The State of Competitive Intelligence within. New Zealand Private and Public Sector Organisations, страница 6

One of the goals of this research is to explore the knowledge and competitive intelligence relationship further and to determine the knowledge management and competitive intelligence value within the New Zealand market place.  Further analysis of the knowledge management and competitive intelligence relationship can be found in the ‘managing competitive intelligence in a knowledge economy’ section of this report.    

Objectives of the research 

As observed by Trengrove and Vryenhoek (1997), New Zealand companies/organisations misunderstand and underestimate the value of competitive intelligence. Additionally, the research showed there was a degree of complacency among New Zealand organisations to address possible competitive threats and change in their environment (1997, pg 8).   Their key findings were:

ƒ New Zealand companies and New Zealand local government believed that their competitive environment was very challenging and that it was likely to become more challenging in the future.

ƒ The average expenditure on competitive intelligence by companies with revenues of NZ$ 20 million or more was less than 0.05%.

ƒ The prominent source of gaining competitive information was word of mouth and personal contacts.  A general failure to use all sources of information in a comprehensive and cocoordinated manner was detected.

ƒ In 1997, forty-six percent of the respondents did indicate that they had plans to improve their competitive intelligence processes.

ƒ Very few organisations understood the need and importance of protecting their strategic information by using counterintelligence methods.                                           (Hawkins, 2004)  

Trengrove’s and Vryenhoek’s study also recommended that New Zealand companies/organisations should (Hawkins, 2004):

ƒ Develop integrated and comprehensive competitive intelligence processes that are linked to strategic planning systems.

ƒ Integrate existing systems throughout the company with a centralised system for coordinating information.

ƒ Widen the focus of information gathering using a fuller range of information sources.

ƒ Allocate adequate resources to ensure effective competitive intelligence activities.

The objective of this research is to conduct explorative research on the state of competitive intelligence within New Zealand’s private & public organisations and to benchmark the current competitive intelligence practices & environments against Trengrove and Vryenhoek competitive intelligence study (1997).  To achieve this, the following question is used to analyse and explore the survey responses:

“Have New Zealand Private and Public Sector Organisations developed a better understanding of Competitive Intelligence as a valuable business resource? 

Or does it remain undervalued and immature”?

Literature Review  

The purpose for undertaking a literature review is not only to gain a level of topical, methodological knowledge and expertise, but to also find any potential gaps in the literature that could assist with benchmarking the current state of competitive intelligence within New Zealand.

To fully understand this question (“Have New Zealand Private and Public Sector Organisations developed a better understanding of Competitive Intelligence as a valuable business resource or does it remain undervalued and immature”?) and the current mindset of competitive intelligence within the

New Zealand Organisation environment,  this research also explores a number of other relating factors:

ƒ The theory of competitive intelligence.

ƒ Competitive intelligence Culture.

ƒ Managing in an Information/Knowledge economy. 

ƒ Internal and External Business Drivers of competitive intelligence.

ƒ Legal and Ethical Aspects of competitive intelligence.