May 30, 2012
LIS 4970/5553
Competitive Intelligence
Summer 2012 Syllabus
Instructor: Betsy Van der Veer Martens (“Doc Martens”)
Office location: 1J30 Schusterman Center (Tulsa campus)
Electronic Office Hours: I will be available in the course “chatroom” on Tuesday and Thursday nights at 9:30 pm.
Telephone: 918-660-3376
Email: bvmartens@ou.edu
(Note: email is usually the best way to reach me: I will always try to respond within 24 hours so if you don’t get a reply,
please feel free to re-send and/or remind me! I get a lot of email, so I’m not deliberately ignoring you!)
COURSE STRUCTURE AND POLICIES
Catalog Description:
Introduction to competitive intelligence in various contexts, appropriate for non-profit and for-profit environments. Topics
will include developing and implementing the intelligence process, accessing and validating sources, information gathering,
auditing, and decision making, with special emphasis on strategies, systems, and ethics in competitive intelligence.
Course Objectives:
To provide students with the opportunity to:
1. Acquire an understanding of the fundamental principles and best practices relevant to providing actionable, ethical
intelligence in operational, tactical, and strategic areas
2. Examine and engage with competitive intelligence techniques relevant to a variety of information environments.
Learner objectives:
Upon successful completion of this course, a student should be able to:
1. demonstrate understanding of the theory and practice of competitive intelligence.
2. identify major issues and current trends in competitive intelligence
3. understand, evaluate, and use techniques, technologies and tools relevant to a variety of competitive intelligence
environments.
4. design and implement an in-depth program of competitive intelligence relevant to a particular organization or industry
5. understand and utilize professional standards of best practice regarding the ethical use of competitive intelligence TEACHING/LEARNING METHODS:
The course will be delivered using the course website at Desire2Learn (http://learn.ou.edu).
Week Starting:
June 11
June 18
WEEKLY SCHEDULE FOR LIS 4970/5553:
Topic for the Week:
McDowell Textbook
Chapter:
Introduction to this course
1, 2
Introduction to Intelligence
Concepts
Intelligence Problems
3, 4
June 25
Intelligence Issues
5, 6, 7
July 2
Processes & Techniques
8, 9, 10
July 9
Hypotheses & Indicators
11, 12
July 16
Collection Techniques
13, 14
July 23
Analysis & Reporting
15, 16, 17
July 30
Assignment Due by Midnight,
Sunday of Each Week:
Choose one of the listed media
companies that you would like
to follow during this class and
post your choice in the forum.
Read Valentin article (“Away
with SWOT Analysis”)
Assignment 1 is due June 24
(Basic company research)
Assignment 2 is due July 1
(Basic industry research)
Assignment 3 is due July 8
(Advanced company research)
Assignment 4 is due July 15
(Advanced industry research)
Assignment 5 is due July 22
(Data compilation)
Assignment 6 is due July 29
(Data analysis)
Stock Prices: Up or Down?
DUE IN DROPBOX BY MIDNIGHT OF FRIDAY AUGUST 3: YOUR FINAL EXAM!!!
Grading will be based on:
60% Weekly intelligence assignments. Each week’s intelligence assignment (during the 6 weeks starting June 18) will be
worth up to a maximum of 10 points. The first four intelligence assignments will involve short searches in designated
databases, etc. relevant to your specific media company and/or the media industry environment. Details about these
assignments will be available on the D2L site at the start of each week that they are due. Please note that grad student
versions of these assignments will be slightly more complex than the undergrad student versions.
15% Discussion contributions. You must post in the discussion forum at least once each week to accrue all the available
points for this. Discussion points will be totalled at the end of the class, as I will be looking for both quality and quantity over
time. Most discussion weeks will center around the micro-lecture topic and/or the textbook.
25% Final exam. This builds on all your previous weeks’ work: you will create a DOE (the “defensive/offensive
evaluation” as described in the Valentin reading) in the form of a memo for your selected media company executive (the
person you chose in week 1). Due in the dropbox by midnight of Friday, August 3rd.
Readings:
Required textbook: (all students must read this)
McDowell, Don. (2009). Strategic Intelligence: A Handbook for Practitioners, Managers, and Users. Lanham MD:
Scarecrow Press.
Recommended additional readings:
Abreu P.G.F. and de Castro, J.M. (2010). Are we blinded by the ‘‘traditional’’ intelligence cycle? Competitive Intelligence
Review 13(3):18–26.
