CI Fall 2013

This is a list of free tools. SEOTools for Excel looked interesting.

hmmm. it does look intersting. you should try to use it for your final project work!

This is some neat stuff! So convenient that it just so happens to also be free.

Interesting analysis of the long-term effects of CI and how it is used in the "real world"

The discussion of the different industries using CI is interesting. Job postings for these positions seem to correspond with what the article states: many positions in the pharmaceutical industry. Also, quite a few in insurance and even one for the Educational Testing Service...who would have thought?!

A guide to collecting information and using intelligence legally, and ethically. "You are only as good as your sources."

I found this article very interesting as it included both sides, ethical collection and then going too far. I don't think today one needs to pick through the trash. There is a lot of word-of-mouth online at social sites, but bloggers and other media sites have such extensive reporting. Also in my industry people talk. It's not too hard to find someone who is aware of corporate change.

"If your people are astute enough, everybody in the company can become an intelligence resource." This is an excellent point. Employees play different roles within an organization, operate in various arenas, and interact with different individuals. As a group, they could provide quite a bit of useful information.

Interesting perspective from the Harvard Business Review Blog explaining the drama that surrounds high-up executives and the responsibilies and liabilities they hold when they are privvy to significant and invaluable pieces of competitive intelligence .

Great article. CI should be done ethically and focus on public domain resources and industry information, but there will always be those that break the law to get ahead.

Its too simplistic to call it cheating when the employment landscape has become so volatile. Interesting that HP dropped the suit. Employees now understand that one needs to promote their value to the organization or to the industry in which they are a part consistently to remain employed. I'd also be interested in the article providing data on those job descriptions subject to non-compete agreements. While I agree there isn't a gray area on the ethics of sharing trade secrets. I think other types of information available in the public domain make it difficult for a savvy employee to decide to ignore valuable information and act upon the information if necessary in maintaining their employment or furthering their career.

This is guide describe the basic principles of CI in its simplest form. It even stated a wonderful quote from Sun Tzu and the Art of War. "If you are ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, then you are a fool and certain to be defeated in every battle. If you know yourself, but not your enemy, for every battle won, you will suffer a loss. If you know your enemy and yourself, you will win every battle."

This blog is about Competitive Intelligence within law firms. It seems as though the blog not only focuses on competitive intelligence, but also on the trials and tribulations of law firms themselves.

Like this title suggests, this article provides a nice overview of the concept of CI and how it applies to today's world

That was a great overview.

I like the fact that this article discusses not only the act of competitive intelligence but also provides details about the individuals in CI roles.

This is a book review, but it has some great information about CI and how it is gathered/used. Also mentions again SWOT which was mentioned in the Sawka reading.

Yup, pretty good! They could have mentioned social media more (more than just blogs, that is!) We will cover this later on.

Great article that provides a few real world examples of CI

This is a White Paper prepared by the company Recorded Future which discusses the benefits of Competitive Intelligence for businesses. I found this very interesting because of the reference to tweets, Facebook posts, press and blog mentions as well as other online sources of information. For the past year I was working at a public relations firm, and we always included company/product mentions within social media, blogs and press mentions in our recap reports to the client. Looks like I've been doing competitive intelligence research.

Definitely an interesting read and takes a look at how corporations deal with security against terrorist acts and how CI is applied.

Jen, interesting article about how much of the burden of fighting terrorism is falling to the corporate side--obviously they do need to protect themselves and play a huge role in doing so.

Short description of CI in the business context. The mention of Factiva caught my eye since I just learned about that in Research. CI does seem to be an emerging cutting edge trend.