A cognitive approach to the representation of managerial competitive intelligence knowledge.

Abstract

With today's rapidly changing business environment, more and more businesses are using competitive intelligence to improve planning efforts, identify threats and opportunities and help avoid unpleasant surprises. However, to be effective, this intelligence must be gathered and communicated between managers. Two research questions will address these issues: (1) can a representation of competitive knowledge be developed that reflects managerial thought and (2) will a graphical computer tool based on this representation elicit a more complete representation of competitive intelligence knowledge in a more efficient manner relative to traditional methods? Various studies have shown managerial thought to be represented in several ways, e.g., conceptual groupings, hierarchically, and causally. However, by proposing that managers represent information about competitors in a story structure and integrating this proposal with the literature from competitive intelligence and strategic planning, a more complete conceptual model results. To validate the proposed conceptual model, an archival case study of three competitors in the computer workstation market was conducted. Following that, interviews were conducted with six MBA students with experience in competitive intelligence and with six managers. The transcripts from these interviews have been analyzed and the conceptual model has been modified based on input from this content analysis. A prototype was developed using the ConceptBase platform, an X-windows tool that provides both graphical and textual access to concepts and their relationships. The prototype will allow managers to create a graphical representation of their competitive knowledge. This representation will allow managers to locate gaps in their knowledge and to communicate their information to others. The prototype was validated by two different groups of MBA students by asking them to represent a given competitive situation. One group used pencil and paper while the second group used the prototype. Both the number of uncategorized concepts and the number of relationships differed significantly. This indicates that a more complete representation was created using the prototype. The two main contributions of this research are: (1) a model of competitive intelligence knowledge based on managerial cognition, and (2) a prototype that will facilitate the elicitation of competitive intelligence knowledge in a graphical and understandable manner.