Education and careers in competitive intelligence in India

[Varsha Chitale]

On the SCIP linkedin group I recently came across a survey to identify the education and career moves that can lead a person into the competitive intelligence discipline.  It was most interesting to note that many of the competitive intelligence practitioners, even in countries more “CI mature” than India, got into their role by accident!

Competitive intelligence in India is a very new discipline. There are few educational courses that lead to a career in CI.

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[Varsha Chitale]

Hi Craig,

Thank you for pointing me to your article and the bibliography.

It seems to me that increasing the integration of CI with strategy formulation could be the key to a long term career in CI. At the entry level, CI analysts are more involved in the mechanics of gathering CI. Senior CI practitioners need to migrate from the gathering to effective use of the intelligence for improving the organisation's  performance. Has that worked in your experience?

Varsha

Hi Craig,

Thank you for pointing me to your article and the bibliography.

It seems to me that increasing the integration of CI with strategy formulation could be the key to a long term career in CI. At the entry level, CI analysts are more involved in the mechanics of gathering CI. Senior CI practitioners need to migrate from the gathering to effective use of the intelligence for improving the organisation's  performance. Has that worked in your experience?

Varsha

[Craig S. Fleisher]

Hello Varsha:

You have come upon a problem I've long written about and personally have tried to improve for over two decades and running. I'm still working on this but from a different vantage point these days.

There are few nation states where there are clear paths from CI education to CI career. The majority of people practicing in corporate CI are visitors to the field. Even those few individuals who manage to stay in it for 10+ years, it is not an easy place to stay until the end of your career (unless, of course, you began in it just prior to that event). Very few CI people make it into the C-suite as a regular invitee and contributor.

I published an article about this a few years ago that still gets cited a bit -- see: Fleisher, Craig, “Competitive intelligence education: Competencies, sources and trends,” Information Management Journal (ISSN 1535-2897), 2004, 38(2), 56-63.

Also, see http://static.ow.ly/docs/CI_Bibliography_wP.pdf for John McGonagle's bibliography on CI education articles.

I hope that India might light the way in terms of developing an educational infrastructure that is supportive of people pursuing CI careers there. Few efforts in most nations have gotten very far!

Craig