Bose, R. (2008). Competitive intelligence process and tools for intelligence analysis. Industrial Management & Data Systems
108(4): 510-528.
Brandenburger, A. (2002). Porter's added value: High value indeed! Academy of Management Executive 16(2): 58-60.
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Charters, D. (2001). The challenge of completely ethical CI and the CHIP model. Competitive Intelligence Review 12(3): 4454.
Chussil, M. (2005). With all this intelligence, why don't we have better strategies? Journal of Business Strategy 26(1):26-33.
Clemons, E. (2010). The power of patterns and pattern recognition when developing information-based strategy. Journal of
Management Information Systems 27(1): 69-96.
Comai, A. (2004). Global code of ethics and competitive intelligence purposes: An ethical perspective on competitors.
Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management 2(1): 25-44.
Dishman, P. and Wiltse, P. (1999). Disinformation usage in corporate communication: CI'ers beware. Competitive
Intelligence Review 10(4): 20-29.
Durand, R. and Vaara, E. (2009). Causation, counterfactuals, and competitive advantage. Strategic Management Journal
30(12): 1245-1264.
Fahey, L. (2007). Connecting strategy and competitive intelligence: Refocusing intelligence to produce critical strategic
inputs. Strategy& Leadership 35(1): 4-12.
Fahey, L. and Herring, J. (2007). Intelligence teams. Strategy & Leadership 34(1): 13-20.
Fleisher, C.S. (2008). Using open source data in developing competitive and marketing intelligence. European Journal of
Marketing. 42(7/8): 852-866.
Fleisher, C.S. and Wright, S. (2010). Competitive intelligence analysis failure: Diagnosing individual level causes and
implementing organisational level remedies. Journal of Strategic Marketing 18 (7): 553-572.
Garland, E. (2012). Peak intel: How so-called strategic intelligence actually makes us dumber.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/peak-intel-how-so-called-strategic-intelligence-actuallymakes-us-dumber/255413/
Gilad, B. (2011). Strategy without intelligence, intelligence without strategy. Business Strategy Series 12(1): 4-11.
Giustozzi, E. S., & Van Der Veer Martens, B. (2011). The new competitive intelligence agents: "Programming" competitive
intelligence ethics into corporate cultures. Webology 8(2): 1-12. http://www.webology.org/2011/v8n2/a88.html
Gladwell, M. (January 8, 2007). Open secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information. The New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/08/070108fa_fact
Herbert, M. (2006). The intelligence agent as epistemologist. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
19(4): 666-684.
Hulnick, A. S. (2002) The downside of open-source intelligence. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
15(4): 565-579.
Jaworski, B.J., MacInnis, D.J., and Kohl, A.J. (2002). Generating competitive intelligence in organizations. Journal of
Market-Focused Management 5: 279-307.
Marin, J. and Poulter, A. (2004) Dissemination of competitive intelligence. Journal of Information Science 30(2): 165-180.
Power, E.M. and Trope, R. L. (Nov-Dec 2005). Acting responsibly with geospatial data. IEEE Security & Privacy: 77-80.
Rittenburg, T., Valentine, S.R. and Faircloth, J. B. (2007). An ethical decision-making framework for competitor intelligence
gathering. Journal of Business Ethics 70: 235-245.
Rodgers, R. S. (2006). Improving analysis: Dealing with information processing errors. International Journal of Intelligence
and Counterintelligence 19(4): 622-651.
Sheehan, N. (2005). Why old tools won't work in the 'new' knowledge economy. Journal of Business Strategy 26(4): 53-60.
Sheng, Y. P., Mykytyn, P. P., and Litecky, C. R. (2005). Competitor analysis and its defenses in the e-marketplace.
Communications of the ACM 48(8): 107-112.
Soto, S. (2001). Competitive intelligence methods for systems and cultural analysis. Competitive Intelligence Review 12(3):
31-36.
Van der Veer Martens, B. and Van Fleet, C. (2012). Opening the black box of “relevance work”: A domain analysis. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63(5): 936-947.
Walle, A.H. (1999). From marketing research to competitive intelligence: Useful generalization or loss of focus?
Management Decision 37(6):519-525.
Zhao, Jie & Peiquan, Jin. (2010). Conceptual modeling for competitive intelligence hiding in the Internet. Journal of
Software 5(4): 378-386.
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