Competitive Intelligence Gathering

INTRODUCTION Knowledge management (KM) is the process through which organizational performance is improved through better management of corporate knowledge. Its goal is to improve the management of internal knowledge processes so that all information required for corporate decisions can be made available and efficiently used. Competitive intelligence (CI) is a process for gathering usable knowledge about the external business environment and turning it into the intelligence required for tactical or strategic decisions. The two are strongly connected because gathered CI has no long-term value unless an effective KM process is in place to turn the information into something usable. Although most information collected during a CI investigation is used in immediate decision making, it must be integrated into the internal knowledge systems to provide a long-term resource when companies attempt to detect trends or adapt to changes in their environments (Aware, 2004). Both KM and CI systems are designed to enhance the information resources of an enterprise, but often target different information types and sources. While CI is concerned with gathering information from the external environment to enable the company to gain competitive advantage (Williams, 2002), most investigation into KM has focused on capturing the knowledge stored within the minds of individual employees for collecting, managing, and sharing internally generated knowledge. Restricting the focus to internal data severely limits the potential of KM systems. The vast wealth of knowledge outside the traditional boundaries of the company may prove just as useful to organizations seeking a competitive advantage (Gold, Malhotra, & Segars, 2001). Fortunately, some studies indicate an awareness of the value of external information. Abramson (1999) notes that KM enables companies to create and systematically use the very best internal and external knowledge that they can obtain. Grzanka (1999) notes that KM provides a methodology to leverage and manage all knowledge, whether external or internal. Other researchers take it a step further and recognize the synergies between KM and CI. Johnson (1999) states that KM and CI are two parts of the same whole because both are designed to apply enterprise knowledge of the internal and external environment for long-term competitive advantage. KM and CI " have similar goals and are natural extensions of one another (e.g., manage information overload and timely/targeted information delivery, provide tools for data analysis, identify subject matter experts, enable collaboration) " (Meta Group, 1998). Davenport (1999) even goes so far as to take the stance …