EDITORIAL NOTE VOL 3, NO 3 (2013)

Abstract

The journal continues to draw mainly on articles presented at academic conferences on topics related to competitive intelligence. In 2013 SCIP organized a first conference in South Africa, under the leadership of ASA du Toit, the journal’s editor for Africa.The first article by Agostino et al. entitled “Cloud solution in Business Intelligence for SMEs –vendor and customer perspectives“ identifies key success factor for SMEs of cloud based Business Intelligence products. Most important KSFs identified in this study were the level of software functionalities, the ubiquitous access to data, responsive answers to customer support requests, handling large amounts of data and implementation cost. The study also shows that SMEs prefer industry tailored software, monthly or quarterly billings, and contact by email or phone for service.The second article by Helen N. Rothberg and G. Scott Erickson entitled “Intelligence in the Oil Patch: Knowledge Management and Competitive Intelligence Insights” argue with extensive empirical data and examples from oil-based industries that practitioners are one step ahead of academia in the sense that many organizations have a connection between their knowledge management and competitive intelligence functions. While the natural inclination of most working in the fields of KM and CI is that more is always better, both theory and practice suggest that sometimes a more measured approach may be better, the authors conclude. The third article by Esteves and Curto entitled “A Risk and Benefits Behavioral Model to Assess Intentions to Adopt Big Data” develops a model that predicts the intention to adopt Big Data technologies. The article by Salvador and Casanoa entitled “Applying Competitive Intelligence: The Case of Thermoplastics Elastomers” provides a practical case of the Competitive Intelligence Methodology applied to the Thermoplastics Elastomers Industry, specifically within the Styrenic Block Copolymers category. The authors identify a solution for a Mexican Company to support their decision-making process. The last article by Kabir and Carayannis entitled “Big Data, Tacit Knowledge and Organizational Competitiveness” show how big data is a source of firm’s competitive advantage.As always we would first of all like to thank the authors for their contributions to this issue of JISIB.