{"id":633898,"date":"2018-10-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/latest-news\/articles\/competitive-and-economic-intelligence\/"},"modified":"2019-02-06T12:20:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T11:20:16","slug":"competitive-and-economic-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/competitive-and-economic-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Competitive and Economic Intelligence"},"featured_media":636278,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[],"areas":[16,18,24],"subjects":[],"class_list":["post-633898","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","areas-competitiveness-growth","areas-finance-control","areas-strategy"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-leadin":["Economic, political, and social landscapes can shift in a matter of days, with consequences for companies and their stakeholders and repercussions for the economic security of the entire country. In today\u2019s environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), intelligence provides a competitive advantage."],"wpcf-article-body":["We tend to view security as a natural and physical issue associated with human protection and the fear of armed conflicts or terrorist attacks. But security is also closely linked to the impact of rising unemployment, soaring interest rates, debt, and inflation, with their attendant effects on purchasing power. Numerous studies have found a relationship between economic turmoil and the rates of suicide, heart attack, and depression.\r\n\r\nTo be sure, security is intimately related to business. It is therefore crucial to maximize safeguards for all companies\u2014from industrial conglomerates to SMEs\u2014because their success reverberates throughout society at large.\r\n
Access to reliable information and the ability to analyze it are increasingly important factors in avoiding impulsive decisions with a high level of uncertainty.<\/blockquote>\r\nCompanies and countries<\/strong>\r\n\r\nIn terms of income and resources, the world\u2019s largest companies and investment funds are comparable in size to many countries. The World Bank recently reported that only 31 of the world\u2019s 100 largest economies are countries; the other 69 are business corporations. Although one might wonder whether the measurements used in this ranking are truly comparable (business income vs. national GDP), there is no doubt that corporations are gaining economic power with every passing year. Walmart, for example, was found to be the world\u2019s 10th<\/sup>-largest economy, while State Grid, China National Petroleum, and Sinopec were ranked in 14th<\/sup>, 15th<\/sup>, and 16th<\/sup> place, respectively. Royal Dutch Shell was named the 18th<\/sup>-largest economy, while Exxon Mobil, Volkswagen, and Toyota were #21, #22, and #23.\r\n\r\nBut the question of security is not limited exclusively to companies; it concerns all sorts of organizational structures. Practically all countries have some sort of intelligence service. These agencies operate under various names, but their purposes are highly specific: obtaining, analyzing, and distributing information to assist in decision-making. It should come as no surprise that the largest and most powerful companies have similar services.\r\n\r\nCompanies essentially face three major challenges: internationalization, innovation<\/a>, and intelligence analysis. To address these challenges, companies must introduce and incorporate economic and competitive<\/a> intelligence into their organizational structures. Access to reliable information and the ability to analyze it are increasingly important factors in avoiding impulsive decisions with a high level of uncertainty.\r\n
The objective is to make the organization more competitive, to increase its influence, and to defend its tangible and intangible assets.<\/blockquote>\r\nIntelligence for greater competitiveness<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe use of intelligence in the economic sphere varies from one country to the next and is associated with many factors, including the need to compete and differentiate oneself. Information as power is an extremely important asset. Over the centuries, major economic powers such as Germany, Japan, and Sweden have harnessed this power for their development, with structures emerging both from the state towards companies (top-down) and in the opposite direction (bottom-up). The structures developed by these countries integrate all major stakeholders, including public services, business associations, universities, labor unions, and the expat diaspora. In Japan, these structures include the sogo shosha<\/em> general trading companies, which drive exportation, and the keiretsu<\/em> business organizations, which foster scientific development and strategic<\/a> financing<\/a>. In South Korea, meanwhile, industrial conglomerates known as chaebols<\/em> play an important role in the exchange of information. More recently, countries such as France, China, the United States, and\u2014especially in the past decade\u2014Spain have developed similar structures in this vein.\r\n\r\nIntelligence can be categorized according to who gathers it. When gathered by public services, it is referred to as \u201ceconomic intelligence,\u201d but when gathered by companies, it is called \u201ccompetitive<\/a> intelligence.\u201d Intelligence focused on data management and the use of quantitative methodologies is known as \u201cbusiness intelligence.\u201d According to the definition proposed by the Spanish National Intelligence Center\u2019s economic team, business intelligence is a function that follows an organized, methodological process within a legal and ethical framework. It has little in common with sort of industrial espionage that makes for entertaining movies but has no place in real-life business practice.\r\n\r\nThe intelligence process is cyclical: planning, information gathering, and information analysis. Like an alchemist turning lead into gold, this process transforms information into intelligence, which is then passed on to the decision-makers who need it. The objective is to make the organization more competitive<\/a>, to increase its influence, and to defend its tangible and intangible assets. This is a strategic<\/a> challenge in today\u2019s increasingly global<\/a> and competitive environment, where information has never been more important. Everyone is playing the same game, in some cases with public-sector support or powerful business allies.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights.\r\n\r\n "],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-extract":["By H\u00e9ctor Izquierdo Triana<\/strong>. Economic, political, and social landscapes can shift in a matter of days, with consequences..."],"wpcf-article-summary-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-summary":["In today\u2019s environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA)\u2014which affects companies as well as countries\u2014intelligence is the main competitive advantage. To maintain security, any organizational structure requires an intelligence service responsible for obtaining, analyzing, and distributing information to assist in decision-making. In companies, this function is known as \u201ccompetitive intelligence,\u201d whereas in the public sector it is referred to as \u201ceconomic intelligence.\u201d In today\u2019s increasingly global and competitive environment, in addition to addressing the challenges of internationalization and innovation, companies must also incorporate economic and competitive intelligence into their organizational structures."]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/633898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=633898"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=633898"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=633898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}