has been confided; something that cannot be divulged without violation of a command or breach of confidence. Frequently with an adj. prefixed, esp. as an intensive, as a dead, entire, profound secret" [Oxford English Dictionary ( http://www.oed.com/ )]. Sadly, the clientele of CI are interested not only in the secrets in the first meaning but also in the secrets in the second meaning.

Best,
Tad