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As businesses learn more about competitive intelligence (CI) and how to use it, the ferocity of competition rises to a new level. Naturally, people will seek ways to protect themselves and their organizations against CI, but how? McGonagle and Vella, specialists in CI and what can be called CI countermeasures, have studied the problem from its beginning, and now offer corporate executives and executives in public and nonprofit organizations a portfolio of strategies and tactics. Each one is designed to meet two mutually important criteria: self-protection against the competitive intelligence activities of others, but also the freedom and mobility needed to maneuver in the marketplace. The result, a so-called cloaking program, allows an organization to become significantly less visible to its competitors, and can therefore compete more effectively against them. Including full details on the new Economic Espionage Act of 1996, this book is an extremely useful resource for executives throughout the public and private sectors.
McGonagle and Vella maintain that there is nothing illegal about protecting an organization against competition. They argue that businesses can and should restrict the information available to others-available legally and ethically from newspapers, for example, or from an organization's annual reports. The authors' aim is for organizations to respond to CI's advances by making it more difficult for competitors to learn about them. They begin by explaining how CI data collection works and the analytical tools that are most effective and commonly used. They then develop the basic precepts for establishing and managing a cloaking program, that is, a way for a business to protect key pieces of competitively sensitive information by the same legal and ethical means others are using to discover it. Well written and easily accessed,
Protecting Your Company Against Competitive Intelligence is important information not only for experienced CI professionals and those who aspire to such positions, but also for executives with general management responsibilities.
List of contents
Preface
The Big PictureCloaking and Competitive Intelligence
Introduction to Cloaking: A Case Study
Cloaking
What do Others Know about You and Where Did They Find It?
How do They Figure Out What We Are Doing?
Creating a Cloaking ProgramWhat Should You Protect and How Should You Protect It?
Cloaking Precepts: What to Do?
Cloaking Precepts: How to Proceed
Cloaking Precepts: Where to Act
Your Cloaking Program: Organizational Issues
Now Use Your New Low Visibility!
Appendix A: Disinformation
Appendix B: Critical Legislation
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the author
JOHN J. McGONAGLE is Managing Partner of The Helicon Group and CAROLYN M. VELLA is Helicon's Founding Partner. Together they have written five books and dozens of articles on CI and related topics. Internationally recognized for their workshops and seminars, they have advised clients on competitive intelligence and related subjects in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. Their three other Quorum books are,
A New Archetype for Competitive Intelligence (1996),
Improved Business Planning Using Competitive Intelligence (1988), and
Competitive Intelligence in the Computer Age (1987).
