The Intelligence Edge: How to Profit in the Information Age [Hardcover]

George Friedman (Author), Meredith Friedman (Author), Colin Chapman (Author), John Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 1997

Knowledge is power, and today's age of information calls for new ways of attaining and controlling knowledge. Your business can get an edge over its competitors by being able to find essential information quickly and efficiently. Whether you are an independent entrepreneur or the CEO of a multinational corporation, intelligence gathering will play an increasingly important role in your business's strategic decision-making process.
        
The Intelligence Edge provides you with tools honed by the world's premier intelligence-gathering professionals. The authors show how to use techniques perfected by such organizations as the CIA on how to find and collect, prioritize, and analyze data. They present a comprehensive system of information management that will teach you how to identify and target different sources of information, from the library to the internet to company gossip. Because some information is expensive or difficult to access, you will learn how to use your time and resources in the most efficient way possible. Then, once you have collected the information you need, you will be shown how to use it--what to store, what to discard, what to turn to your advantage. By following these steps, you can learn to compete and prosper in today's knowledge-based business environment.

Whether you work for yourself or for a major multinational corporation, The Intelligence Edge will help you and your company to survive and prosper in today's knowledge-based business environment. Stay ahead of the information wave with:

Techniques perfected by intelligence organizations
Advice on how to find the information you need quickly and efficiently
Methods on how to sort and analyze the information
Guides to the best databases, libraries, and on-line services

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Intelligence Edge: How to Profit in the Information Age is a tightly focused primer that details ways to intelligently and systematically gather the specific type of data that can boost profitability in virtually any company. George Friedman, Meredith Friedman, Colin Chapman, and John S. Baker Jr.--four experts on intelligence-gathering techniques--identify the primary sources for such information and outline an eight-step formula for acquiring, prioritizing, and utilizing it. The Intelligence Edge discusses legal questions that can arise, and possible sources of assistance and tools (including the Net) that will aid in the process.

From Library Journal

Drawing on their extensive experience in intelligence services, the authors argue that in this global economy businesses must adapt to new ways of thinking brought about by global trends and information technology. Because the computer age has generated a massive amount of information whose value for businesses depends on a company's ability to collect and analyze it quickly, this has made information management crucial to business decision-making. To this end, the authors present a systematic process for collecting information, analyzing it, and using the resulting knowledge, demonstrating that this process would help an organization to innovate and develop its operations better and faster. With a step-by-step approach and supporting anecdotes, this book discusses techniques used by national intelligence organizations. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.?Ali Abdulla, East Carolina Univ., Greenville,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (October 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609600753
• ISBN-13: 978-0609600757
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,078,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book for REAL Practitioners in the Art, July 20, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Intelligence Edge: How to Profit in the Information Age (Hardcover)

I work as a professional performing due diligence for VC firms and client companies in Seattle and Silicon Valley. I have been using many of the techniques for several years that enable me to rapidly assess business opportunities and develop turnaround strategies. I am also a member of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

What this book did was enable me to enhance my business process and better articulate this extremely difficult line of work. For example, the business process outlined on page 58 is crucial in that it identifies several "Stop" or check points with clients. Key in this type of consulting, especially where steps you take as a consultant may directly add risk to your client, it is important to know where to draw the line and involve them for a decision. The authors clarify where the key decision points are when it comes to going from passive to semi-active, to active intelligence gathering. Critical, as time is money to you. But! to the client, information - or exposure thereof also means risk that could become your liability.

Consultants in this field are in the knowledge business, and one of the most difficult things to do is get the client to place a value on knowledge or intelligence. The authors, through wit and excellent real-world examples, spell out some of the keys to getting paid!! (pp 67). Naturally, this would go over the head of the casual reader who has never practiced and is looking for a "cook book" approach to due diligence of new business opportunities (i.e. see above commentary from Bogota).

This book is a "how to" book in that the authors have taken the time to clarify and rank several research tools and locations that one might not normally be aware of. This comparison alone is worth the money, as anyone who has used the web for performing research would agree.

The real brilliance in this book is subtle. By connecting the examples, you learn how to ask questions and iden! tify with what is important in doing intelligence research.! Again, for anyone who has gone in circles with clients who "don't know what they don't know", or worse yet, don't know how to value knowledge - this is critical to delivering fast, and minimizing your exposure.

Frankly, the Bogota guy didn't get it and has probably never performed true business intelligence. I agree that the coverage of the Internet web search engines, which used the example of finding information on pagers, is old news. The chapter's purpose was to show how more advanced tools outside of the Internet, such as Nexis, are preferred substitutes. That point was clearly made. However, this example was only used among 10 pages of chapter 5 (which was taken up with images of why the web doesn't work). The other 257 pp of this book are the meat.

My hats off to the authors for delivering a humorous text based on real-world wisdom that cuts through a very gray area that is as difficult to perform, as it is to explain.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Resource and Reference Book, October 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Intelligence Edge: How to Profit in the Information Age (Hardcover)

As an investment banking anaylst, one of my primary jobs is build financial models of the companies we evaluate. One of the most underrated and (in my view) more important element of my work comes when we perform due diligence and understand the soundness of the assumptions we build into our models. Most analysts (in my experience) are too infatuated with their sophisticated spreadsheets and believe the sheer complexity of their models can compensate for a lack of understanding of the fundamental business they are set to evaluate.

The book does an outstanding job of articulating, at every step, the importance of challenging one's assumptions and systematically gathering, synthesizing, and =analyzing= information that helps to dig through the colored lenses of wishful thinking or purely numerical analysis. The occasional injection of humor is quite welcome - in a world of stuffy self-important books on business, here's a piece of work that was written by people who love what they do, and are adept at making you better at what you do as well.

7 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This is a ridiculous, trivial book., February 9, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Bogota, Colombia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Intelligence Edge: How to Profit in the Information Age (Hardcover)

In this book, one can learn that: The internet started as a Defense Department project in the 80's p. 120 The proper way to search for pager manufacturing in internet web search engines is just to mention "pager", and not worry at all about other key words or symbols. p. 124 That, according to an intelligence project, pager repair could be a great business. p.139 I was lead to believe by a book review that this book would give me a great deal of information about passive intelligence gathering. It does not live up to its promise, and lacks credibility for so many factual (1,1969 2, +pager +manufacture + industry +trends ) and analytical (3 I threw my cell phone away, and got another for free)errors. What a shame.