It is often heard, and even more often seen written, for example on social media, that that there is nothing new in the competitive intelligence (CI) field. There are no new ideas, the ideas that are being expressed are the same old, there is no development, there is, at best, stagnation. Even the old claim that CI is dead [1] reappears with a certain frequency [2] : “Competitive intelligence as a profession is dead. There are fewer and fewer full-time, dedicated CI professionals in organizations, and even fewer legitimate CI departments or functions. The need to understand an organization’s competitors has been diffused to several other functions including market research, finance, sales, R&D and others. What the founders of the profession - Jan Herring, Leonard Fuld, and Ben Gilad - built through the 80s and 90s no longer exists. And organizations are the worse off for it” [3] . Is this true? Yes and No. From a research perspective CI has developed and emerged with information technology (IT) solutions over the past ten years. It has come to the point where it does not make much sense to talk about new CI practices. Most advancements and developments are now about IT solutions and applications. This has again given rise to a whole new world of intelligence related problems and opportunities, not only for engineers but for users of these technologies. It is probably fair to say that the intelligence perspective has never been as important for businesses as it is today. Companies and organizations have never collected and analyzed as much information. Another way to explain this development is to say that CI has evolved, thus is no longer the same. Trying to look for the same or insisting that it has not changed gives the impression that there is nothing new in CI. CI consists of an interesting body of literature, but it was not the first term to deal with questions of intelligence in private organizations, and it is not the last. Before CI there was social intelligence, strategic intelligence and corporate intelligence with their own consultants and literature. As Sawka rightly points out CI was a label used in the 80s and 90s. Other terms used include market intelligence, marketing intelligence, business intelligence, collective intelligence, financial intelligence, scientific and technical intelligence, foresight, insight, and equivalent terms in other languages, like “l’information strategique et de la securite economiques” (Sisse) [previously “intelligence economique"], “veille” in French and “omvarldsanalys” in Swedish. All these fields, where a field is defined as a body of literature, basically study the same phenomenon, how to gather information to make better decisions. As such intelligence studies is a part of the information age. The information age gave birth to several bodies of literature, of which the more established include information systems, management information systems and customer relations management. The intelligence perspective never really caught on among business scholars, maybe because it was associated with industrial espionage. The intelligence parallel in business is also a bet, the argument that private organizations are better organized as intelligence organizations, much like in state and/or military organizations. The idea is that this will give better information, which again will lead to a competitive advantage. So far, this bet has not caught on. Business organizations continue to be organized much as they were a hundred years ago: into production, sales, marketing, HR, finance and accounting. However, the way people work in all of these departments with ever larger amounts of information and data is starting to look more like intelligence operatives with their extensive system of files. In other words, the CI position never really saw a breakthrough, but CI has become an ever more important part of employees’ jobs, as a function. How can we then explain the frequently raised discussion related to the problems of CI? Let me suggest two answers, one general, the other more specific. Once we create something, we insist that it has either to exist, as it is, or it must disappear, thus at the end it is declared dead. This is the western mind at work, thinking in dichotomies, a thing either exist or