Competitive Intelligence and All That
In the fall 1998 article in Special Libraries, "Competitive Intelligence and the Information Center," the author, H. Frances Greene, suggested that "serious consideration be given to library information centers because these centers feature many of the elements needed to build a fully integrative and effective intelligence gathering system." Over a decade later, how far have we come? I think we have become more aggressive in promoting our talents in this area, and in many cases have been very successful. You can't do much better than making the cover of Inc. magazine and being called "a knowledge-management tool of extraordinary power." Of course, our role has changed or at least been given a new name or names. Do you remember SDI (Selective Dissemination of Information) and Current Awareness? Well now it's Competitive Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Environmental Scanning, Intellectual Capital Management, Resource Mapping, etc.
They are, of course, not exactly the same, but they deal with access to information, adding value and creating knowledge. What has changed is the new resources available and, with the advent of the web and search engines, how one accesses these resources. There are now discussion lists, chat lines, joblines, portals, company web sites, and extranets. Have a good look at a company's web page. It is amazing how much information, previously of a sensitive nature is now found on a company's web site or extranet. You can find a lot of information on a web site about the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of business competitors. I suspect with the extensive use of intranets and internal knowledge management systems less corporate information will become available to the public. What technology has made easier is accessing regional information such as local newspapers, but whatever information is now accessible there is no substitute for common sense. In a Fast Company article, Leonard Fuld referred to finding out a lot about a company's aggressiveness with regard to costs when reading in a local newspaper that the CEO took a bus to a nearby town to visit one of the company's plants. You won't find that article using an online database regardless of how brilliant your search criteria are.
A recent SLA survey found that eighty-four percent of the top one-hundred of the Fortune 500 companies had libraries or information centers, compared to only forty-eight percent of those companies in the last one-hundred of the Fortune 500 list. I would like to think the reason they are in the top one-hundred and not last one-hundred is solely because they have a library, but there may be other reasons. You can rest assured that those top one-hundred companies have committted a lot of resources to competitive intelligence and other forms of information seeking. The Competitive Intelligence Electronic Information Packet (EIP) at http://www.sla.org/membership/irc/intell.html, prepared and updated regularly by IRC staff is a useful resource on this subject. Any recommendations for resources which should be added to this EIP will be greatly appreciated by IRC staff at irc@sla.org or 1-202-939-3639.
However excellent and appreciated are the information services one provides, we still have to justify our existence all too often. The EIPs on Value of the Information Center (http://www.sla.org/membership/irc/value.html) and Opinions and Perceptions of the Library Profession (http://www.sla.org/membership/irc/opin.html) are targeted at helping this justification. In a recent issue of Library Journal there is an article on Time Inc.'s library, explaining how it was once in danger of becoming another corporate casualty, but is now an indispensable part of the massive media company's daily operations1.
CONSULT Online
Those members with consultant profiles on CONSULT Online will be pleased to see that it is now featured on the SLA homepage. Not only does this improve access to the database it will also increase its visibility to the public who may be looking for professional consultants. The main search criteria, Areas of Expertise, of CONSULT Online were increased from twenty-three to 111 subject areas in August 1999. These revisions have greatly improved the effectiveness of the database. http://www.sla.org/consult/index.html.
1 "Time Inc.'s 'Strategic Asset'." Pamela Gallop Brooks & Lany W. McDonald. Library Journal, 124(19), November 15, 1999: 32-34.
For more information, contact John Latham
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