The State of Competitive Intelligence within. New Zealand Private and Public Sector Organisations, страница 23

•  Industry A: We are an industry which produces or sells products/services which are similar to other companies, for example electrical items, durable and nondurable goods, insurance or air travel.  With our industry, there is a low risk if our competitors gained access to our products or services knowledge.   

•  Industry B: We are innovative and share knowledge between our operations, marketing and sales, but as our product and service knowledge are very specific to our company, this knowledge could not be adapted outside our company. 

•  Industry C: We are innovative but we find knowledge to be less critical to our success, i.e. our products/processes are often easy to copy.

•  Industry D: We know developing and sharing knowledge is imperative for competitiveness and at the same time competitors are very interested in our proprietary knowledge.

Table 9.6 provides the survey results and number of responses against each industry type. Table 9.6 Strategic Protection Factor framework

Aim of Research Report

Trengrove and Vryenhoek (1997) identified that in 1997 competitive intelligence lacked maturity and was undervalued by New Zealand organisations.  While their study was in-depth, the concept of knowledge management was not identified as a business tool/discipline or the relationship between these two key elements.  This has resulted in a gap in their study and is the motivation for this research.

The aim of this report was to examine this gap and use the literature review tools identified (i.e. “Strategic Protection Factors” (Rothberg and Erickson, 2005) and Rouach and Santi (2001) competitive intelligence attitudes) to examine the relationship between knowledge management and competitive intelligence and the current mindset/value of competitive intelligence in the New Zealand, Wellington based companies/organisations. 

Data Collection and Analysis Methods  

This research report has applied a method of using quantitative research (Creswell, 2003) from a questionnaire survey that was completed by 34 organisations. The survey questions were based on Trengrove and Vryenhoek (1997) competitive intelligence study questions and elements from the completed Literature Review which included expert and academic resources.  These academic resources were sourced from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand  online library (Proquest), lecture notes and a presentation from Masters of Information Management 582 competitive intelligence 2007 course, academic articles and  books from leading competitive intelligence authors and practitioners (MMIM 582, 2007).

While a number of the survey questions were based on Trengrove and Vryenhoek (1997) competitive intelligence study to enable a comparison for the purpose of benchmarking, new questions were added or redefined to reflect the competitive intelligence and knowledge management elements identified in the Literature Review factors.  This approach has been used to determine the research 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”).

Survey respondents had a choice of either completing the survey in private or face to face, or via a teleconference. Completed surveys were then emailed or returned by courier. Surveys that were completed in person via the telephone were recorded for quantitative research content analysis and can be referred to in Appendix B.