The State of Competitive Intelligence within. New Zealand Private and Public Sector Organisations, страница 28

As identified in the Literature Review informing this report, Kessels (2001) states that the concept of knowledge is “the ability for an organisation to obtain relevant information, creating new knowledge and then applying this knowledge to improve and renew” and is critical to the success of any company.  However, as knowledge management and competitive intelligence have opposing directions, there is a risk that if unmanaged, they could conflict.  

The Rothberg and Erickson (2005) “Strategic Protection Factor” framework (SPF) has been used and adapted to understand this relationship and their SPF industry type. For example:

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

•  Industry B: We are innovative and share knowledge between our operations, marketing and sales, but as our product and service knowledge is 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 10.8 identifies that 44% of surveyed respondents believed that their company has a low knowledge management risk, a low competitive intelligence risk and that their Product and Services were similar to other companies.

Table 10.8: Surveyed Companies Strategic Protection Factors

When asked if their company/organisation understood the importance of managing knowledge (Question 9).  Twenty per cent of Strategic Protection Factors (SPF) Industry A believes that they understood knowledge and that it was well managed, 67% of the same industry type believed that they understood, but it could be managed better. Industry C reported 20% in the understood and well managed and 80% in understood, but could be managed better categories.   In comparison, only 25% of SPF Industry D responses believe that their company knowledge is understood and was well managed and interesting 13% believed that their company/organisation understanding was only neutral.  

As highlighted in Table 10.9, the results suggest that there is a gap between the management of knowledge and the SPF element that “knowledge is imperative for success” categorised by SPF Industry D companies.

Table 10.9: