Challenges for strategic competitive intelligence at the corporate level

Abstract

Strategic competitive intelligence is a necessity for corporate decision making in today's highly complex, “hypercompetitive” global markets, where current and potential rivals are encountered on multiple levels of competition. Key strategic decisions regarding diversification, downsizing from past diversification, and strategic alliances must be based on sound assessments of the competitive environment. Strategic CI, for example, can provide a basis for assessing the opportunities, necessities, and risks of present or future alliances, for making decisions regarding appropriate forms and intensities of present or future cooperative arrangements, and to choose among stable or variable forms of cooperation. Similarly, strategic CI can provide relevant knowledge concerning a firm's strategy‐related, structure‐related, and culture‐related challenges with respect to diversification. D'Avini's framework of four cooperative arenas highlights why, with respect to the new competitive realities, corporate‐level strategy requires dynamic, multi‐level, and multi‐arena competitive intelligence to identify and analyze probable threats and opportunities on all levels, and in all arenas, of competition.