The Added Value of Competitive Intelligence
Five types of intelligence attitudes
Authors :
Dr Daniel Rouach, Professor at ESCP-EAP
Patrice Santi, Research Associate at ESCP-EAP
(article to be published in 2000 in the European Management Journal)
I. Introduction
Competitive Intelligence tracks the activity of direct
and indirect competitors in a range of areas : general
business activity, business development activity,
strategic thrusts and tactical manoeuvres in different
sectors or new activities (sometimes designed to
confuse and mislead), market encroachments, patent
registration, research activity, etc.
school2 specialising in the management of innovation,
technology transfer and competitive intelligence.
It seeks to synthesise and optimise the knowledge
accumulated by the GTI Lab, notably through the
completion of three major work packages:
-
The elaboration of a “Competitive Intelligence
Tool Box”3, which was edited for the Ministry of
Industry in 19994. This research project aimed to
provide first knowledge on the Competitive
Intelligence (CI) concept, practical examples of CI
best practices, and tools for the setting up and
developing of CI systems. It includes a series of
transparencies, illustrative charts and diagrams on
the concept, case studies or illustrations on more
than 15 companies practising CI5, and pedagogic
as well as practical tools for the implementation of
CI systems within the corporate environment
(information sources, key success factors, do’s and
don’ts, etc.).
-
The editing and publishing of two books6 and six
articles dealing with CI issues. These articles were
published in major French and international
magazines or business newspapers.
-
The setting up of three international conferences
on the “World-wide Tour of Competitive
Intelligence”,
which
gathered
consultants,
Government officials and academic experts on
Competitive Intelligence may be seen as a radar screen
spotting new opportunities or helping avert disasters. It
enables the firm to observe its environment. Further,
the intelligence reflex empowers the firm to monitor its
own development. All too frequently, business leaders
are left in the dark because they overlook crucial data
or ignore information which at first sight seems
insignificant.
But what exactly does it consist of? What are the limits
of its scope?
The objective of this article is to present the main
characteristics of the Competitive Intelligence concept
and to describe how it has become a real management
practice that is now developing inside most leading
companies in the world. We are going to give our
definition of this concept but also to have a look at the
definitions that we have found in the literature. Finally,
we are going to see how it is developed within
companies.
This article will seek to answer the following key
questions:


What are the different types of
Intelligence attitudes?
How companies practice Competitive
Intelligence – best practice examples
It is the result of the research work which has been
realised between 1998 and 2000 by the GTI Lab1, a
research laboratory of the ESCP-EAP business
See GTI Lab’s Web site at
http://research.eap.net/gtilab/
1
2
ESCP-EAP is a French graduate management school
based in Paris, Oxford, Berlin and Madrid.
3
“Kit Veille – Naviga’Veille”, Dr. Daniel ROUACH,
September 1999.
4
This initiative was launched by the Paris Chamber of
Commerce.
5
Notably Nestlé, Motorola, Gemplus, Aérospatiale,
Sanofi, Ciments Français, Essilor, Guerbet, L’Oréal,
Ericsson, and Oberthur.
6
“Le Management du transfert de technologie, l’art de
coopérer, innover, veiller ”, Presse Universitaires de
France, 1999. “La Veille technologique et
l'Intelligence économique ”, collection Que Sais-Je,
Presses Universitaires de France, 1996 with update in
1999.
1
Competitive Intelligence, Knowledge Management
and Benchmarking.
Through the completion of these projects, the GTI Lab
was given the opportunity to interview specialists from
leading companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, IBM, or
L’Oréal, and expert consultants from all over the world.
In addition, attendance to conferences and workshops
organised outside ESCP-EAP allowed to gather
valuable inputs from renowned speakers and lecturers.
II - From Information to Intelligence - Overview of
the Competitive Intelligence concept
In an article Michael E. Porter and Victor E. Millar 7
pointed out how information changes the industry
structure and, in so doing, alters the rules of
competition.
