Millennium Intelligence: Understanding and Conducting Competitive Intelligence in the Digital Age

Citation

Tanner, S. (2001), "Millennium Intelligence: Understanding and Conducting Competitive Intelligence in the Digital Age", The Electronic Library, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 49-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2001.19.1.49.1

This book is about decision making and the means of gathering suitable information to ensure decisions are based upon evidence and high market confidence. Millennium Intelligence is aimed firmly at the business executive or key organisational decision maker, and as a resource for those who have to service the needs of these people it will be invaluable. It is a frequently stated paradigm that the secret of success is having good ideas and acting on that idea in the right way at the right time. This book doesn’t claim be helpful with the ideas but does claim to help with the latter two initiatives. It further explains that competitive intelligence is a fairly rare commodity. For the initiatives described to be successful the organisation as a whole has to be involved in the process of seeking to become better informed about critical competitive issues on a formal and systematic basis.

The definition given by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals of intelligence is “… the process of ethically collecting, analyzing and disseminating accurate, relevant, specific, timely, foresighted and actionable intelligence regarding the implications of the business environment, competitors, and the organization itself”. So this book is going further than librarians traditionally have done as providers of timely, accurate information. Intelligence is more than current awareness services, daily newspaper clippings, search services, detailed guidance or market reports; it is about developing unique insights on issues within the organisation’s business environment. Interestingly this book also emphasizes the ethical and legal issues involved in competitive intelligence and devotes a chapter to each of these subjects. This is a very valuable aspect covered with unusual thoroughness for this field, often mistakenly associated with industrial espionage. What is particularly refreshing about this work is the constant emphasis on practical and realistic means of managing the intelligence function.

Millennium Intelligence has 13 chapters detailing the competitive intelligence process. The main author or his experienced associates, from the Business Intelligence Braintrust, write each chapter. There are initial chapters on the process and its value to the organisation. These will serve as a useful introduction to the concepts and also as ammunition to anyone wanting to justify such an operation. For planning and implementing an advanced intelligence process there are chapters covering where to locate the function in the organisation (not in the library unfortunately) and the skills and training needed. The book even goes so far as to suggest suitable career paths into this field of work. Further detail is then added by discussing the various analytical models and techniques useful for this type of work. This section is an essential introduction, but for the experienced professional already working in a business environment many of them will be familiar (such as SWOT analysis), and other more detailed works, as suggested by the excellent bibliography, should be considered in parallel. What Millennium Intelligence does very well is to take various elements that are likely to be familiar to the reader but repackage them to demonstrate their application specifically to intelligence gathering and decision making. For instance, the section on information resources for intelligence holds no great surprises and indeed will be reassuringly familiar for business information professionals. However, it is the way they are combined, described and implemented that is refreshing and the authors propose a new agenda of competitive intelligence that information professionals rarely pursue to the extent suggested here. The final chapters discuss security issues and in particular cover competitive intelligence for small businesses. The last chapter discusses the future, but very much in terms of the way forward for the intelligence profession, which was a slightly disappointing way to finish such a good book.

Millennium Intelligence fits a very specific niche but does so very well and gives a full introduction to an interesting subject. The work is naturally American biased and some of the examples and assumptions made might not suit a European audience quite so well. There are extensive biographies of the writers, an excellent index and a very helpful complete bibliography. This book tackles the key issues, offers case studies and practical examples. With business affected by globally based information resources and the worldwide economy this work gives a new focus to the means of maintaining competitive advantage.