Description

Where the knowledge applies:
Competitive intelligence that is collected without a systematic methodology produces assessments with uneven coverage and unknown gaps. This module covers the full CI cycle — from intelligence requirements definition through ethical collection, source triangulation, analysis, and delivery — with the methodological rigor that makes competitive assessments reliable.

What the module works through:
– Intelligence requirements framing: defining what the CI function needs to produce — the specific decisions it supports, the information gaps it fills, and the analytical outputs that will be most useful to the decision-makers it serves
– Ethical collection frameworks: the legal and professional boundaries of competitive information collection, how to design a collection program that operates within them, and how to assess the reliability of competitively sensitive information retrieved from different source types
– Analytical methodology for CI: structured analytical techniques — SWOT, PESTLE, competitor profiling, scenario analysis — applied to competitive intelligence contexts with attention to the specific analytical biases and errors most common in CI work

Module duration: +/- 6 hours

What changes in practice:
A competitive intelligence practice built on systematic methodology rather than reactive collection — producing assessments with documented coverage, identified gaps, and analytical conclusions that are grounded in triangulated evidence rather than single-source inference.