"Comprehensive, well-researched, readable, and a title that says it all. [This book] offers an in-depth discussion of how you can make knowledge management and competitive intelligence work together for competitive advantage."
- Harvard Business School Book Report
"When two leading experts on competitive intelligence and knowledge management get together to layout how to exploit knowledge assets, you expect to get actionable insight - and this book delivers. This book provides a practical framework to implement a program to convert knowledge to actionable intelligence that fits the needs of the organization. Using a metaphor of sunscreen protection, SPFs provide a way to quickly understand the balance of risk, reward and costs to leveraging knowledge. An investment in this book will have immediate payoff for those that believe that knowledge and intelligence are power."
-- William Ruh, Chief Technology Officer, Software AG Inc.
"At last, a clear and unique piece of work drawing together the siblings of knowledge management and competitive intelligence. This is an indispensable guide to better managing your knowledge assets. Love that SP factor as a means of identifying the risks involved with KM and CI!"
"This book clearly and uniquely establishes the inter-relationship between knowledge management and competitive intelligence. The executive moments throughout the book provide an excellent and concise guide for the issues addressed in each chapter. A must read for any executive who works for an organization that has to compete!"
"What an excellent book - well researched and full of solid examples and guides to addressing the future of management globally. Rothberg and Erickson have done an outstanding job in providing a clear pathway to understanding and developing an organisation's knowledge assets within a competitive."
"If your organisation competes in any way or your business environment is changing, you need to read this excellent book. Change challenges competitiveness - and Rothberg and Erickson provide a unique and innovative approach to understanding today's sustainable competitive advantage and to strategically managing change. A must read. So what is your company's SPF?"
-- the 4 above are from Babette Bensoussan,
Director, The MindShifts Group, Australia and SCIP Fellow
"Rothberg and Erickson do a terrific job explaining how to take Knowledge Management from a walk to a run in your company. They impress upon us the reality that in today's business world with increasing pressure to find and hold a real positioning advantage, Knowledge Management is as important an asset for success as your company's brand name. And maybe moreso!"
--Terry D. Peigh, Senior Vice President, Interpublic Group of Companies
"This book will reduce ignorance and add insights onto the evolution of knowledge leadership, especially on how to develop capacity for
intelligence. By combining the authors supplementary perspectives on Intellectual Capital and Intellectual Property Rights they have shaped a
most timely and valuable book on among others blueprinting knowledge into active intelligence for competetive capital as well as feeding
intelligence perspectives. The book offers easy reading, very good insights and most practical quizzics on the subject."
- Leif Edvinsson
The world´s first holder of professorship of Intellectual Capital
"From Knowledge To Intelligence provides a practical tool for developing strategy by business leaders. The book moves from theory to action steps
quickly and offers good recommendations on finding and using intelligence that should help businesses compete."
-- Bruce Gorchow, President, PPM America Capital Partners, LLC
"As a manager in charge of offices in three countries, I have to deal with many of the issues addressed by this book. Both finding, using and
protecting my organization's intelligence is a constant challenge. "From Knowledge To Intelligence" has been extremely helpful in organizing my thinking on this challenge."
-- Marie Fioramonti, Managing Director/PRICOA Capital Group
"The Rothberg/Erikson book is a remarkable contribution to the knowledge management(KM) and competitive intelligence(CI) literature. While clearly defining the differences between the disciplines, it also focuses around their seamless integration. As a practitioner in these areas at a major multinational pharmaceutical company for over fifteen years, the theme of the work rang true to the mark, i.e., the overarching objective of these and other decision support functions is to support management in building and sustaining competitive advantage through evidence based decision making.
Of particular interest was the introduction of the concept of the SPF (strategic protection factor). This concept provides a bold new theoretical risk assessment framework for structuring the delicate balance between the creation and protection of a firm's intelligence and knowledge assets.
This text should be become part of required reading not only for practitioners new to the KM and CI fields, but for advanced practitioners as well."
-- Cliff Kalb, Former Senior Director, Strategic Business Analysis, Merck; Former President, SCIP
"It's easy to overlook the importance of competitive intelligence in an e-commerce business model. Rothberg and Erickson do a good job in pin pointing where the opportunities and risks lie."
-- Chris McCann, President, 1-800-Flowers.com
"Rothberg and Erickson provide the most authoritative approach to the integration and complementarities of knowledge management and competitive intelligence. Their approach, embodied in the essence of competitive capital, will soon become a key concept in the lexicon of business literature."
-- John E. Prescott, Ph.D., Professor of Business Administration, Director of the Doctoral Program,
University of Pittsburgh
"Valuable information that can help a company win is routinely collected, yet the recognition, organization and distribution of this info to the
appropriate decision makers is typically not systematic...nor optimal. From Knowledge To Intelligence will help you gain competitive advantage through a better understanding of how to use information ....much of it from data you
already possess..."
-- Frank Minerva
Business/ Management
From Knowledge to Intelligence:
Creating Competitive Advantage in the Next Economy
Helen Rothberg and G. Scott Erickson
".This book provides a practical framework to implement a program to convert knowledge to actionable intelligence that fits the needs of the organization. Using a metaphor of sunscreen protection, SPFs provide a way to quickly understand the balance of risk, reward and costs to leveraging knowledge. An investment in this book will have immediate payoff for those who believe that knowledge and intelligence are power."
- William Ruh, Chief Technology Officer, Software AG Inc.
"From Knowledge to Intelligence is a remarkable contribution to the knowledge management and competitive intelligence literature. While clearly defining the differences between the disciplines, it also focuses around their seamless integration.This text should be become part of required reading not only for practitioners new to the KM and CI fields, but for advanced practitioners as well."
- Cliff Kalb, Independent Consultant; Former Senior Director, Strategic Business Analysis, Merck; Former President, SCIP
"As a manager in charge of offices in three countries, I have to deal with many of the issues addressed in this book. Finding, using, and protecting my organization's intelligence is a constant challenge. From Knowledge to Intelligence has been extremely helpful in organizing my thinking about this challenge."
- Marie Fioramonti, Managing Director/PRICOA Capital Group
"This book will reduce ignorance and add new insights to the continual evolution of knowledge leadership, especially on how to develop the capacity for intelligence. By combining their separate expertise in Knowledge Management/Intellectual Capital and Competitive Intelligence, the authors have shaped a most timely and valuable book."
- Leif Edvinsson, The world's first holder of professorship of Intellectual Capital
In the New Economy, intelligence- not just information or knowledge- is the essential ingredient for firms to gain competitive advantage. Competitive intelligence, or the strategic gathering of knowledge about competitors, climate, trends, and new products, has a long and successful history of generating competitive advantage. In this book, Helen Rothberg and G. Scott Erickson demonstrate how corporations can combine their competitive intelligence gathering with their internal knowledge management gathering into one dynamic system. Using real-world cases from the corporate world, the authors show how the strategic use of this combined system generates measurable competitive advantage. Topics covered include how to develop your strategy for sharing and gathering knowledge across the value chain, sustainable product development and innovation, manufacturing improvement, CRM and marketing, and developing a corporate-wide global knowledge strategy.
Dr. Helen Rothberg is Associate Professor, Management, at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Dr. G. Scott Erickson is Associate Professor, Marketing, at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY.