The information revolution, as Porter and Millar put it,
creates competitive advantage by giving companies
new ways to outperform their rivals. Information
technology, in particular, is affecting the entire process
by which companies create their products. It is
permeating the company’s value chain at every point,
transforming the way value activities are performed and
the nature of linkages among them. It not only affects
how individual activities are performed but, through
new information flows, it is also greatly enhancing a
company’s ability to exploit linkages between
activities, both within and outside the company.
Information technology is affecting competitive scope
and reshaping the way products meet buyer needs.
The emergence of an old management practice
Over the past few years, CI has become a management
concept on its own. As we will see, many leading
companies are now integrating it in their organisational
culture. Intelligence practices, however, have long been
developed by companies all over the world.
The German have for centuries understood its benefits.
Back in the fifteenth century, the House of Fugger,
from its base in Augsburg, disseminated manuscript
newsletters to provide its key officers a steady flow of
confidential political and commercial information8.
Modern German intelligence grew in the eighteenth
century: scouting the European continent, the Germans
discovered that they could compete with established
French and British firms by applying foreign scientific
advances to their own industrial processes. They
Michael E. Porter and Victor E. Millar, “How
information gives you competitive advantage”, Michael
E. Porter on Competition and Strategy, Harvard
Business Review1991.
8
Taken from Jean-Marie Bonthous, Understanding
Intelligence Accross Cultures, the International Journal
of Intelligence and counterlintelligence.
7
rapidly developed their own base of education and
research as a foundation for technological innovation.
By the late 1800s the Germans held international rights
to many formulas and processes, particularly in the
chemical field.
Japan was forced to open its doors when it realised,
with the arrival of the warships of Commodore
Matthew C. Perry in 1854, that after two centuries of
self-imposed seclusion, the ocean no longer provided a
natural shield against technologically superior military
powers. In 1868, Emperor Meiji (“the enlightened”)
launched a program of communitarianism, nationalism,
and modernisation, with the intention of enabling the
country to compete with the West by absorbing the best
Western practices. Meiji was among the first to
understand that the “not invented here” syndrome was
incompatible with global competition.
After World War II, the country was stripped of its
military power, and converted its military espionage
capability into an economic intelligence powerhouse,
and since then has dedicated its forces toward building
a national, integrated business intelligence system with
unlimited scope and time horizon. In the early 1950s,
Japan busily sent tens of thousands of market
researchers around the world to assess the potential of
the photographic market, which was to be their major
breakthrough.
Japan is the only country that has managed to create a
national system of intelligence, whereas more liberal
economies have not been able to integrate national and
business interests. One reason is that Japan and
intelligence have grown hand in hand. The pledge of
allegiance of the Imperial Kingdom, dating back to
1868, stated that it was every subject’s duty to gather
information about the rest of the world. The system has
been in place for more than 130 years: it is mature,
effective, and efficient. Information serves as the axis
and the central structural support of the nation’s
companies.
From a more general point of view, the competitive
intelligence approach highly benefits from other
management concepts that have been developed over
the past decades. Knowledge Management, in
particular, is one of the most influential concepts in
today’s business environment.
A 1998 report by KPMG found that 43 percent of the
U..K.’s leading firms (66 percent of those with over
2,000 employees) had some kind of Knowledge
Management scheme. The fact is that a growing
number of companies have created the job of chief
knowledge officer (CKO), including leading firms like
Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Xerox and
Motorola.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, for example, schedules
regular internal conferences with associated
2
“Knowledge Fairs” to harvest thoughts, experiences
and war stories.
The U.S. Army uses an “After Action Review” to
codify soldiers’ learning and apply it rapidly for the
next group going into action.
top U.S. corporations have since joined the research
consortium.
IBM’s
Institute
for
Knowledge
Management (IIKM) is a membership uniting
executives from outfits like General Motors, Xerox and
the World Bank, with Knowledge Management experts
from industry and schools such as Boston University,
Stanford and Wharton.
Ernst & Young opened a Centre for Business
Knowledge in 1994 in Cleveland, Ohio, and two dozen
From information to intelligence: the raison d’être of
Competitive Intelligence
For the GTI Lab, a first definition of the Competitive
Intelligence concept can be as follows:
Figure 1 – the Competitive Intelligence concept
Competitive intelligence: Definition
Competitive intelligence is the art of
locating, collecting, processing and storing
information to be made available to people
at all levels of the firm with a view to
shaping its future, but also protecting its
present against competitive threat.
