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Competitive Intelligence Schools Across the World: Foundations, Influence and Perspectives
3.1. Introduction: what is the competitive intelligence school?
Robert Guillaumot was a French pioneer, as well as international pioneer of competitive intelligence. During the early 1980s, he used to meet with emblematic figureheads of the competitive intelligence practitioners in the United States and Sweden. At this time he met the pioneers who would then become his friends: the Yugoslavian Stevan Dedijer, the Japanese Juro Nakagawa, and the Chinese Qihao Miao. In 1994, he invited the representatives of various national “competitive intelligences” (United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, United States, France) to Boston in order to lay the foundations of an international alliance of business intelligence professionals. Later, he says: “with this alliance, my goal was to sketch the framework of a new discipline, to differentiate its content from that of other management methods and thus lay the foundations for an international coopetition guaranteeing fair play in defending our national interests”. The existence of this group as an “observatory” involved the exchange of information on best practices and innovations related to globalized competitive intelligence. Every school in the world aims to feed off others, always with a critical eye and awareness of the cultural specificities of each.
It is important to remember that this little-reported but considerable event is indeed very relevant and we believe it is at the origin of the acceleration of the dynamics of competitive intelligence schools, that it finally, is the basis of the phenomenon of methodological syncretism and the “strategic mix” that characterizes the most dynamic schools. Above all, schools of competitive intelligence cannot be understood in each country without reference to this dynamic of internationalization and creativity from “advanced experiences” and, as we shall see below, “often caused by the circumstances and by specificities of each continent, region or country”. Finally, there is a concordance of the concerns of both public and private decision-makers and strategists. Throughout the world, they have gradually designed modern competitive intelligence to overcome the growing confusion they faced at the end of the 20th Century confronted with inefficiency of their world analysis matrix and the malfunction of their strategic compasses.
Competitive intelligence is closely linked to the culture of strategy. In each country it feeds off an original culture of strategy (Latin, Asian, Anglo-American, African, Arab). This is expressed through a set of ways of thinking and acting that govern the conception, the organization, and the use of means; in particular information and knowledge to achieve a strategic objective [FAY 06]. It consists of an intellectual heritage, as well as experiences that are formed gradually through history and its incarnations. Peoples and rulers mobilize them to achieve conquests or to survive by drawing from each ambition the materials of strategic advantage and the ingredients necessary to remain resilient during crises.
As far as we are concerned, it determines specific competition management or cooperation management skills that feed into private and public strategies aiming at increasing power and influence. The way by which we exist in the world and representing it in an interpretation of globalization produces strategic behaviors and generates creativity in this area: power strategy, influence and security strategy, conquest strategy and forward-looking strategy. In order to innovate, we have to mobilize the varying capacities of intelligence; that is to say, understanding situations, risks and crises, balance of power relationships or cooperative relationships, cultures, etc., and to think of organizations that collect, interpret, disseminate and protect information.
This mobilization produces communities of competitive intelligence, communities of practice gathering researchers, experts and practitioners, across all countries. Various countries have created schools: American, Swedish, Anglo-American, French, Francophone, Chinese, Moroccan, African, etc.
A new phenomenon has been rapidly accelerating due to the spread of globalization. It is the cross-fertilization of business intelligence practices that rely on information and knowledge mastery to drive strategies, as well as competitive offensives or partnerships. This phenomenon has grown from the hybridization of “strategic styles” and strategic cultures – Chinese, Japanese, British, Anglo-American, Latin American, Brazilian, and Arabic for example. This is not a new phenomenon. Japanese industrial strategist, Fumio Hasegawa [HAS 88], demonstrates this through a book entitled Built by Japan. Competitive Strategies of the Japanese Construction Industry in which he discusses strategies combining Sun Tzu’s thinking and modern competitive intelligence and market competition.
In the field of competitive intelligence, this phenomenon of syncretism is more particularly characterized by the construction of the Chinese school. The Chinese national and provincial authorities have gradually organized the “silent revolution of open intelligence” – that of competitive intelligence – by studying through scientific exchanges, foreign practices and organizations, such as those practiced in the United States, France, Canada, Japan and Germany [CLE 11]. These crossovers can be useful when they generate a capacity for innovation in schools. They also determine the ability of one school or another to influence others. We can therefore emphasize the influence of the Japanese, American or French schools in China. The Japanese influence, through regular exchanges, began in the early 1990s when Professor Juro Nakagawa, founder of the Business Intelligence Society of Japan [NAK 13], met with both Professor Qihao Miao, founder of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professional of China and patron of the Shanghai Institute of Science and Technology Information, and the French pioneer Robert Guillaumot. This influence is characterized today by the long-term action of pioneers, such as Robert Guillaumot, Professor Henri Dou, the expert Jean-Marie Rousseau, and Philippe Clerc at the assembly of the French Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI) France, particularly in the field of territorial intelligence. This influence is characterized by an in-depth debate between the practitioners of the two schools, which is well illustrated in the proceedings of the 2011 symposium held in Shanghai on the theme “National Competitive Intelligence. Comparative study on practices in France in China” whose leader for France was Alain Juillet, former senior government official for competitive intelligence affairs [GRO 11].
But we must remain vigilant. The reproduction of methods and the use of identical tools, which are often heavily culturally grounded and lacking criticism, can lead to mimicry – the “evil of generalized good practices”. It leads to inefficiency. It creates cognitive biases. It creates a “blind intelligence” of situations.
From then on, a school of competitive intelligence was defined by a vision, a doctrine, a community of practice, a capacity for innovation and influence.
3.2. Visions that inspire schools of thought
“See far and act quickly” is the challenge facing our nations and the actors who make them. “If you do not plan for the future, you won’t have one” Wayne Rosenkrans warned us [ROS 88] in the 2000s, at a conference of the Association of American Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP). He was in charge of international competitive intelligence at the Astra Zeneca laboratory. In order to survive, keep on influencing world history, and to guarantee one’s future within a period of globalization and its avatars, must prepare for the one future, and sketch a vision that can be shared, departing from a single ambition. Competitive intelligence in its modern definition has been formalized, made explicit both in very small countries, such as Sweden, as well as in “power countries” such as the United States, France and China. The type of competitive intelligence that is practiced on the basis of a vision becomes one of the instruments for the choice of strategies. In this case, each country, with its various specificities, implements it to develop its capacities for strategic thinking and foresight.
“Power countries” tend to focus on global issues, to build multiple scenarios for the future of the world and to formulate roadmaps for their respective economic and social strategies. As for the emerging countries grouped under the term “developmentalists” (which are less and less considered as BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), given this group displays heterogeneous realities), they will be interested in competitive intelligence in order to catch up economically and strategically by seeking to master their sovereignty and develop their influence in their strategic areas.
