CALL FOR CHAPTERS
Submission deadline April 15, 2002
Information and Communication Technology
for Competitive Intelligence
A book edited by Dirk Vriens, Nijmegen School of Management,
University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Competitive
Intelligence can be described as the production and processing of information
about the environment of an organization for strategic purposes. To formulate a
strategy, an organization needs to collect and process information about its
environment - about, for instance, competitors, customers, suppliers,
governments, technological trends or ecological developments. Collecting and
processing environmental information has always been important. However,
because of the increasing complexity and dynamics of the environment the pressure
to produce relevant ‘actionable’ intelligence quickly is increasing as well. To
systematically collect and process strategically relevant environmental
information, a large number of organizations are therefore implementing a
competitive (or business) intelligence function.
To structure the process of competitive intelligence, several
authors propose a cycle of four stages. This ‘intelligence cycle’ contains the
following stages:
1.
Direction In
this stage the organization should determine its ‘strategic information
requirements’. It should determine about what aspects in the environment data
should be collected.
2.
Search Here, it is
determined what sources can be used for data-collection and the data are
actually collected.
3.
Analysis In the
analysis-stage the data collected in the previous stage are analyzed to assess
whether they are useful for strategic purposes. In other words: in this stage,
one tries to find out what particular data mean for the organization. Here, the
actual ‘production’ of intelligence (data relevant for strategy) takes place.
4.
Dissemination
The intelligence (produced in stage 3) is forwarded to the strategic
decision-makers and used to formulate their strategic plans.
To support these
stages, different Information and Communication Technology (ICT) applications
may be employed. These ICT-tools include datawarehouses, datamining tools, the
systematic use of the Internet for direction or search, group-ware applications
for uncovering information requirements, specific applications for supporting
the analysis (e.g. System Dynamics software), the use of an Intranet for
disseminating intelligence, or even specific applications that are said to
cover all the four stages. To select systematically what kind of ICT-tools is
useful to support the intelligence cycle, a detailed understanding of the role
of ICT in intelligence activities is needed.
This
book intends to address this need. It sets out to assess the role and
possibilities of ICT in intelligence activities. It aims at uncovering criteria
for the use of ICT in the individual stages, as well as for the whole cycle. It
gives an overview of state-of-the-art ICT applications and it demonstrates the
need to see ICT as an aspect of the whole competitive intelligence
infrastructure. For this book, we need a collection of scholarly research works
on the topic of ICT and Competitive Intelligence. Chapters based on research
from both academia and industry are encouraged.
Representative topics include but are not limited
to the following:
Empirical research on the effectiveness of various ICT-tools for
competitive intelligence
Conceptual and empirical research on the criteria for the use of
ICT for competitive intelligence
Conceptual and empirical research on the comparison of ICT-tools
Case studies of the implementation and use of different ICT-tools
for competitive intelligence by real-life firms
Failures and success of the use of ICT for competitive intelligence
Experiences with the use of the Internet for competitive
intelligence
Experiences with the use of datawarehouses for competitive
intelligence
Conceptual and empirical research on the evaluation of ICT tools
for competitive intelligence
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before
April 15, 2002, a 2-5 page manuscript proposal clearly explaining
the mission and concerns of the proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals
will be notified by May 15, 2002 about the status of their proposals and sent
chapter organizational guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted
by September 15, 2002. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a blind
review basis. The book is scheduled to be published by Idea Group Publishing in
March 2003.
Inquiries and Submissions
can be forwarded electronically (Word97) to:
Dirk
Vriens
Nijmegen
School of Management
University
of Nijmegen
6500 HK
Nijmegen,
The
Netherlands
Tel: +31
24 361 21 16 Ÿ Fax: +31 24 361 19 33 Ÿ
Email: d.vriens@nsm.kun.nl