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Real-time Strategy and Business Intelligence pp 77–98Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Competitive Intelligence—A Strategic Process for External Environment Foreknowledge

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Abstract

This chapter offers a review of the literature on competitive intelligence showing how scholars have been preoccupied with deciphering whether or not companies are incorporating CI in their business activities yielding no common definition of CI, equivocal approaches to the CI process, strong focus on data collection, and inappropriate analysis. Therefore, this chapter attempts to address these gaps by providing a more comprehensive definition to competitive intelligence , clearly explicating the CI function, and supplementing the CI cycle with a fifth phase: exploitation. This chapter also draws attention to the disparity between the optimal CI practice and the actual practices of real-world cases. As a result, the value of CI is not only prescribed but also reexamined to offer managers and researchers alike a clear idea of challenges ahead, and the pros an actionable competitive intelligence have on strategic agility .

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland

    Yassine Talaoui & Rodrigo Rabetino

Authors
  1. Yassine Talaoui
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  2. Rodrigo Rabetino
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yassine Talaoui .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vaasa, Vassa, Finland

    Marko Kohtamäki

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Talaoui, Y., Rabetino, R. (2017). Competitive Intelligence—A Strategic Process for External Environment Foreknowledge. In: Kohtamäki, M. (eds) Real-time Strategy and Business Intelligence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54846-3_5

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