Competitive Inteligence 2.0: Organization, Innovation and Territory

Chapter 1

Competitive Intelligence 2.0: A Three-Dimensional Relationship? ¹

1.1. Introduction: From information society boom…

Among the various 20th Century industrial revolutions which have influenced the business world, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)¹ are part of those that have experienced the maximum turmoil. These evolutions have contributed to the boom in information production and particularly in the demand for information², which is essential for all spheres of human activities, for man’s adaptation to his environment, as well as for decision-making. From the production perspective, we have observed, as noted by Théry et al. “a quantitative increase in information (in its different forms) especially via the Internet, mobile telephony and multimedia production, as well as from other knowledge domains” [THE 94]. From the demand perspective, the present consideration of “information as raw material” [ROS 96] implies the need to rise up to “this increase” through knowledge specialization.

To cope with this demand for information, new tools, techniques, sharing modes, knowledge exchange methods, and particularly new information search and analysis methodologies have been developed in order to enable:

– acquisition, in the short term and with little or no delay, of relevant documents containing high added-value information which is indispensable for situation clarification and decision-making;

– long-term capitalization and continuous mobilization of knowledge ...