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:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“... it is a great mistake to confuse conventionality with simplicity ... it takes a good deal of intelligence and a great many inhibitions to follow a social code.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)
“In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“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)