Competitive Intelligence and Economic or Industrial Espionage
'Competitive intelligence' describes the legal and ethical activity of systematically gathering, analyzing and managing information on industrial competitors. It may include activities such as examining newspaper articles, corporate publications, websites, patent filings, specialised databases, information at trade shows and the like to determine information on a corporation. The compilation of these crucial elements is sometimes termed CIS or CRS, a Competitive Intelligence Solution or Competitive Response Solution. With its roots in market research, 'competitive intelligence' has been described as the 'application of principles and practices from military and national intelligence to the domain of global business'; it is the business equivalent of open-source intelligence.
The difference between competitive intelligence and economic or industrial espionage is not clear; one needs to understand the legal basics to recognize how to draw the line between the two. Others maintain it is sometimes quite difficult to tell the difference between legal and illegal methods, especially if considers the ethical side of information gathering, making the border even more blurred and elusive of definition.
Read more about this topic: Industrial Espionage
Famous quotes containing the words competitive, intelligence, economic, industrial and/or espionage:
“Developing the muscles of the soul demands no competitive spirit, no killer instinct, although it may erect pain barriers that the spiritual athlete must crash through.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“But as these angels, the only halted ones
among the many who passed and repassed,
trod air as swimmers tread water, each gazing
on the angelic wings of the other,
the intelligence proper to great angels flew into their wings,
the intelligence called intellectual love....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up—or else all go down—as one people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“A few ideas seem to be agreed upon. Help none but those who help themselves. Educate only at schools which provide in some form for industrial education. These two points should be insisted upon. Let the normal instruction be that men must earn their own living, and that by the labor of their hands as far as may be. This is the gospel of salvation for the colored man. Let the labor not be servile, but in manly occupations like that of the carpenter, the farmer, and the blacksmith.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilisation. It’s a lout’s game.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)