CHAPTER 12
Business/Corporate Intelligence and Ethics: Temptation Abounds HE
THAT FAILS IN HIS ENDEAVOURS AFTER WEALTH OR
POWER WILL NOT LONG RETAIN EITHER HONESTY OR COURAGE.
– S A M U E L J O H N S O N (17 0 9-1 7 84 )
“ C O M M E R C I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E ” G A T H E R I N G say it is just as an essential part of a large corporation’s business plan as the sales and marketing functions. Its detractors say it is a dirty business akin to spying. It is an ethically fuzzy area for some and a fact of life for others. It may be hard to trust a business service that has given the world such euphemisms as “waste archeology”—a term that is used to describe sifting through trash for financial, product or marketing secrets. What is certain these days is that the market for business or corporate intelligence services is mammoth—and growing every year—in every region of the globe. International corporations can’t compete these days without employing some elements of “CI,” as it is known in the trade. According to industry associations and government estimates, the market for business intelligence is worth about US$2 billion a year worldwide. A survey by the Society of Corporate Intelligence Professionals found that 25 percent of the hundreds of large corporations interviewed said their company’s total corporate intelligence spending in 2000 topped US$100,000. Almost 14 percent said their company spent over US$500,000. Another survey by The Futures Group found that 82 percent of companies with annual revenues over US$10 billion had an organized system for collecting information on rivals while 60 percent of all companies had an organized intelligence system. Regardless of the intentions and promises to remain ethical, the reality is that where big money and competitive advantage is involved, the temptation to cross the lines of ethical conduct increases exponentially.
SUPPORTERS OF
What is Corporate Intelligence? Call it what you like, but don’t call it corporate espionage, say practitioners. While some managers prefer to cloak it in the relatively harmless sounding veil of “research,” the activity of collecting, analyzing and using information regarding any aspect of countries, industries, companies, institutions, and even individuals, to help make informed business decisions is “competitive or business intelligence.” Corporate Intelligence activities run the gamut of the ethical spectrum. At one extreme is blatantly illegal activity, such as theft of trade secrets. At the other end
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