Building an ?analysis age? for competitive intelligence in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Why is the effectiveness of CI programs so low? Poor training of CI analysts, asserts the author. Academics often do an inadequate job of training people to think critically, rigorously, and in creative and alternative ways precisely because many of them lack these skills themselves. For CI to prosper long term within the corporate environment, it needs to be difficult to gain entry into an intelligence training program, and even harder to graduate from it. Similarly, the corporate CI function needs to attract and hire only the top talent from within the company or from outside. To support this, perhaps the foremost characteristic of a CI practitioner needs to be analytical excellence built upon flexibility of mind and a first-rate intellect, which is only then followed by some of the other characteristics generally assumed to be necessary for a CI analyst. Since CI organizations are not interested in buying a degree but in producing a result, the transformation of ex-student to future analyst is better served by recruitment and retention standards that focus on active thinking abilities by establishing apprentice-like arrangements. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.