It is legal and it respects a code of ethics.
In other words, competitive intelligence is
the transfer of knowledge from the
environment to the organisation with
respect to established rules.
© GTI Lab, ESCP-EAP
Information is definitely at the centre of the concept. As
suggested in the definition however, Competitive
Intelligence covers wider goals and stakes that just
gathering this information.
When presenting the intelligence concept, Leonard M.
Fuld9 reveals all the dimensions hiding behind crude,
basic information: “Sometimes, it’s almost easier to
describe what intelligence is not, rather than what it is.
It is not reams of database printouts. It is not
necessarily thick, densely written reports. It is most
certainly not spying, stealing, or bugging. In its most
basic description, intelligence is analysed information”.
Information is factual, as Larry Kahaner10 explains: it is
numbers, statistics, scattered bits of data about people
and companies and what they have been doing that
seems to be of interest. Intelligence, on the other hand,
is a collection of information pieces that have been
filtered, distilled, and analysed. For Kahaner, the basis
of competitive intelligence is precisely knowing the
difference between information and intelligence :
“Intelligence, not information, is what managers need
to make decisions. Another term for intelligence is
knowledge”.
In their “Competitive Intelligence Guideline”, Pierre
Achard and Jean-Pierre Bernat11 highlight the added
value provided by competitive intelligence managers,
whose role is to enrich data throughout the information
cycle. As shown in the following diagram, these
manager transform information into an exploitable
intelligence which can be used decision makers.
9
Leonard M. Fuld, The New Competitor Intelligence,
Wiley 1995.
10
Larry Kahaner, Competitive Intelligence, Simon &
Schuster, 1996.
11
Pierre Achard, Jean-Pierre Bernat, L’Intelligence
Economique, Mode d’Emploi, ADBS Editions, 1998.
3
Jean-Philippe Deschamps and P. Ranganath Nayack,
from Arthur D. Little, Inc.15 distinguish three main
types of intelligence.
Figure 2 – the information cycle
From Data to Intelligence
The information cycle
Human
intelligence
Data
Collection
Selection
Exploitable
Information
Information
Analysis
Synthesis
Source: Pierre Achard, Jean-Pierre Bernat,
L’Intelligence Economique : Mode d’Emploi, ADBS Editions, 1998
Bringing added value to information and being able to
transmit it is the major purpose of intelligence
initiatives. In an economy where the only certainty is
uncertainty, the one sure source of lasting competitive
advantage is knowledge12. For Peter Drucker13, who
defines information as “data endowed with relevance
and purpose”, companies must now be able to build a
system capable of fostering and optimising this added
value if they want to survive. According to him,
companies will have to be more and more knowledgebased organisations, composed largely of specialists
able to direct and discipline their own performance
through organised feedback from colleagues,
customers, and headquarters, and who will be able to
transform their data into information.
Market Intelligence and insights are needed to provide
a road map of current and likely future trends in
customer needs, demands, and preferences; of new
markets and creative segmentation opportunities; and
of major shifts in marketing and distribution.
Competitive Intelligence and insights are needed to
evaluate how the competitive intensity will evolve over
time, through changes in competitors’ structure, the
emergence of new substitution products, or new
entrants in the industry.
Technology Intelligence and insights are needed to
assess the cost/benefit potential of current and new
technologies as well as to make a tentative forecast of
future discontinuities in technology evolution with their
resulting opportunities and threats.
For the GTI Lab, the CI concept can be segmented into
4 main categories, which are quite in line with
Deschamps and Raganath Nayack’ vision:
-
The marketing/commercial intelligence, which
mainly gathers and analyse information from
customers, suppliers and sub-contractors, buyers
and distributors.
-
The competitors intelligence, which focuses on
competitors related issues, including for example
pricing policies, arrival of substitute products, or
competition’s development policies.
-
The technical and technology intelligence, which
deals with fundamental and applied research,
factories and processes, and norms and patents.
