This document summarizes case studies of four organizations' competitive intelligence (CI) practices in the digital age. It discusses: 1) CI units in three organizations that conduct external monitoring and analysis to support strategic decision-making. Their work involves collaborating through internal networks and periodic reporting. 2) A procurement company where the knowledge manager focuses on collecting and disseminating expertise to customers through a knowledge portal. The document identifies potential areas of improvement for collaborative CI practices and tools, including adopting agile methodologies, socio-technical design, developing mature CI programs and networks, and defining new professional roles like a CI community leader.

1. Lars Degerstedt
lars.degerstedt@sh.se
- Case studies of four organizations
Competitive intelligence in
the digital age

2. CIBAS
• 3-year project 2013-2015
• Funded by The Knowledge Foundation
• Intelligence 2015 – conference 18 November
• The Swedish CI Network
• Partners:
– M-Brain Johan Hammarlund
– Comintelli Jesper Ejdling Martell and Anders Thulin
– Glykol Peder Söderlind
– Södertörns University, Media technology Lars Degerstedt (projektledare), Guests 2015: Sven
Hamrefors och Pelle Snickars

3. Competitive Intelligence (CI)
Competitive intelligence is a systematic process
for monitoring and analysis of the external
world in an organization and how to gain
strategic insights from such study.
Note: ”competitive” is here understood in its most general sense,
taking into account ”any related external event” for an
organization.

4. Social CI – external monitoring and analysis
with networking
General aim: support and improve CI to better fit
the networking organization
http://bibl.sh.se/skriftserier/hogskolans_skriftserier/Social_Co
mpetitive_Intelligence/diva2_852720.aspx

5. The aims of the presented studies
1. Understand how tools and work methods
are used for CI today, in particular in
Swedish organizations
2. Understand what role collaboration has in
the CI work process
3. Understand how tools are used in
collaborative CI work
4. Generate insights into potential
improvements of collaborative practices
and tools for CI

6. Four cases
• A hugiene and forest product company
– 3 members of The BI Unit
• A labor union
– 2 members of The Communications Unit
• An educational association
– 1 CI coordinator + 1 senior advisor
• A procurement company
– The Knowledge Manager + The Director of
Procurement Operations
Semi-structured interviews + contextual inquiries
3 cases
with
“explicit
CI units”
1 case
with
“focus on
KM”

7. CI unit work organization (from 3 cases)
CI Unit
Board of directors
Executive
Management
CI Network
Personalized
news
Intranet
Broadcasting
Special
assignments

8. Group communication and the CI Unit
Collaboration through CI portals,
intranet services, social media etc.
“Daily”
Virtual meeting with CI groups and
networks
“Monthly”
Internal meetings with the CI Unit “Weekly”
Physical meeting with CI groups and
networks
“6 month”

9. The periodic production of the CI Unit
News
monitoring
Improve
deliverables
The ”basic”
daily loop of CI
work
Weekly
report
Fortnight
report
Monthly
report
Quarterly
report
Yearly
report
Periodic
deliverables

10. Potential areas for improvement –
based on collaboration and group tasks
• Agile methodology seems to fit with daily loop and
periodic delivery
• Socio-technical analysis and design seems suitable to
develop new collaborative methods and tools
– Due to Information and knowledge intensive character of
the work
• The CI network seems to be a ”new core” of social CI
rather than ”top management + internal news”

11. Maturity of the CI program (3 cases)
• 0-5 years
– Learning how to use basic techniques, e.g. filtering and analysis
– Developing suitable groups / networks for CI
– Experimenting with technology for CI but not committed
– Demonstrating the value of CI for the organization
• 5-10 years
– Stable functional groups / networks for CI
– Committed to technological solutions for CI
– Expanding potential values of CI
• 10-20 years
– The CI analyst/coordinator roles are refined and further
developed/specialized
– CI resources are accumulated in full scale
– Organization is aware of and fully harness the values of CI

12. Potential areas of improvement based on
maturity stages
• Work methods and tools that ”scale”
– Small scale – immature
– Intermediate level - growth
– Large scale – mature
• View of (social) CI as a form of Community
/social network development
• Long term goal – ”a CI-driven organization”
Source: Li, C & Bernoff, J. (2011) Groundswell:
Winning in a world tranformed by social
Technologies. Forrester Research, HBR Press.

13. CI networks – interdepartmental
collaboration
National CI networks (2)
Global CI network (1)
CI networks - way
to reach out in the
organization
The
CI Unit
is ”the
network
Hub”

14. Potential areas of improvement with
CI networks
• Develop deeper knowledge about network
coordination
• Learn how to collaborate with ”advanced
knowledge work” such as CI
• Learn how to gain insights and value from
multi-disciplinary (and perhaps multi-cultural)
collaboration
• Social software tools/functionality that are
tailored for CI and work well in the enterprise

15. CI Coordinator work role (example from the educational association)
Coordinator of
Groups and networks
CI analyst / coordinator
Expert
Analyst
Personal
networks
Community
Strategic work
Research
Communication
Monitor
Knowledge
dissemination
Workshops CI process
development

16. ”The CI analyst role has changed in the last ten
years”- a lot of information in a lot of channels
Social media
Internet search
General news,
Trade press
and literature
Research and
reports
Knowledge
portals
..
.

17. The domain expert – ”the new CI analyst”
• A typical ”core member” of the CI network
• An advanced knowledge worker
• ”Learns with other people”
• Typical role - ”senior expert” or ”manager”
• Many responsibilities
• Time is a scarce resource
• Less expert in CI methods
• Low tolerance for complex (CI) systems

18. Potential areas of improvement based on roles
• A ”new” professional role
• CI community leadership
• Driving-force, security
guard and police
• Leader of knowledge
creation
• Leader of the
”information-driven
organization”
• Tools and methods that
supports CI coordination
• Integration of CI work
with other roles and
daily work
• Simple and attractive
methods and tools
Clear purpose of CI
• Feedback of value of CI
• Informal and open
methods and tools
CI coordinator CI network member

19. Focus on knowledge management (1 case)
• ”Sells expertice to their customers”
• Knowledge is packaged in ”projects”
• A knowledge portal is used as ”the hub of collected
knowledge”
• Every consultant is encouraged to publish ”final versions”
• Knowledge is shared between consultants
• Every project works with both external and internal
information
• 30 senior consultants are nominated to determine ”best in
class information” in a formalized process with formal
judgements of the expert commitee.
• Best in class i ”flagged” in the portal system

20. Current research with design prototypes
Crowd CICoCI

21. Thank you!
Questions?