It has become a business strategy of substance that can make the difference between success and failure, especially for small companies. Research company Gartner believes that by the end of this year at least 60 per cent of the world's 1000 most successful companies will have strategies to keep a close eye on competitors, as well as use third-party information to help form initiatives to win or retain customers. A straw poll of 13 IT vendors conducted in the US in 1999 by Gartner found each company had an average of nine staff employed as CI analysts. The notion of competitive intelligence should not be confused with the act of spying, or industrial espionage, as it is known in business circles. It is common to hear stories from the auto industry about how competitors try to get sneak peaks of a competitor's prototypes as they are put through their paces on a racing track before being commissioned for production.
Similar dangers exist for IT companies too.
Last October, Microsoft suffered a hack attack aimed at trying to secure details of source code for an unnamed product that had yet to be released. Idle gossip among dotcom employees in New York almost proved the undoing of a chief executive officer during the height of the internet boom in 1999. But while they shilly-shallied, the CEO got to hear of the plot and so quickly arranged for a green card. This is a bizarre but classic example of two rival organisations that held competitive intelligence, but only one of them actually executed on it. The head of the CIA, Robert Gates, claims national governments actively spy on foreign businesses and pass on their ill-gotten secrets to their own nation's business leaders.