-
The strategic and societal intelligence, which
includes regulation, financial and tax issues,
economical and political issues, as well as social
and human resources aspects. This fourth type of
intelligence, which is often practised in many
companies, mainly aims to observe and analyse
social behaviour trends.
Defining competitive intelligence’s scope
In a broad sense, competitive intelligence covers the
monitoring of information about the entire industry at
hand14. It consists of detecting the “ weak signals ”, i.e.
the barely recognisable trends which could lead to a
change in the environment of the company. Its function
is to alert management sufficiently early, thanks to the
relevant information, to all scientific and technical
innovation, or any environmental move which is likely
to change the firm’s economic landscape.
12
Ikujiro Nonaka, The Knowledge-Creating Company,
Harvard Business Review on Knowledge
Management, Harvard Business School Press, 1998.
13
Peter F. Drucker, The Coming of the New
Organization, Harvard Business Review on
Knowledge Management, Harvard Business School
Press, 1998.
14
Thomas Durand, François Farhi, Charles de Brabant,
For an intelligent approch to competitive intelligence,
Forthocoming in "Keepting Track of Science and
Technology", W.B. Ashton and R.A. Klavans, Batelle
Press 1994.
15
Jean-Philippe Deschamps and P. Ranganath Nayack,
Product Juggernauts – How companies mobilize to
generate a stream of market winners, Harvard
Business School Press, 1995.
4
Following figures present these main intelligence types.
Figure 3 – the fourth types of intelligence
Competitive Intelligence: a system of linked and
interdependant activities
1
Marketing
Intelligence
4
Strategic &
Societal
Intelligence
Technical &
Technology
Intelligence
3
2
Competitor
Intelligence
© GTI Lab, ESCP-EAP
Figure 4 – the intelligence pyramids
Competitive Intelligence mainly includes four types of intelligence
Suppliers
and
sub-contractors
Competitors
Market
Intelligence
Customers
Competitor
Intelligence
Buyers
Distributors
1. The market intelligence:
Which customers? Which suppliers?
Price
Social
Ressources Humaines
2. The competitor intelligence:
Which competitors ?
Regulation
Financial &
tax issues
Fundamental
& applied
research
Technology
Intelligence
Factories
and processes
Substitute
products
Societal
Intelligence
Patents
and norms
3. The technology intelligence:
which technologies?
Economic and
Political
Social and
Human Resources
4. The strategic intelligence and others:
Which regulations? Which strategies?
© GTI Lab, ESCP-EAP
III – Analysing the Competitive Intelligence Process
5
From knowledge management and information
technology to added value Competitive Intelligence
systems
In a world where mass information is highly accessible,
notably through the developing of Internet facilities and
through the globalisation of business activities, one
may wonder how common knowledge might lead to
competitive added value and increase the company’s
efficiency.
In Business @ the Speed of Thought 16, Bill Gates
maintains that the most meaningful way for a company
to differentiate from its competition is to do an
outstanding job with information : “How you gather,
manage, and use information will determine whether
you win or lose. There are more competitors. There is
more information available about them and about the
market, which is now global. The winners will be the
ones who develop a world-class digital nervous system
so that information can easily flow through their
companies for maximum and constant learning”.
When analysing the situation, Gates observes that even
companies that have made significant investments in
information technology are not getting the results they
could be. For him, this gap is not the result of a lack of
technology spending: “ In fact, most companies have
invested in the building blocks: PCs for productivity
applications; networks and electronic mail for
communications; basic business applications. The
typical company has made 80 percent of the investment
in the technology that can give a healthy flow of
information yet is typically getting only 20 percent of
the benefits that are now possible. The gap between
what companies are spending and what they are getting
stems from the combination of not understanding what
is possible and not seeing the potential when you use
technology to move the right information quickly to
everyone in the company”.
According to Bill Gates, the job that most companies
are doing with information today would have been fine
several years ago. Getting rich information was
prohibitively expensive, and the tools for analysing and
disseminating it were not available in the 1980s and
even in the early 1990s. But on the edge of the twentyfirst century, the tools and connectivity of the digital
age give companies a way to easily obtain, share, and
act on information in new and remarkable ways.
