Strategic Intelligence for the Future 1

4 Competitive Intelligence as a Vehicle for International Collaboration

Over the last 10 years, competitive intelligence has been used to help increase the competitiveness of companies across the world. We are now proposing that it can be used in a new way to open up numerous exchanges and collaborations. If the Second World War gave rise to East-West blocks and the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall was the start of a new era of world competition: globalization.

We are currently entering a period of competition and struggle which is not yet known today, where the rules of the “game” are no longer stable and can change at any point.

At the same time, technological developments mean that we receive information in a “shorter amount of time”.

This new era has increasing instability across the world, with competition existing between societies states, and regions. In this field, attractiveness is becoming a fundamental advantage for both ensuring international development and ensuring “client” loyalty from those who use products and services.

4.1. The arrival of new signs

4.1.1. Definitions of competitive intelligence

If we refer to the first definitions of competitive intelligence [CAL 05]:

• – “systematic program to collect and analyze the information upon the activities of the competitors […] in view to achieve the strategic goals of the company” (Larry Kahanner) [KAH 97];
• – “analyze the information, upon the competitors which are involved within the decision process of the ...