it does not exist. There is no room for evolution, only constants. If a phenomenon such as a discipline evolves, we shouldn’t say that it’s dead, it just isn’t the same anymore, and nothing is more natural than that. So, what must change is rather the way in which we think about the fields we study. The other suggestion is that the critic of CI has more to do with another problem, the selling of consulting services. The market for consultancy services is highly segmented and fiercely competitive. As consultants we are trying to make a name for ourselves in a niche we can call our own and strive to be an acknowledged expert in it. This takes years, often a whole career. Academic careers are created much according to the same logic so the problem is the same there. The underlying message is “this is my area”, my niche, and as such I will defend it. What often happens is that another persons’ or group’s area grows into our own and sometimes is better at explaining the reality of our business problem, thus challenging our very raison d'etre. Instead we insist that we are still relevant refusing to read up on other areas. We cease to be curious and the very business problems we study pass on to others. Some would argue this is what happened to CI. So, where is CI today? There certainly are many answers to this question. One suggestion is that it is more often treated as business intelligence again (it very much started there, but then without the IT association), data mining, search engine optimization, social media marketing and digital marketing in general. It suffices to look at the articles in this issue to find other examples: Bleoju et al. write about how MOOCs can be used to teach intelligence. Sperkova writes about customer experience (CX) and voice of customer (VoC). Poblano-Ojinaga et al. write about structural equation modeling for the identification of the intelligence factors. All authors have that in common that the are studying how organizations handle intelligence. In more detail, the first article by Bleoju et al. entitled “Empirical evidence from a connectivist competitive intelligence massive open online course (CI cMOOC) proof of concept” reveals how “the CI learning community perceives the capability of a cMOOC to train foreknowledge practices, given the best match between its content and context.” The paper argues for “an open intelligence approach to cMOOC collective training.” The second article by Maune entitled “Competitive intelligence as a game changer for Africa’s competitiveness in the global economy” develops a conceptual framework for how competitive intelligence can be adopted by African countries to improve their performance in the global economy. The third article by Sperkova entitled “Integration of textual VoC into a CX data model for business intelligence use in B2C” is a summary of her PhD, which will be defended in February 2020 at the University of Economics in Prague, the Department of Information Technologies. The author presents a model to store the customer experience (CX) and voice of customer (VoC) data as part of a business intelligence system. The model can help to improve customer relationships and make future performance more automatic and effective. The fourth article by Palilingan and Batmetan Entitled “How competitive intelligence can be used to improve a management vocational high school: A case from Indonesia” shows how competitive intelligence can be applied to make a vocational high school more efficient. The fifth and last article by Poblano-Ojinaga et al. entitled “Effect of the competitive intelligence on the innovation capability: an exploratory study in Mexican companies”, is an investigation using a methodology of structural equation modeling for the identification of the intelligence factors, to evaluate their relative importance and relationships with the innovation capability of Mexican companies. The empirical results show that the relationship between competitive intelligence and the innovation capability is indirect, with knowledge management as a mediating factor. Some news worth mentioning: we would like to thank the Swedish Research Council/ NOP-HS for receiving the “large” grant for Open Access journals for two years starting in 2020. JISIB is now indexed by Crossref, which