For Bill Gates, Competitive Intelligence would
probably be highly supported and driven by technology
: “For the first time, all kinds of information – numbers,
text, sound, video – can be put into a digital form that
any computer can store, process and forward. For the
first time, standard hardware combined with a standard
software platform has created a scale that make
16
Bill Gates, Business @ the Speed of Thought,
Penguin Books 1999.
powerful computing solutions available inexpensively
to companies of all sizes (…) We have infused our
organization with a new level of electronic-based
intelligence”.
In its essence however, competitive intelligence
appears as a whole culture characterised by specific
attitudes and management practices which concern
everybody in the company. For Leonard M. Fuld17, “the
framework of a successful intelligence system is build
on and around the culture of each organization. In other
words, intelligence systems – despite the computerbased applications this concept conjures up – are very
much a human issue”.
From his side, Kahaner insists that competitive
intelligence is a whole process, not a mere function in
the company. According to him, it appears “in all
aspects of your business as one seamless, continuous
activity not relegated to one area, division or unit”.
Kahaner conceives the competitive intelligence process
as a system characterised in four steps18:
1. Planning and Direction
2. Collection of data
3. Analysis
4. Dissemination
The Planning and Direction step is when an
intelligence action is defined and launched, therefore
initiating a process which will lead to the delivery of
the information to the end user. During that phase,
particular attention has to be paid to the understanding
of the user’s need. As Kahaner puts it, “intelligence has
various uses: strategic planning, research and
development, entry strategies, acquisitions, market
timing, and technology assessment”, and the success of
the process will highly depend on the capability of the
intelligence manager to find out what top management
needs to know and why. The time frame involved is
also critical, as it will determine how to allocate
resources and what types of collection processes to use.
Depending upon the time available and the intelligence
items requested, the intelligence will then set up a plan
outlining what information should be collected. Once
its action plan completed, the intelligence manager
goes back to the user to make sure it fits his needs.
The Collection step involves obtaining the raw data that
will be turned into usable intelligence. As synthesised
by Jean-Marie Allin19, three types of data can be
distinguished:
17
Leonard M. Fuld, The New Competitor Intelligence,
Wiley 1995.
18
Larry Kahaner, Competitive Intelligence, Simon &
Schuster, 1996.
19
Jean-Marie Allin, Competitive Intelligence - French
and US ways of practizing Competitive Intelligence,
1997. Presentation document on competitive
6



The Open Source Information, also called White
Information, represents the open source
information, which can be found in public
databases, newspapers, or publications. Companies
like Dun & Bradstreet, Lexis-Nexis or Reuters
provide an important quantity of data. The firms
nowadays subscribe to such databases in order to
find their main source of intelligence. The Internet
is also an important source of information. The
open source intelligence is mainly an electronic
intelligence.
The Grey Information, which represents nonpublic domain information. The grey information
is provided through public sources which are only
opened to insiders, people who are inside a
diffusion circle. This information can be found
through visiting trade shows, bringing back
information from a network of salesmen, or
subscribing to very specific types of publications,
which are ignored by competitors. An example for
that kind of information is the information
salesmen can collect by visiting the customers of
the firm about the competitors. That kind of
intelligence is mainly human intelligence.
Black Information / Espionage: the black
information is the information gathered through
illegal ways, such as usurpation of employees
identities, computer piracy, burglary or phone lines
tapping. That kind of intelligence is proscribed by
firms’ code of ethics and of course, by law. This
kind of intelligence is both electronic intelligence
and human intelligence.
Figure 5 – Classifying the information types
Classifying according to information types
C la ss ifica tio n a c co rd in g to in fo rm a t io n ty p es
80 %
C O L D IN F O R M A T IO N
W h ite
In f o rm a tio n
20 %
H OT
S E C RE T
G re y
I nfo r m a t io n
B la c k
I nfo r m a t io n
I n d u s tri al
es p i on a g e
C om p eti tive
In tell igen ce
G re y In fo rm a tio n
75 %
B l a ck In for m a ti o n
25 %
© GTI Lab, ESCP-EAP
The Analysis step is the core element of the process.
