Customer Reviews

From Knowledge to Intelligence: Creating Competitive Advantage in the Next Economy

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"Intelligence" in this book is used in its strategic sense - building knowledge of competitors and determining what internal knowledge needs to be protected from others and how to protect it. The book focuses on building competitive advantage through an understanding of intelligence, and integrating this focus with wider aspects of knowledge management. It is therefore centrally concerned with the competitive value of knowledge and the impact of the competitive environment on tools, techniques, organization and protocols for management of knowledge.

The basic thesis of the book is that, in a knowledge economy, competitive intelligence (CI) and the way in which this intelligence is integrated with other aspects of knowledge management (KM) can be an important source of competitive advantage.

The way in which these two complementary elements - CI and KM - should be managed and integrated in turn depends on the intensity of competition, the extent to which that competition is based around knowledge and - in a globalized world - the national and international legislative and regulatory framework within which enterprises are competing.

While issues of intellectual capital and its protection are touched on, this is not the core of the book. Its main focus is on the organization, processes and supporting technology needed to support an effective intelligence and counter-intelligence effort for the organization (and its value chain) in relation to actual and potential competition.

The book will be useful to those concerned with these issues. But it has important gaps. For example, the discussion of counter-intelligence (protecting your own material) does not pay much attention to the extent to which knowledge is held in the heads of employees who may be enticed away and, while it mentions the issue, does not give much guidance on the extent to which professionals may or may not participate in professional forums.