should give users direct access to PDF full text through databases like Scopus and Web of Science. The SCIP organization, owned by Frost & Sullivan, has been reignited with a new executive director. We wish them good luck. There are numerous conferences on intelligence related topics this spring and next winter. See the JISIB website for details. Some of the editors of JISIB will be at the ICI in Bad Nauheim 11-14 May 2020. We hope to see you there. As always, we would above all like to thank the authors for their contributions to this issue of JISIB. Thanks to Dr. Allison Perrigo for reviewing English grammar and helping with layout design for all articles. [1] Sawka, Kenneth. (2010). The death of the competitive intelligence professional. Outward Insights , 13 (2), 36-39. [2] Sawka, Kenneth. The death of the competitive intelligence professional. Retrieved January 30, 2020 from https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6627549366062194688 [3] Idem

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关于“竞争情报领域没有新事物”的论点

例如，在社交媒体上经常听到，甚至更经常看到书面记录，竞争情报（CI）领域并没有什么新鲜事物。没有新的想法，表达的想法是一样的老，没有发展，充其量是停滞。即使是关于CI已死的旧说法[1]也会以一定的频率[2]再次出现：“竞争情报作为一种职业已经死了。组织中的专职CI专业人员越来越少，合法CI部门或职能也越来越少。了解组织竞争对手的需求已经分散到其他几个职能部门，包括市场研究，财务，销售，研发和其他职能。在80年代和90年代建立的该行业的创始人Jan Herring，Leonard Fuld和Ben Gilad不再存在。而组织则因此变得更糟” [3]。这是真的？是和否。从研究的角度来看，CI在过去十年中已经发展并出现了信息技术（IT）解决方案。到了这样的地步，谈论新的CI实践并没有多大意义。现在，大多数进步和发展都与IT解决方案和应用程序有关。这再次给与情报相关的问题和机遇带来了一个全新的世界，不仅对于工程师，而且对于这些技术的用户而言。可以公平地说，对于企业而言，智能观点从未像现在这样重要。公司和组织从未收集和分析过如此多的信息。解释这种发展的另一种方式是说CI已经发展，因此不再相同。尝试寻找相同的内容或坚持认为它没有改变，给人的印象是CI中没有新内容。CI由有趣的文学组成，但它不是处理私人组织中的情报问题的第一个术语，也不是最后一个术语。在CI之前，有社会情报，战略情报和公司情报，以及他们自己的顾问和文学资料。正如Sawka正确指出的那样，CI是80年代和90年代使用的标签。使用的其他术语包括市场情报，市场情报，商业情报，集体情报，金融情报，科学技术情报，远见，洞察力以及其他语言的等效术语，例如“ l'信息策略与安全经济学”（Sisse） [以前是“智能经济学”]，法语中的“ veille”和瑞典语中的“ omvarldsanalys”。所有这些领域（其中一个领域被定义为文学主体）基本上都研究相同的现象，即如何收集信息以做出更好的决策。因此，情报研究是信息时代的一部分。信息时代催生了许多文学，其中更成熟的包括信息系统，管理信息系统和客户关系管理。情报学的观点从未真正引起商业学者的欢迎，也许是因为它与工业间谍活动有关。商业上的情报并行也是一个赌注，这种论据认为，私人组织可以更好地组织为情报组织，就像在州和/或军事组织中一样。想法是，这将提供更好的信息，这将再次带来竞争优势。到目前为止，这个赌注还没有流行。商业组织继续像一百年前一样组织起来：进入生产，销售，营销，人力资源，财务和会计。但是，人们在所有这些部门中使用越来越大量的信息和数据的工作方式开始看起来更像是具有广泛文件系统的情报人员。换句话说，CI的位置从来没有真正突破，但是从功能上来说，CI已成为员工工作中越来越重要的部分。那么，我们该如何解释与CI问题有关的频繁讨论呢？让我提出两个答案，一个是一般性的，另一个是更具体的。一旦我们创建了某种东西，我们坚持它必须要么原样存在，要么必须消失，因此最后被宣布死亡。这是工作中的西方思想，二分法思考，一种事物存在或不存在。没有进化的空间，只有常数。如果诸如学科之类的现象发展了，我们就不应该说它已经死了，那就不再一样了，没有什么比这更自然了。因此，必须改变的是我们思考所研究领域的方式。另一个建议是，CI的批评者与另一个问题有关，即咨询服务的销售。咨询服务市场高度细分，竞争激烈。作为顾问，我们正努力在小众市场中为自己取名，我们可以称自己为专家，并努力成为其中公认的专家。这需要数年，通常是整个职业。学术职业是根据相同的逻辑创造的，因此那里的问题是相同的。基本信息是“这是我的领域”，这是我的利基，因此，我将捍卫它。经常发生的事情是，另一个人或一个小组的区域逐渐发展成为我们自己的区域，有时更擅长于解释我们业务问题的现实，从而挑战了我们的存在理由。相反，我们坚持认为，我们仍然拒绝阅读其他领域的内容。我们不再好奇，我们所研究的商业问题也转移到了其他人身上。有人会认为这就是CI发生的事情。那么，CI今天在哪里？这个问题肯定有很多答案。一个建议是，它更经常被再次视为商业智能（它从那里开始，但是没有IT协会），数据挖掘，搜索引擎优化，社交媒体营销和数字营销。只需查看本期中的文章以找到其他示例即可：Bleoju等。撰写有关如何使用MOOC教授智力的文章。Sperkova撰写有关客户体验（CX）和客户声音（VoC）的文章。Poblano-Ojinaga等。撰写有关识别智力因素的结构方程模型的文章。所有作者都有一个共同点，即研究组织如何处理情报。更详细的说，Bleoju等人的第一篇文章。题为“来自连接主义竞争情报的大规模开放式在线课程（CI cMOOC）概念证明的经验证据”揭示了“ CI学习社区如何感知cMOOC训练前瞻性实践的能力，因为其内容和背景之间的最佳匹配。该论文主张“对cMOOC集体培训采取开放式情报方法。” 莫恩（Maune）的第二篇文章题为“竞争情报作为改变非洲在全球经济中竞争力的游戏规则”，为非洲国家如何采用竞争情报以改善其在全球经济中的表现提出了一个概念框架。Sperkova的第三篇文章“将文本VoC集成到B2C中用于商业智能的CX数据模型中”是她的博士学位的摘要，该博士学位将于2020年2月在布拉格经济大学信息技术系获得辩护。 。作者提出了一个模型来存储客户体验（CX）和客户语音（VoC）数据，作为商业智能系统的一部分。该模型可以帮助改善与客户的关系，并使未来的业绩更加自动化和有效。Palilingan和Batmetan撰写的第四篇文章题为“如何使用竞争情报来改善管理职业高中：来自印度尼西亚的案例”显示了如何应用竞争情报来提高职业高中的效率。Poblano-Ojinaga等人的第五篇也是最后一篇文章。题为“竞争情报对创新能力的影响：墨西哥公司的一项探索性研究”是一项使用结构方程模型方法确定情报因素，评估其相对重要性以及与创新能力的关系的调查。墨西哥公司。实证结果表明，以知识管理为中介，竞争情报与创新能力之间是间接的关系。值得一提的一些消息：我们要感谢瑞典研究委员会/ NOP-HS从2020年开始连续两年获得“开放获取”期刊的“巨额”资助。JISIB现在被Crossref索引，该索引应使用户可以直接访问通过Scopus和Web of Science等数据库获取PDF全文。Frost＆Sullivan拥有的SCIP组织已被重新任命为新的执行董事。我们祝他们好运。今年春季和下个冬季，将举行许多有关情报相关主题的会议。有关详细信息，请参见JISIB网站。JISIB的一些编辑将在2020年5月11日至14日在巴特瑙海姆（Bad Nauheim）举行的ICI上。我们希望在那里见到您。一如既往，首先，我们要感谢作者为JISIB这一期所做的贡献。感谢Allison Perrigo博士复习了英语语法并为所有文章提供了版式设计帮助。[1]肯尼思·索卡（Sawka）。（2010）。竞争情报专业人员的死亡。外向洞察，13（2），36-39。[2]肯尼思·索卡（Sawka）。竞争情报专业人员的死亡。取自2020年1月30日，网址为https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6627549366062194688 [3]同上 竞争情报专业人员的死亡。取自2020年1月30日，网址为https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6627549366062194688 [3]同上 竞争情报专业人员的死亡。取自2020年1月30日，网址为https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6627549366062194688 [3]同上