Analysis is, as Kahaner defines it, “the process of
taking information – often seemingly unconnected
information – and turning it into intelligence”. It is, for
Leonard M. Fuld20, both an art and a discipline, which
enables to convert information into intelligence. It is,
most of the time, “a process of winnowing the good
from useless information and finding a framework in
which to add value to that good information (…) The
analysis need not be complicated, only complete and
accurate”.
As shown in the following figure, the dissemination
step is described by Kahaner as the last step, but also
the first in the cycle. It is the time when the analyst
suggests possible course of action based on his work,
and when the intelligence resulting from its
recommendations is distributed to the end user and to
others in the company who can use it.
White Information represents the main part of
information (around 80%). As illustrated in the
following schema, among the 20% which are left, Grey
Information is estimated to represent 75% of it.
Competitive Intelligence, which is legal and respects a
code of ethics, and therefore does not include industrial
espionage, is particularly focused on that part of the
information.
intelligence practices. Taken from
Http://www.geocities.com/
WallStreet/Floor/7918/main_eng_resume.html.
20
Leonard M. Fuld, The New Competitor Intelligence,
Wiley 1995.
7
Figure 6 – the intelligence cycle
The Intelligence Cycle
1. Planning and Direction
2. Collection
3. Analysis
4. Dissemination
in
ion
llect
o
2. C
lann
I. P
tion
irec
D
d
g an
ion
alysis
3. An
4. D
isse
m
ina
t
Source: Larry Kahaner, Competitive Intelligence, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
In Leonard Fuld’s description of the competitive
intelligence process, the analysis step is followed by an
action phase, which includes the storing and delivering
of the intelligence, but also the protection of the
company’s business activities (preventing for instance
possible information leaks), and the recommendation’s
implementation.
Other representation of the competitive intelligence
process might also be that of Ashton and Stacey21, who
include a sixth step in the CI process: the auditing of
the system’s performance. The purpose of the
evaluation is to improve future operations by making
them more responsive to company needs, to further
clarify those needs and to adjust practices accordingly.
From this evaluation of the company’s competitive
intelligence process starts a new cycle which takes into
account the experience of previous actions.
The Science and Technology intelligence process
Collect
Source
Materials
2
Data
Analyze
Source
Data
3
Information
Needs
Targets
Sources
Methods
Needs
Plan 1
Intelligence
Activities
Intelligence
Information
System
Deliver 4
Information
Products
Intelligence
. feedback
Evaluate 6 Performance
Program
Performance
Apply
Intelligence
Results
5
Impacts
SOURCE : Ashton, W.B. and Stacey, G.S. (1995) ‘Technical intelligence in business: understanding
technology threats and opportunity’ Int. J. Technology Management, Special Issue on the Management of
Technological Flows Across Boundaries.
Figure 7 – the intelligence process
Ashton, W.B. and Stacey, G.S. (1995) ‘Technical
intelligence in business: understanding technology
threats and opportunity’ Int. J. Technology
Management, Special Issue on the Management of
Technological Flows Across Boundaries, Vol. 10,
No.1, pp.79-104.
21
8
IV- The five types of intelligence attitudes
Competitive intelligence can range from a “ watching
out ” attitude, that is watching out and being prepared
to react, to a “ hunting ” attitude – looking out for
specific information, which a specific aim in mind.
Generally speaking, we would distinguish five types of
intelligence attitudes:
1.
The warrior attitude. In this case, the intelligence
manager is very pro-active when it comes to
investing. The manager is continuously on the
lookout for opportunities.
2.
The assault attitude: the manager is also very proactive, above all in highly competitive areas. Many
ex-military intelligence specialists become
competitive intelligence professionals in civilian
life.
3.
The active attitude: the manager is always looking
for strategic information through normal sources.
However, the company ’s information system is
not really structured.
4.
The reactive attitude: the manager only responds
when attacked from outside.
The sleeper’s attitude: the management team
shows no interest in competitive intelligence and
knowledge management and shows no fear of the
competition – ‘More out of ignorance than of
boldness’.
5.
Such classification can be represented as shown in the
following diagram:
Figure 8 – the competitive intelligence matrix
The 5 competitive intelligence attitudes
Offensive 5
+
« Warrior » Intelligence
manageres
4
+
Active
Offensive Intelligence managers
3
+
2
Inactive 1
+
+
0
1
Amateurs
Active Intelligence managers
Reactive intelligence managers
Sleepers
2
3
Professionals
4
5
Expertise
© GTI Lab, ESCP-EAP
9
They’re also turning to consultants and “ information
vendors ” for help.
As shown in the following table, such classification
enables to locate a company according to its CI
practices.
“ There’s much less room for mistakes than there was
in the past ”, said John E. Prescott, a professor of
business administration at the University of Pittsburgh.
Figure 9 – Some best practice examples
The 5 types of Intelligence attitudes: best practice examples
Type of Intelligence
attitude
1. »WARRIORS"
France/
 Exemples :
 L'Oréal
 ELF
 Michelin
 SHELL
 Aerospatiale

Europe
 ABB
 Bouygues
 Ciments français
 SKFDassault
 Aviation
United-States
 Exemples :
 Boeing
 Corning
 AT & T
 Motorola
 Xerox

 General Electric
 Rockwell
 Mariott
 Kraft
 General Mills
Japan/Asia
 Exemples :
 Les Sogo Shoshas
 NEC
 Mitsubishi
 Toshiba
 Canon

Big Japanese and
Korean firms
2. OFFENSIVE
3. ACTIVE
 Thomson CSF
 Guerbet
 Nestlé
 IBM Europe
 Saint Gobain
 Air Liquide
 Siemens
 CEA
 DTA
 La Poste
 Lafuma
 Airbus
 Hutchinson
 Schneider
 SEP
 Alcatel
 Snecma
 Sanofi

 Nutrasweet
 Federal Express
 McDonnell
Douglas (1997)

 Big American




 Big French firms
firms

 Toyota
 Nissan
 Daewoo
 Nomura

 Chinese companies
Japanese SME ’s
American
SME ’s
And some SME ’s

4. REACTIVE
5. SLEEPERS

Of French
SME ’s
*Cas d'entreprises les plus souvent citées par presse et ouvrages spécialisés.Sources d'informations publiques/liste non exhaustive
© GTI Lab, ESCP-EAP
Some Examples
NUTRASWEET has an assault attitude
“ Nutrasweet’s patent on the artificial sweetener
aspartame was due to expire in 1982, and the company
faced possible disaster as chemical and sugar
companies planned moves on the market.
So Nutrasweet began analysing competitors’ prices.
Customer relations, expansion plans and advertising
campaigns. The company used the information - called
competitive intelligence - to cut costs, improve service
and preserve most of its market.
Flynn said competitive intelligence practices are worth
$ 50 million a year to his company ”.
The watchful eyes of business intelligence enable the
firm to observe its environment. Further, the
intelligence reflex will empower the firm to monitor its
own development. All too frequently, business leaders
are left in the dark because they overlook crucial date
or ignore information which at first sight seems
insignificant. A culture of intelligence will improve the
performance of these and the other players in the firm.
NESTLE has an active attitude
“ We maintained over 80 percent of our market ”.
Nutrasweet Co. chairman Robert E. Flynn said. With
increasingly tough global competition and helterskelter
advances in information technology, many companies
are forming their own competitive intelligence units.
Through more than 130 years of history, Nestlé has
grown form a two-product company focusing
essentially on infant nutrition to one of the largest food
companies world-wide.
The food industry is highly innovative: about 5000 new
products are launched every year. In Germany, 25 % of
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Nestlé’s sales are made up with products which did not
exist three years ago. These figures emphasise the
essential role played by R&D as a drive for innovation.
feeds into the system information about what is going
on outside, technological breakthroughs, etc, so that
they can be worked on in the company. ”
R&D in the food industry is characterised by its high
level of multidisciplinarity, since innovation requires to
combine multiple competencies, such as food science,
processing, nutrition and bioscience.
Nestec resorts to external sources and sub-contractors
in disciplines of basic research which are not deemed
core competencies. It co-operates with laboratories and
universities around the world. Nestec looks at what can
be useful outside its field of activity: innovation in fine
chemistry, pharmaceuticals or aircraft industry may be
of major interest for agricultural scientists. There is no
way to outguess which technologies might prove most
useful: the solution lies in experiments of various
solutions through exchanges and dialog with scientists
and industrials
Since its creation, Nestlé has played along these rules
and built its success on technological innovation.
Technological breakthroughs introduced by Nestlé
include such early products as lacteal flour Henri
Nestlé 1867. Innovation may also take the shape of new
processes (example of a totally new process to
manufacture soluble coffee powder, introduced in
1937), as well as improved product quality (example of
the suppression of carbohydrate support for Nescafé,
1950).
The ultimate goal of Nestlé’s R&D specifically consists
of achieving a better understanding of the food chain
and its nutritional value - from raw materials to
processed products, with a view to providing
consumers with products ensuring health, well-being
and pleasure.
Nestlé’s R&D apparatus lies at the core of vast
exchanges of information, where external researchers
bring in new ideas and concepts, where market analysis
and date collection help set up the R&D agenda.
Therefore, business intelligence is increasingly critical
to ensuring competitive advantage. “New systems of
gathering and using intelligence from outside the
company could also be required”, says Jan Ekholm
from Nestlé.
One cannot raise the question of R&D at Nestlé without
introducing Nestec. Nestec acts within Nestlé as a
separate entity in charge of basic research, through the
Nestlé Research Center and the R&D department that it
commands.
Nestec is open to its environment. Nestlé considers
technology as an asset. Therefore, acquiring additional
knowledge constantly appeared as a key factor in
establishing the group as a key player. Nestlé uses an
information system that gathers information from
outside the company, including technological
breakthroughs and socio-economic trends (e.g
consumers tastes).
Indeed, market and fashions constitute the external side
of the driving forces of innovation . In addition,
competition stands among the sources of innovation.
Innovation requires means to combine all those factors.
For Jan Ekholm, the most important things are to try
and create a culture of innovation in your company, and
knowing your consumers. “ For that purpose senior
management are linked to an information system ”, that
CONCLUSION
The cult of business intelligence exists. Intelligence
professionals form a caste and the Japanese are
probably the High Priests of the business intelligence
community. It has been estimated that Japanese firms
spend over 1,5 % of their sales revenue on the worldwide collection and processing of intelligence. They
keep a close watch on patents (the Japanese buy four
times more patents than they sell, but at the same time
register each year more than 30.000 patents compared
with less than 2.000 in France), they visit exhibitions
and fairs, participate in numerous conferences and
seminars, acquire publications and databases, undertake
industrial missions, make use of trainees in a large
number of countries as well as a multitude of expatriate
researchers and teachers and study rival products. Their
know-how in the systematic collection of information
remains a major competitive asset for Japanese firms.
Strikingly, education now needs to adapt to the tidal
wave of new technologies and know-how as well. The
flurry of intelligence is shaking the foundations of our
learning and knowledge formation. In the words of
Professor André Giordan, research director at the
University of Geneva, “ For engineers, over half the
data available to them will be useless in five years. 90
% of the knowledge that our children will learn in their
lifetime has not yet been produced... The acceleration
of knowledge forbids a canon of learning as in
centuries gone by, or even a guaranteed access to the
exploding body of science. In response to knowledge
inflation, education has too often resorted to massive
syllabuses at the expense of scientific method. The
focus needs to shift to self-directed learning which is
the use of documentation sources, multimedia and
computer simulations to approach reality ”.
Engineers in the 21st Century will rely massively on
direct access to business intelligence on the worksite,
both as an information source and as a learning
resource about their world.
The advantages which it can offer are numerous:
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saves times : the right information can be
found quickly
helps make the right technological choices :
technological information points to the
relevant choices
avoids situations of unpatentability : “ patent
intelligence ” eliminates fatal errors
contributes decisive input to negotiations :
“ competitive intelligence ” leads to better
results
helps the company to be conscious of its own
scientific and technological assets by
comparing itself continuously with its
competitors.
helps to detect market threats and
opportunities
helps to pinpoint the right strategies in areas
which are difficult to access
helps to detect all sorts of threats and to
protect oneself them.
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