3.2.1. “Power countries”
In France, research, development, technology, industry and innovation, as well as cultural influence, have long been strategic fields. They densified visions and created the European will-to-power aimed at guaranteeing independence. Influence was conceived and driven by state-of-the-art research and mastery of the core competencies of the major technological sectors (software, microelectronics, biotechnology, nuclear, telecommunications, transport, aeronautics, etc.). The equation “excellence, technological power” has long expressed a desire for power. In 1982, France launched a vast program of technological cooperation on the technologies of the future, from which it drew the Eureka program. The European will-to-power was expressed in 1985 by one of the major players in the Eureka program, Yves Stourdzé, Director General of the Center for Systems and Advanced Technologies Studies (CESTA – Le Centre d’Étude des Systèmes et Technologies Avancées):
“The era of power fossilized in a stable regulatory system is long over. The world of deregulation and instability that has opened up is a hard world, like that of Bismarck. Those who have gathered their strengths and built a solid foundation will resist this. A new social contract of progress between the peoples of Europe, based on advanced technology, has become a burning preoccupation” [STO 16].
Today, if there is one of the last years of government foresight worthy of its name in France it is that of identifying the key technologies that we must master in order to remain in the global competition. The ambition of excellence/power remains valid, but hollow: if France does not want to disappear from the world, it must urgently retake its course of reindustrialization with a strengthened position in the “4th industrial revolution”.
As we have said, this vision has also been based for some centuries on the feeling of influencing the world through French values, culture and our creativity. During the great international battles that took place at UNESCO on cultural diversity in the first decade of the 21st Century, France managed to retain its fragile influential leadership [CLE 08]. Today, it does not neglect the considerable economic interests that compete inside the cultural industries. Essentially, however, France, since the governments of General de Gaulle, since the “Pompidou industrial imperative” and the European technological interlude of the 1980s, has failed to define a real project, a doctrine of power as a way for the future of the country.
Competitive intelligence in France has developed around these visions and this observation of the “lack of reflection on the power of France faced with the challenges of globalization” [HAR 08]. The publication of the report of the French Planning Office entitled “Competitive Intelligence and Business Strategies” in 1994 [MAR 14] and the creation of the first national strategy of competitive intelligence called “competitiveness and economic security” policy in 1995 [CLE 95a], then the public policies that have followed until today, have tried and still try to respond to this lacuna. Today, a number of stakeholders of the French school of competitive intelligence (companies, experts, think tanks administration) are working to feed the reflection, including through the definition of so-called strategic sectors and the attempt to define of a doctrine of digital sovereignty for France in the European partnership.
In the United States, Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama considered that their country was the only world power and expressed in their inaugural speeches or on the state of the Union the desire to dominate both the values, as well as in the economic field. This desire for power was thus illustrated by excerpts from presidential speeches.
“America has become the only indispensable nation […]. The world’s largest democracy must take the lead of democracies […] so as to pursue America’s eternal mission,” Bill Clinton announced in 1993. Later in 2006 George Bush in a speech on the state of the Union said: “America must lead the world.” As for Barack Obama, he got angry in 2016: “I already told you that all discussions on the decline of the US economy were a political fiction […]. The United States of America is the most powerful nation […]”.
The desire for power and structuring influence on the world is also supported by the industrial world. In 1946, the Director of Paramount stated [CLE 08]:
“We, the industry, are aware of the need to inform people in foreign countries of what makes America a great country and we think we know how to deliver the message of our democracy. We want to do it on a commercial basis, and we are ready, if necessary, to face a decline in our revenues.”
Today the war of data and technologies is engaged by the American industrial world through the GAFA offensive and supported by the American administration. Both Europe and Africa appear as digital colonies of the United States.
In the report defining the National Security Strategy of the United States of America published in December 2017, the Trump administration expressed the reorganisation of its power objectives. The president has decided to abandon the role of “world policeman” and focus on adressing American society and its economy. In 2017, President Trump declared that: “President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world, thank you… Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come.” The role of the White House, diplomacy, and its armed forces is no longer to “shape the world”, but to protect the “interests of the American people”, and its way of living. American power is also extended to protecting the “cyber-spatial” borders, securing the internet and especially national security, energy, banks, communication, and transport, as well as strategic sectors. The administration is planning a “brain drain” toward the United States, as well as fighting foreign state and company interventions, namely in advanced technology sectors.
3.2.2. “Emerging countries”
Where emerging countries are concerned, their leaders find themselves preoccupied with controlling their sovereignty, as well as developing the influence of their regional zones and their respective strategies. On a local level, competitve and prospective intelligence concern the great challenges that face these regions, including fighting poverty, improving education standards, expanding access to healthcare, urbanization, etc. Beyond internal and local concerns, competitive and prospective intelligence serve to reinforce their local leadership. One of the common goals of emerging countries is to extend their voices so that they might be heard further afield, on the world stage. Also, the economic and prospective intelligence that they deploy progressively can be analyzed as an exercise of communication of influence intended to reinforce their internal sovereignty, both toward their populations and to project their motivation to increase their power to the outside.
Through this approach, we are able to identify a project which consists of formalizing long-term and ideal strategic objectives, built upon the construction of internal evolutionary scenarios of society and the economy. The national prism seems to be a priority. This is understandble because the confirmation of their power by countries such as China or Brazil, for example, is based firstly on the internal issues linked to their development. Mexico is a perfect example of this approach. During his election in 2013, the former Mexican president, Peña Nieto, found a way of crossing over the two main aims – both internal and external – whilst realizing a strategy for power growth through the use of the Spanish language and Hispanic culture (toward the outside) in order to better fight poverty in Mexico (a response to an internal issue). Indeed, for emerging countries, their main threat is firstly found in the social divide and economic inequality. In a column entitled “The end of poverty in Mexico”, featured in the French newspaper Le Monde in October 2012 [NIE 12], Peña Nieto spelled out his vision:
“I believe that we should make the most of Mexican culture. Beyond its symbolic importance, we should promote it so that it becomes a driving force for development and the strategic position it holds in the world […]. Our objective will be to transform Mexico into a world leader in the dissemination of the Spanish language and its culural goods (cinema, literature, radio, the press, television and higher education).”
According to the “developmentalists”, the economy is not a sufficient argument to claim a place on the international scene. Although economic diplomacy is important, of course, but “radiation” and strategies based on “cultural power” appear to be more effective ways of openings doors, especially in the long run. As a result, emerging countries affirm their singularity by pointing out the importance of their culture in the face of the dominant and globalizing culture. In our view, they deploy geocultural strategies that draw on their strengths, including the economy, within their culture and the history of their culture.
In China, the vision the country’s new power was formalized by President XI Jinping on the occasion of the Nineteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. In order to overcome the difficulties of Chinese society – inequality, the ageing population, pollution etc. – the Chinese president decided to change the country’s industrial strategy and launched the China 2025 digital transition industrial program. At the same time, he launched the new Silk Road marking China’s determination to increase its commercial outreach to the world, targeting through these new land and sea routes Europe and gradually Africa. Above all, it is a long-term vision that lays out the objectives to be achieved: 2020–2035 will engage China on the path of fundamental development and 2035–2050 will mark China’s entry into the value-added services industry.
Regarding Africa, the affirmation of African schools of competitive intelligence is illustrated by the “design” of strong visions of a desire to overcome historical and material dependencies and to find new strategies for increasing power.
To our knowledge, one of the first African organizations to draw a vision backed by an approach of competitive intelligence for Senegal and Africa in development is the Forum for Competitive Intelligence and Development, created in the late 1990s by Amath Soumaré [SOU 12], President of SOPEL International. During the meeting of the FCID organized in Dakar in 2015 in partnership with the International Francophone Association of Competitive Intelligence and the International Trade Center, the final declaration is clear:
“The organizers share the conviction that competitive intelligence, understood as the control of information and knowledge at the service of the design and governance of development strategies, must be integrated into all current systems of support of the Senegal Plan, PSE; must have a cross-cutting dimension, in order to respect coherence in the overall implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the PES strategic policy program projects; must finally feed as ‘a cooperative strike force’ the sub-regional, continental and international alliances, which Senegal needs to realize the ambition of its development.”
In May 2018, we attended a noteworthy and innovative event held on the African continent in Morocco. The Open University of Dakhla and its iconic President Driss Guerraoui, who is also Secretary General of the Economic, Social, Environmental Council of the Kingdom of Morocco [NDI 17] had invited competitive intelligence associations and subject matter experts and practitioners from 23 African countries to debate and exchange. At the end of this meeting, the former Prime Minister of Togo, Mr. Agbéyomé Kodjo published a “plea for a competitive intelligence action plan for an emerging Africa”. He writes:
“In conclusion, economic intelligence and strategic intelligence have to be considered as a core condition intended to drive the ambitious project building a new united and strong Africa. The African continent must now adopt operational mechanisms of economic intelligence and collective strategic intelligence, supported by the promotion of good practices in this field in order to ensure the global security of the continent understood as food security, economic security and economic patriotism. Finally, the public authorities of our countries, with their prerogatives, must consider urgent measures to integrate into the conduct of public affairs a coordinated approach of strategic and economic intelligence in order to strengthen their economy, to better adapt public policies and encourage private companies to integrate the dynamic.”
In his inaugural lecture at the 2nd African conference of competitive intelligence in 2017 in Casablanca, Professor Driss Guerraoui, drew a realistic vision for the future of the African continent based on a collective strategy of global security:
“Ensuring global economic security in an open world has become a complex equation for nations to solve. This is at the heart of the new challenges that the African continent must meet to ensure its stability from its ability to promote in this area an appropriate collective strategic intelligence […]. This task seems crucial in view of the specificity of the global context in which Africa is evolving […]. Finally, given the scale of this problem, no single African country can provide an appropriate and sustainable response to this complex issue […]. In this perspective, the creation of a new generation of regional integration whose geostrategic objective is the creation of the ‘United States of Africa’ constitutes the most appropriate spatial and institutional framework for this purpose. The overall economic security of the continent will depend greatly on it in the future.”
Brazil is developing a vision of its position in the world based on its status as an emerging power. It seeks constantly to avoid and relativize the dependence on dominant economic and political poles: the European Union, the United States, China/Asia. It seeks instead to position itself as the bridgehead of the South American continent. During the hearing of the House of Lords commissioners on soft power and UK influence, the Brazilian ambassador to the UK explained that Brazil lack “hard power” and seeks to “maximize its soft power and increase its accessibility in international business” [HOU 13]. Like China, in the late 1990s, Brazil more recently embarked on a strategy of integrating the global governance system and its institutions, such as the WTO. Brazil has thus developed specific strategies to take regional and global leadership through the promotion of renewed alliances, different from the old colonial systems and based on the values of prosperity and democracy. Its strategic sphere of influence is spreading progressively over West Africa, which it considers to be “its eastern border”. Brazilian leaders have long bet on the choice of Brazil rather than China by Africans from this part of the continent; some of whom have the Portuguese language and former colonial territories of Europe.
3.3. The advent of the competitive intelligence schools
After outlining the geopolitical and geoeconomic framework to better understand the dynamics of building the first schools of competitive intelligence, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we will describe the foundations of the doctrines that have inspired them through recalling the essential texts of the designers of the process. We will describe the communities of practice that built them on a daily basis.
3.3.1. Geopolitical and geoeconomic framework
At this point, it is necessary to go deeper to try to better understand the advent of competitive intelligence at the end of “a tortuous path strewn with contradictions” [BAU 97].
The advent and thus the construction of the schools of competitive intelligence can be understood only in relation to the great geopolitical, geoeconomic and strategic transformations of the global environment which marked the end of the Cold War and the necessity for inventing new intelligence grids of situations. These transformations can be considered as founders of competitive intelligence; that is to say of a new practice of intelligence of the stakes and the situations by the actors involved – companies, experts, public organizations and organizations coming from civil society.
It is 1990. The end of the Cold War marked by the dismantling of the Berlin Wall brings out the ruins of the political masquerade of confrontations a reality driven by economic key-drivers and new forms of competition. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama [FUK 06] published his famous essay entitled The End of History and the Last Man, an end he explains by the global advent of market democracy. Thus, he obscures the national economic dynamics. The following year, Edward Luttwak founded geoeconomics. In a basic text, “From geopolitics to geoeconomics,” he describes the dawn of a new international order in which the economic weapon would replace the military weapon as an instrument of the will of states to gain power [LUT 90]. The major economic clashes are then played out according to the three major players, Japan, Europe and the United States in technology sectors driven by large networks of dominance: information technology, biotechnology, robotics, automotive, aeronautics and cultural industries. Japan dominates, combining in its strategies of conquest and its commercial wars the strategy of the three determinants of globalization according to the Japanese, the 3 Cs: “competition, cooperation, conflict” [YOS 98]. Europe is seeking its position in the balance of power. The United States is committed to economic resilience through a new industrial policy and strategic intelligence: the Advocacy Policy and endows the government and the so-called American economy with an advocacy center; a “War room” that drives US offensives into the top 10 emerging markets for US interests around the world. State, administration and companies coordinate their actions in the national interest.
In every school of competitive intelligence, we note the same creative impulse – a political will, a desire to gain power, but also the geoeconomic pressure of the market, even strategic surprises and therefore the need to enter into a strategy of resilience – at the origin of the dynamic cycles and innovation of their pilots and their practitioners. But there will also be brakes. France, for example, stands out for the delay that policymakers and information management practitioners have made in understanding and integrating the central role of information games in economic competition. In this respect, Christian Harbulot speaks of “omission of geoeconomic power relations” [HAR 08].
The schools of competitive intelligence will gradually be built by distinguishing themselves through intelligence and information management techniques mobilized by practitioners and decision-makers or governmental authorities: prospective and strategic analysis, strategic planning, evaluation, scientific and technical surveillance, bibliometrics, specialized documentation, current data science, economic and legal security, intellectual property, etc. These techniques have been forged and are forged in a permanent dynamic of innovation accompanying “strategic invention” along agile methodological paths; that is to say implemented differently for each situation, each avatar, each time the system is disrupted. The futurist, Thierry Gaudin, recently reminded us of what should be considered as a foundation of the French school of competitive intelligence: as early as the 1980s in France, the study of the technical-social interaction, ethno-technology and world technological surveillance organized with the commissioner for atomic energy, the CEA, and scientific advisers embassies, by the center of prospective and evaluation (CPE) he led, allowed the “the cognitive revolution” [GAU 14] to emerge as the central role of information and knowledge in the emerging technical revolution.
Lastly, schools cannot understand each other without the contribution of international cooperation as we have seen above. The “pioneers, discoverers, designers” of the competitive intelligence approach come together in the United States and within a global network of experts in competitive intelligence (Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, English, etc.) launched by the French Robert Guillaumot in the 1990s. As we mentioned above, hybridization comes from this international community that continues, transforms and enriches itself. Here we find the source of the contemporary approach of competitive intelligence.
3.3.2. Doctrines
We understand doctrine as a set of concepts that enlighten, guide and run any action.
3.3.2.1. The creators
We now propose to visit in more detail, in the first part, the conceptual work and the production of the Anglo-American (that’s English-speaking American) school which inspired the French approach. In the second part, by presenting the French school, we will propose a reading of the criticism that the French pioneers have made of the Anglo-American school, the same one that allowed the French school to deploy an approach that still remains rather original even today.
3.3.2.1.1. The Anglo-American influence
Philippe Baumard and Christian Harbulot [BAU 97], research professors and practitioners, are used to speaking of the “Anglo-American influence on competitive intelligence”. They identify the steps that structured these reflections. The Anglo-American school is the first to conceptualize the use of information in economic clashes, especially during a first phase of academic criticism, marked by collective knowledge exchange strategies between governments and companies, to promote power interests and thus the national interest. A second and more entrepreneurial step of their critique comes from the need to meet the new challenges of competition and to take into account the factors outside the market and the game of stakeholders who do not act in a strict market framework. Here, the deployment of the concept of competitive intelligence developed in American multinationals (Motorola, Chrysler, General Motor, 3M, etc.) has given rise to a field of very influential entrepreneurial types of practice. It has led to many academic developments. In a complementary way, a current way of thinking has developed around “social intelligence” and the attempt to create a discipline of the sciences of intelligence, repositioning the problem of information in the context of social sciences.
The Anglo-American contribution in the foundational conception of the first schools of competitive intelligence and in the design of the most recent is based on five designers and thinkers. They are Americans Harold Wilensky, Michael Porter, Richard D’Aveni, Robert Edward Freeman, and Yugoslavian Stevan Dedijer.
3.3.2.1.2. Harold Wilensky: public/private strategies and organizational intelligence
The international community of practitioners and researchers in competitive intelligence – at least in the West – seem to agree that the modern conception of competitive intelligence was formalized in the United States in the 1960s by Harold Wilensky [WIL 67]. A former expert in military intelligence, the latter formalizes the concept of organizational intelligence. What is his contribution? According to Wilensky, winning competitive advantages relies on cooperation and collective strategies for the production and exchange of knowledge between governments and businesses. It assigns a central role to organizational techniques and innovation in this field to make the production of knowledge more effective at the service of the national interest. The mobilization of analytical and interpretive skills in a process he calls “organizational intelligence” is crucial in the acquisition and preservation of strategic advantage.
3.3.2.1.3. The contributions of Michael Porter and de R.E. Freeman
In 1980, Michael Porter [POR 80, POR 90] published his famous book on competitive advantage considered as the foundation of the modern approach of business intelligence. He proposes a reference grid and analysis of what he calls the five market forces (new entrants, suppliers, customers, substitute products, competitors) [WIK 17c]. Such a grid is still widely used by businesses or industries to understand the profitability of their business sector to make an informed change in their competitive strategy and gain competitive advantages. It has helped to gradually feed schools into competitive strategies, with firms and experts having a weak competition culture.
Robert Edward Freeman proposes an essential approach to competitive intelligence that may even be more relevant than that of Michael Porter. It broadens the scope of competitive confrontations to the study of the influence games in the corporate environment, actors in particular “offmarket” strictly defined, stakeholders: government, local authorities, lobbies and activists, media, unions, civil society, etc. It opens the way to a matrix related to influence strategies [ENG 84]. This work remains highly relevant for organizations facing the challenges of the digital revolution and the emergence of the power of civil society vis-à-vis that of companies. “Stakeholder theory is not just a story of profits, but a way to create value for customers, suppliers, employees, and communities”, writes Freeman in 2015 [ENG 15]. We find the theory of stakeholders at the heart of the work of the chair of “competitive intelligence and strategy of organizations” led by Professor Stéphanie Dameron of the University of Paris-Dauphine [GOU 15].
3.3.2.1.4. The contributions of Richard A. D’Aveni
Richard D’Aveni, without questioning the usefulness of Michael Porter’s analysis (matrix of the five forces), debates his operability regarding the advent of new relations of power understood as hyper-competition [FRAZ 17, DAV 94]. According to D’Aveni, the deal is considerably modified by the advent of new provocative and even “disruptive” competitors, who no longer seek to preserve their positions, but rather their way of disrupting or fighting acquired advantages: the disruptive behavior against the given and established advantage. In 2001, by imagining the operational concept of the sphere of influence, Richard A. D’Aveni [WIK 17d] shows how “leading” companies shape the market to their advantage by mixing confrontation and cooperation with competition. He revisits the so-called “hyper-competition” strategies. His vision is now therefore to avoid weakening the market by systematic disruption, not to engender competing threats and retaliation, but to favor the evolution of the market rather than its permanent revolution. A veritable arsenal of competitiveness will be required to build favorable territories, by organizing spheres of influence. This configuration helps actors to dominate the competition by maneuvering more skillfully to avoid competitive confrontation that can lead to chaos. Based on the technique of influence strategies, this approach, formalized in 2001, gradually inspired the French school in its application of competitive intelligence. In 2003, the directors of competitive intelligence, innovation and ICT of the assembly of French chambers of commerce and industry (CCI France) invited Richard D’Aveni to give a conference in the French Senate which made its mark and inspired practices.
3.3.2.1.5. The influence of the Swedish school of societal intelligence
The former Yugoslavian Communist and professor at Lund University in Sweden, Stevan Dedijer, [CLE 04], very early on introduced the social intelligence approach as the most appropriate approach to “bring out” social systems, national intelligence, or even for low-income countries. Since the 1970s, he has been designing the first Business Intelligence courses for Swedish business managers. He regularly spends time with the American Robert Steele, who is a very effective promoter of the open source revolution in the context of intelligence reform. He and some British lecturers also founded the magazine Social & Economic Intelligence (1989–1992), focusing their reflections on the methodological and cognitive aspects, considering that information, knowledge and technology represented the levers of power of the Nations in the next world without addressing the issue of power growth by the economy.
Stevan Dedijer used to question the intelligence capacity of a nation and talk about its “collective IQ”. The effectiveness of social intelligence – many speak today of the collective intelligence of a country or territory – is based on the size and dynamism of production and knowledge development activities, as well as on the density and quality of its information and expertise networks.
In this approach of competitive intelligence based on a multidisciplinary mobilization of tools of intelligence of the situations and the world, the stress is placed on the mobilization of cultural assets to boost cooperations, and on the sharing of capacities of intelligence. Today, it is a major source of inspiration for competitive intelligence, a lever for dynamic cooperatives within the Francophone world, and in relations with low-income countries and emerging economies [AIF 18].
3.3.2.2. The original approach of the French school
At present, we propose to put into perspective the French reflections that contributed to the conception of an original approach of competitive intelligence. As always, it is humans that have designed and implemented this new approach, including crossing borders. The designers have gradually constituted the French approach and its school. Three “smugglers” stand out. They have played and continue to play a vital role since the 1980s: Robert Guillaumot [VEI 14], Christian Harbulot [WIK 17a] and Philippe Baumard [WIK 17b, WIK 17e].
As early as 1990, Christian Harbulot and Philippe Baumard [BAU 97] introduced the debate on issues related to new competitive behavior based on the offensive use of information. Faced with the American mono-cultural conception, the French approach innovates from the beginning of reflection in the late 1980s by a multicultural approach based on a study and analysis of the diversity of cultures and information practices in confrontations and economic cooperation [MAR 94, HAR 15]. The short history of the French school of competitive intelligence has been forged on the fundamental debate about France’s strategy of power in the face of the challenges of globalization and the reality of our information culture alongside such a strategy. A complementary axis essential to this debate is that of the strategy culture that has thus far been entirely missing [BAU 14]. It should be remembered that the French school has also been enriched by methodological and technological know-how in library and associated software engineering. As early as 1978, the Center for Retrospective Research in Marseille (CRRM) [DOU 79] was already developing courses in technological surveillance which were later replaced by lectures on competitive intelligence. In 1982, the first postgraduate courses in advanced study in competitive intelligence and strategic intelligence were created at the University Aix-Marseille III and at the University of Marne la Vallée by professors Henri Dou and Clément Paoli, specialists in bibliometrics.
The French school was originally conceived from a critical reading of the Anglo-American approach. The doctrine has been forged as government decisions and successive reports on the subject gradually leading the private ecosystem to appropriate the approach. The originality of the French school lies in the decision of the French government, as early as 1995, to develop a public policy of competitive intelligence, at the same time as the companies and their ecosystem of support and the world of education and training took ownership of the approach, thanks to the chambers of commerce and industry, the strong arm of the state and companies in the field.
We have therefore chosen to sketch the presentation from what we will call the founding texts of the French School of Competitive Intelligence. From a geostrategic perspective, they reveal reflections and “bringing into action”, sometimes in strategy, of France that we will present at the end through the productions of the community of public and private practice.
3.3.2.2.1. A critical look at the American school
We insisted on the fact that the pioneers of the French school were closely linked to those of the American school of practice. They built the French approach on the basis of a thorough analysis of the Anglo-American school, its strengths and its weaknesses. Between competition and cooperation, it is through a cultural reading of the foundations of it that they helped to build the originality of French competitive intelligence. What criticisms have they made of the British and Anglo-American conception?
The latter is characterized by the focus on its own information culture. This is based on the leading role of US power in the markets. The Anglo-American elites have not “formalized” their theory of the role of information in competitive clashes. Their authors have divided their reflection according to this mono-cultural vision of the role of information and according to the following fields: the academic field (production on strategic management), the entrepreneurial field (competitive intelligence, counter-intelligence, lobbying) and the institutional field (economic diplomacy, soft power, economic security and national security, information security, intellectual property) [HAR 15]. This partitioning could have been deeply detrimental to US strategies. It suffices to say that the destabilization of the American economy following the Japanese offensive of the 1980s led in particular from a strategic management of information as a weapon of economic war.
We now propose to present the founding texts of the French school. They intervene at particular geostrategic moments; that is to say, requiring reference grids of a new organizational intelligence. They illustrate the commitment of the public sphere, even of the political world on the subject. They have been declined in public policies. Even today, the national strategy of competitive intelligence remains based on these texts which are produced to answer the blindnesses resulting from two geostrategic breaks: the end of the Cold War, the attack of the World Trade Center of New York and the advent of a world of multipolar competitions and alliances exemplified by the power of emerging economies in the South.
As an introduction to this sequence of thinking on strategic intelligence from visionary government decision makers, we wish to mention here the first French report on immaterial society published in 1983 under the direction of André-Yves Portnoff of the Center for Prospective and Evaluation (CPE) of the Ministry of Research and Technology headed by Thierry Gaudin, now president of the France 2100 foundation. Entitled “The revolution of intelligence” [GAU 14, POR 80], the report starts from an observation to contemporary echoes: “faced with the Japanese challenge, will the West lock itself in a losing scenario or bet on ‘transformative intelligence’? […] A massive investment of gray matter can turn the most traditional sectors into a sector of the future.”
3.3.2.2.2. The Aditech economic war study
The study conducted by Christian Harbulot and published in 1990 by the Aditech association, the editorial arm of the Center for Studies and Foresight of the Ministry of Research and Technology, is defined as “an essay on the nature of economic clashes that contrast at that time the different models of market economy”. The study describes and analyzes the commercial rivalries of multinational companies, the penetration of the southern hemisphere, the development of national business strategies, illustrated by the technological and commercial offensive of Japan, to highlight the behavior of company business leaders pushed to integrate more and more data and analysis with their own knowledge by creating strategic data processing units.
This study appears when the “fourth decennial vision” of the MITI (1987) is set up to favor the international circulation of scientific and technical results; in a word, the “technoglobalism” allowing the Japanese to organize an offensive strategy of capture innovation and position itself as a central partner for future technological cooperation [CAD 94]. And we think today of China.
3.3.2.2.3. The Henri Martre report
Like the United States at the end of the 1980s [MIT 86] and Europe in the early 1980s, France wondered why it was losing competitiveness. This is the theme of the great Gandois commission on the competitiveness of the 11th and last French plan (1993). In 1994, the Martre report [MAR 94] “Competitive Intelligence and Business Strategy” provides an unprecedented and decisive response. Produced by the Commissariat général du plan (the French Planning Office), a service of the Prime Minister, by a commission of experts and practitioners from the worlds of business, administration and the university, it is chaired by Henri Martre, president of the AFNOR (the French national standard office), former president of the company Aérospatiale. It was set up thanks to Jean-Louis Levet, head of the Technological and Industrial Development Department at the French Planning Office, and the strength of conviction of Christian Harbulot, advisor to Henri Martre, determined president and visionary of the Commission.
While the commission’s work does not highlight the contradictions of the Anglo-American, and more precisely, the American model, it is very clearly distinguished by differentiating cultural contexts from national competitive intelligence systems and information cultures. The Martre Commission produced the first comparative analysis of several national competitive intelligence systems across the world, demonstrating through this unprecedented work the strategic effectiveness and performance of nations that know how to organize the coordination of capabilities and information management practices. He noted that the lack of coordination of the action of French public and private actors undermined strategic individual and collective effectiveness. This report is the recognized foundation and the driving force of the French School of Competitive Intelligence. The innovation is such that the Encyclopedia Universalis opens its expert pages on the subject under the heading “Companies” [CLE 95b].
3.3.2.2.4. Report to the President of the Republic establishing a Committee for Competitiveness and Economic Security (April 1995): the doctrine of IE’s first public policy [LEG 95]
To be sure, Henri Martre conceived his main action in response to the situation of the French economy which he described as “a competitive emergency”. His plea was heard. A few months after the publication of the report, the French President, François Mitterrand and his government headed by Édouard Balladur, Prime Minister, decided to react and create the first national strategy of competitive intelligence called “competitiveness and economic security policy” on the recommendation of a great prefect, Rémy Pautrat. More than an inspirer, the latter is the founder of this public policy that he has from the beginning considered a stage of state reform. An orientation council is chaired by the Prime Minister. An inter-ministerial steering committee is responsible for implementing the decisions of the latter in the field of competitive intelligence. Published in the Official Journal of April 4, 1995 [KNA 07], the report is the French response to the US commercial offensive on its major “power” markets: armaments, telecommunications, aeronautics, biotechnology, etc. The text introduces and motivates the decree creating the Committee for Competitiveness and Economic Security made up of nine industrialists, bankers, and scientists, as well as the governance and orientation mechanism of the government’s competitive intelligence strategy. It represents the government’s founding text of what was the first public policy of competitive intelligence. The writers inspired by the Martre report write:
“[…] Given the capacity of its main partners and competitors, France must become more aware of the strategic role of information […]. Such a necessity requires the adoption of a dynamic and offensive approach coordinated by the State, in order to reinforce at all levels, the capacity for coordination and exchange of information between economic and political actors […]” [CLE 95a].
3.3.2.2.5. The Carayon report “Competitive intelligence, competitiveness and social cohesion” (2003): the policy takes hold of the approach [CAR 03]
It is 2002. In the multipolar world, models of capitalism clash (Chinese state capitalism, English or American financial capitalism, etc.). The power shift in globalization is driven by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The national competitive intelligence systems they set up compete with the established positions of the G8 countries. In the globalized knowledge society, battles, including cooperative ones, are won through intelligence and excellence. France is badly positioned: there is a decline in national economic and industrial power and the risk of strategic dependence in several key technological areas. Since 1998, Prime Minister Jospin has put an end to the first French experience and the country is, in fact, “disarmed”. France is talking about competitive intelligence but it is unable to diagnose its strengths and weaknesses by sectors, to produce an inventory of key technological assets (companies, know-how, strategic skills), nor a vision or a shared strategy. The Gemplus affair – the acquisition of a French technological flagship by a US investment fund, TPG Capital, which was not anticipated by the French authorities – is the painful trigger of a new awareness of this collective deficit. We can also recall the recent “Alstom case” whose most strategic part (arms, nuclear and sustainable development) was sold in the United States without the State having been able to intervene effectively in this process [QUA 17].
Now facing the world, France saw the American syndrome of the 1980s against the Japanese. The elite and the community of competitive intelligence are becoming aware of the lack of a system of competitive intelligence within the State apparatus.
At the request of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, MP Bernard Carayon is commissioned to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of France’s competitive intelligence capabilities, to produce recommendations to enhance the role of competitive intelligence and to establish the conditions for effective coordination of intelligence capabilities to propose the content of a national strategy in this area. He writes a report “Competitive Intelligence, Competitiveness and Social Cohesion” which is at the origin of a sustainable collective leap in this area. The State “has never defined strategic sectors of activity in terms of sovereignty, employment, influence, and so on, and has never evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of French research and industries in these sectors”. It urgently proposes the definition of a doctrine identifying the major economic, scientific and cultural interests that should be developed, promoted and protected. It advocates “engaging in applied prospective thinking” and “setting priorities for key […] sectors and partner countries”. The central recommendation calls for the constitution of a “real and widespread public policy of competitive intelligence of the state, such as in healthcare, environmental or tax policies”.
Following the Carayon report, President Jacques Chirac appointed a senior competitive intelligence officer to develop the national and territorial strategy for competitive intelligence. Alain Juillet held this position in charge of the definition of public policy and communication with companies in this area until 2009. Two interdepartmental delegates of competitive intelligence pursued this mission: Mr. Olivier Buquen and Mrs. Claude Revel to start in 2013. In 2015, Jean-Baptiste Carpentier took charge of the governance of a redefined strategy as a strategic information policy, and an economic security policy. In July 2018, Mr. Thomas Courbe became the new head of competitive intelligence to the government as director general of enterprises within the Ministry of Economy.
Until 2015, the production of the organizations for regulatory texts, standards, methodologies and structuring actions gradually came to enrich the doctrine of the French school. This essential work has been done in close collaboration with communities of thought and practice of competitive intelligence, especially in universities and schools such as the School of Economic Warfare, the government think tanks that are the Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defense and the National Institute of Higher Studies of the Security for Justice, the Assembly of the French Chambers of Commerce and Industry and its network of CCI (CCI France), associations (SCIP France), the Academy of Competitive Intelligence, the French Association for the Development of Economic Intelligence, the French Grouping of the Information Industry (GFII), the Club of Directors of Safety and Security (CDSE) large national companies and the Association of information and documentation professionals (ABDS). This heritage can be defined in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu as a real social capital; that is to say a set of resources, including information and knowledge that, accumulated within a network, will give France “a competitive advantage while giving higher returns to investments” [BOU 00].
We now propose to put explore those productions coming from the public sphere in close and permanent consultation with the community of competitive intelligence, and listening to the evolution of the productions of other national schools. We will then examine the communities of public and private practice, after having outlined the main features of the “nourishing disciplines” [MAR 14] of the mode of thought and action [LEV 01] represented by competitive intelligence.
3.3.2.2.6. The production of the steering structures of the national strategy of competitive intelligence
This production that has been elaborated over time and, we must insist, coproduced with the representatives of the communities of practitioners and researchers, is constituted by the base of reference standards of competitive intelligence declined in regulatory or methodological tools. They can be considered as elements of an implantation and actionable doctrine.
The governmental representative for competitive intelligence affairs, Alain Juillet, organized with his team a vast collaborative work that led to the 2005 publication a “training repository in competitive intelligence” whose appropriateness is undeniable. It has been developed into common tools for the dissemination of competitive intelligence (OCDIE). These tools are neither a course nor a training program. They are intended to highlight the contributions of the community of competitive intelligence made up of representatives of administrations, companies, professional unions, chambers of commerce, chambers of trades, schools, associations, universities, University institutes of technology, business intelligence firms, experts, authors, teachers, students, etc. to spread of competitive intelligence. They aim to pool all these actors with concrete practices and proven methods on topics related to competitive intelligence. In 2014, the governmental interdepartmental delegate for competitive intelligence undertook the task of updating with the aim of making the new reference “Competitive Intelligence. References and key concepts”, a teaching tool for all disciplines and the doctrine of the French school. The interdepartmental delegate writes in the introduction:
“In a world where competing ideas and persuading others have become an essential key to the success of any project, our competitive intelligence corpus is in itself an intangible asset, in that it transports an operational vision of the world, just like law, culture, or research.”
Each of the pilots of the government strategy, until 2015, has progressively worked to equip public authorities with competitive tools and methods. Its economic and regulatory arsenal has grown. The production of each has strengthened the doctrine of economic security and included as an offensive priority the strategies of influence so that competitive and commercial battles can be carried out on equal terms for our companies and administration. Economic security now includes the definition of strategic sectors using key technologies and the list of companies and know-how to be monitored. Thus, in 2007, the senior manager of competitive intelligence published 10 practical fact sheets “Fundraising and control of strategic information”. The interdepartmental delegate between 2009 and 2012, which guides the national strategy on strengthening economic security tools, offers a competitive intelligence guide for researchers and laboratories. It broadly disseminates a self-diagnosis of economic security “DIESE”. Later, in 2015, the interdepartmental delegate published a highly operational guide on competitive intelligence with regard to competitiveness clusters, as well as a training syllabus for SMEs on cyber security.
This considerably creative work has always fundamentally lacked in the sense of a strategy and a vision for public policy of competitive intelligence, a real implementation doctrine of competitive intelligence. This was the stated objective of Jean-Baptiste Carpentier, commissioner in charge of strategic information and economic security, who resigned from his position in 2018 without leaving this essential doctrine for action. Establishing an annual “strategic review” of the national policy of competitive intelligence would resolve this forever-asked question, which is never addressed.
3.4. The “nourishing disciplines” of competitive intelligence and communities of public/private practice
Competitive intelligence can be understood as a “way of thinking”; or more precisely, a way of knowing. Plural modes of action have been nourished by several disciplines. In fact, several schools of competitive intelligence are built on inter-disciplinarity for the effectiveness of their analysis, we mobilize several sciences and disciplines as expressed by Stevan Dedijer and as claimed by the supporters of the French and French schools. Thus, since 1991, Philippe Baumard has been building the foundations of the French school of competitive intelligence by deciding to revisit the concepts of surveillance and monitoring from an interdisciplinary approach at the crossroads of the industrial economy, the sociology of organizations, the information economy and strategy and management [BAU 91].
We are in the “field of the complex”. In this respect, the French sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin reinforces our approach. For a long time he has warned us: it is necessary to go beyond the compartmentalization of disciplines to understand the complexity of the world and the complexity of the local situation. “The compartmentalized, mono-disciplinary, quantifying way of thinking or knowing leads us to blind intelligence.” Interdisciplinarity becomes a necessity, indeed, it is a question of decompartmentalizing the disciplines, of mobilizing their knowledge and their methods: economics, sociology, chemistry, biology, mechanics, anthropology, information communication etc. [CLE 17].
3.4.1. Disciplines and “schools of practice”
Schools of competitive intelligence have been built around several “schools of practice” and several disciplines. Those that are evolving and transforming, those that emerge, as in Africa, are still passed by these different components that allow them to innovate and adapt to the challenges and sensitive and shifting terrains of their applications.
Let us first distinguish, without hierarchizing, the community of practice of librarians and advanced or specialized documentation and that from before these periods, both fed by the discipline of the information sciences. This community of professionals has continued to evolve in expertise with the advent of the Internet and intelligent tools of digital transition, which gradually gives its practitioners knowledge and increased intelligence capabilities close to the analysis toward the production of elaborate knowledge. In France, these professionals have begun to reflect on its positioning and the evolution of the skills of information professionals [DUF 17]. In the United States, the pioneer Ben Gilad [GIL 08], founder of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence completed studies in 2008 on the future of the discipline of competitive intelligence losing expertise vis-à-vis specialist librarians trained in sophisticated tools for research and analysis.
Secondly, the expertise developed by watch specialists, many of whom work in the field of engineering sciences, continues. The community of surveillance agents and specialists in bibliometrics have acquired essential expertise for the intelligence chain. They make it possible to trace in the scientific and patent databases, far beyond the states of technology and art, the path and the competency profile of engineers and public or corporate researchers, or even to recompose business strategies.
Thirdly, a significant portion of the business intelligence community is from the world of defense and intelligence. Hybridization is fruitful in both methodology and strategy. This is a constant in a large number of countries. It is in this way that the American School, the Swedish School of Social Intelligence and the Chinese School have been consolidated more recently. In France, the Economic War, School, founded by Christian Harbulot and General Jean Pichot-Duclos [EGE 17] in 1996 fare makes this necessary bridge a permanent reality. The school provides the necessary reading of economic relations in terms of power relations and power strategies to teach the offensive techniques of economic war.
A fourth consideration is that the experts in the field of the economy, the industrial economy (Jean-Louis Levet [WIK 17f]) and the sciences of management (Philippe Baumard; in France Michael Porter, Richard D’Aveni and Henry Mintzberg in the United States; Klaus Solberg Søilen in Sweden), reinforce the discipline of competitive intelligence. They analyze and anticipate the strategic movements of companies and organizations. The competitive intelligence model of AFDIE [AFD 04] (French association for the development of competitive intelligence) has been largely inspired by this trend.
In France, a group of professor-researchers, led by Nicolas Moinet and Christian Marcon, lecturers at the University of Poitiers, have progressively positioned dynamic competitive intelligence in the discipline of information communication. This activity is well outlined by Christian Marcon in a 2014 book [MAR 14] and the periodic newletter Communication & Influence, created and animated by Bruno Racouchot, which gives life to the discipline in the implementation of competitive intelligence [RAC 17].
Finally, new communities of practice are developing through cyberspace and the digital world. Through the capacities of mass analysis of data (Big Data) and new professions (data scientists), artificial intelligence is producing intelligence of increased dynamics that is out of the ordinary. In China, Peking University and the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information in Beijing have begun to reflect on the impact of breakthrough innovation of Big Data on competitive intelligence since 2013 by organizing an international symposium on the problem. In France, the Collège de France has just created a “Data Sciences” chair entrusted to Professor Stéphane Mallat [MAL 18]. These communities born of the digital revolution of the year 2000, energized by the current intelligence revolution, disseminate new collaborative capabilities through social networks and platforms. The participative and relational capital they mobilize opens up unprecedented perspectives for shared intelligence and co-production.
These different disciplines and communities of practice feed the private and public communities of practitioners from companies, their representative organizations to the State, the administration, local authorities and organizations in charge of the development of national schools of competitive intelligence. Below we will present the African and Chinese schools.
3.4.2. The African and Chinese schools of competitive intelligence
Without being exhaustive, we have chosen to illustrate the evolution of schools of competitive intelligence by presenting schools still poorly documented and belonging to the new generation that sets up and develops schools in emerging countries.
3.4.2.1. The African school
From the outset, it should be noted that there is an African school of competitive intelligence, but it is greatly diverse, given that is of “Africa”. Some people in Africa speak of a pan-African vision of competitive intelligence, like Babacar Diallo, director general of the pan-African school of competitive intelligence in Dakar. This conception is legitimate given the latest developments in the African community of practice. It also allows us to remain consistent in this short presentation.
If we refer to the pioneering dynamics in this field, one of the foundations of this African school is found, in our opinion, in a provocatively titled article “The IQ of the Undeveloped Countries and the Jones Intelligence Doctrine” published in 1979 in the American journal, Technology in Society by Professor Stevan Dedijer, founder of the School of Social Intelligence and an international civil servant at the OECD and the UN. This article seems to be the first to address the issue of developing “national intelligence capabilities” in low-income countries. Professor Dedijer calls for the establishment in low-income countries first of a national doctrine of intelligence – which is based on a series of principles, values and standards – then a dedicated organization of the establishment to guide the development of the animation function of the national social intelligence system. Since 1979, he has been insisting on the central couple of knowledge and the “power of intelligence” in the development of the social systems that make up the Nations: companies, government agencies, agricultural enterprises, up to the Prime Minister’s office. It is a remarkable feature in this visionary text through which the author calls decision makers to break out of dependencies and think differently. It recommends that they, as well as analysts in charge of studies and state of the art studies, identify the restrictions that are the ideological bias and “cognitive dependencies” vis-à-vis foreign models or older operating methods. It therefore calls for the establishment of a national capacity for creative and innovative intelligence. This clearly means a break with established concepts, a call to break out of “cognitive fixation zones” and to deploy “the intelligence of unprecedented situations” and crises out of the usual paths.
Now let’s look at recent and significant developments toward the consolidation of the foundations of an African School of Business Intelligence. We will present the observation of the strengths and weaknesses expressed by Africans alongside our European perspective. We will then describe the significant achievements of practice members before concluding with a synthesis of issues. The dynamics of the African school are the result of associations of practitioners, and pioneers sometimes supported by public authorities.
On the occasion of the opening of the first African conference of competitive intelligence organized in Casablanca on June 3rd, 2016, Professor Driss Guerraoui drew a lucid report of the reality of the practices of the public and private African communities of competitive intelligence. “With few exceptions,” he wrote, the interest of African policymakers and researchers in the practices of competitive intelligence is recent, embryonic and disparate. The initiatives, works by academics or public or private institutional actors, remain, according to him, fragmented and without effective repercussions in terms of national structuring of the field of the competitive intelligence. The first important observation is that Africa does not have a real public policy of competitive intelligence piloted at the highest level of the State. Secondly, existing practices are the preserve of large industrial, banking and financial groups, some national champions, but also transnational firms operating in African countries. According to Professor Guerraoui, the leaders attach little importance to the strategic dimension of the governance of their economies and their societies through competitive and strategic intelligence. Teaching and management research does not integrate the dimensions of strategic intelligence and economic intelligence. Finally, as an echo of Stevan Dedijer’s visionary vision, Professor Guerraoui points to the dependence of African countries on the big international think tanks that are undermining “the autonomous production of a strategic thinking peculiar to each country and by extension to the whole continent”.
We gladly complete this observation with the evocation of a little expressed asset, but which is the lever of a true African capacity for strategic and prospective intelligence. This is the diversity of schools present on the African continent. We can say here that the syncretism they provide between Anglo-American flows, particularly through the South African school of competitive intelligence, methodological fundamentals and competitive cultural matrices, which will be able to hybridize and enrich themselves with societal and cultural intelligence practices of the French-speaking school. Crossed with “the spirit of the people” and the human intellect of each culture, this syncretism will lead to the creation of the alchemy that gives people “the ability to survive”. As we shall see, this dynamic has been at work since 2010 in the Open University of Dakhla, desired by Moroccans and created in 2010 by the association of studies and research for development chaired by Driss Guerraoui, the Francophone International Association for Competitive Intelligence, chaired by Philippe Clerc, Professor Xavier Richet and representatives of the Moroccan authorities of the southern provinces of Morocco. The founding framework was the international meeting of Dakhla, a true “world incubator” that brought together 18 countries from five continents on the theme of “Territorial intelligence and regional development by the company: comparative international experiences”.
We now propose a focus on the exemplary achievements of African communities of competitive intelligence. We must distinguish between those born in the French-speaking world, for example between the French school and several African countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso for example) and those who come from the African willpower to organize this pan-African network of strategic intelligence and competitive intelligence.
It is important here to make it clear who the pioneer is: the Forum for Economic Intelligence and Development, the FIED, which was created in the late 1990s by M. Amath Soumaré, CEO of SOPEL International. It remains the first laboratory of the African School of Competitive Intelligence. Visionary and emblematic, the Forum, which has long held its meetings at the World Bank Institute, is the first organization to combine competitive intelligence and African development strategies, particularly those of Senegal and the NEPAD program. Its originality in relation to our purpose is its desire to promote distinctive African competences through a practical approach of economic intelligence and development (IED). For this reason, this living laboratory was able to mobilize from the beginning the cultural and methodological syncretism that we mentioned earlier.
Since 2010, the Open University of Dakhla has held its international meeting – it brought together the experts and representatives of 41 countries in December 2017 at the invitation of the Kingdom of Morocco – and its thematic meetings (economy and intangible assets, climate and environment, economic intelligence). These meetings are an opportunity to take stock of the advances in competitive intelligence in the world and of course in Africa. The proceedings of each meeting are published and allow us to trace the conceptual and methodological innovations, as well as the multicultural analyses produced. The authors of this book actively participate in this “international community” of sharing the world’s intelligence capacity. The theme of December 2017 was devoted to the new global economy, its structural transformations, their impacts and the responses of actors. A workshop was devoted to global security and risk intelligence. Two recent major advances were born, at the request of the founders of the university and concretized by its president, Driss Guerraoui. This is the creation of the African Forum of Dakhla in December 2017 and the Forum of African Association of Competitive Intelligence in May 2018.
Created in the legitimate framework of the Open University of Dakhla, the African Forum of Dakhla is a forum for reflection, sharing of knowledge, analysis and foresight on “The Africas” designed by and for Africans. It brings together three African institutions – the African Future Institute of South Africa, the African Center of the New Economy of Senegal and the platform for the Development of African Women in Angola – as well as the Association of Studies and Research for the Development in Morocco and the International Francophone Association of Competitive Intelligence, founders of the Open University of Dakhla. A network of expertise and action, the Forum is a platform for exchanges aimed at strengthening and promoting the dialog between “The Africas”, their peoples, their business communities and political decision-makers in the service of sustainable development, companies and economies open to cooperation with Europe and the world. Thus, its leaders have set an essential ambition to supply the African School of Competitive Intelligence by mobilizing African collective intelligence to the service of African strategic thinking, in order to strengthen its capacity for shared diagnostics and proposals for action.
The second lasting structural breakthrough for the African School of Competitive Intelligence was the recent creation under the auspices of the Open University of Dakhla of the Forum of African Associations of Economic Intelligence (FAAIE) – which aims to: implement the know-how in terms of competitive intelligence and strategic intelligence in Africa, the development of inter-African exchanges, the sharing of experiences in this area and the enhancement of the expertise of the geostrategic dimensions of the African continent with States, companies, administrations, local authorities, universities and research centers. The partnership agreement brings together the Vigilance, Intelligence and Prospective think tanks of Côte d’Ivoire, the Congo Brazzaville Strategic Intelligence Center, the Nigerian Network of Competitive Intelligence, the SOPEL International Center of Senegal, the Tunisian Association of Competitive Intelligence, the Chadian Association of Competitive Intelligence, the Moroccan Association of Competitive Intelligence and the Association of Studies and Research for the Development of Morocco. The partnership aims to “structure and mobilize African collective intelligence in the service of three essential levers of African emergence, namely: the development of African strategic thinking, the development of shared diagnostics and the proposal for collective action for a united and stronger Africa in the service of the interests of Africans. Its constitutive general assembly was held in July 2018 and will thus contribute to the work of the think tank, the African forum of Dakhla”.
These advances in the competitive intelligence of “The Africas” have been made possible by the creativity and commitment of women and men who have federated around them networks of skills and know-how to gradually organize the African School of Competitive Intelligence. We wish to present the most influential. These are the African associations themselves, such as the Moroccan Association of Competitive Intelligence or the Tunisian Association. In Algeria the promoters of competitive intelligence are senior officials of the Ministry of Industry or Planning in partnership with universities and the business community. In Burkina Faso the promoter is the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in Togo the competitive intelligence community is led by the CCI or by figures such as its former Prime Minister, Mr. Agbéyomé Kodjo.
The African Session of Competitive Intelligence whose second meeting was held in Casablanca in December 2017 was conceived of and taught in 2016 by François Jeanne-Beylot, leader of the intelligence firm Troover and member of the international network of the school of economic war (France). Mixing the different communities of public and private practices of French schools, bringing together representatives of the French school, they provide the opportunity, in our opinion, to reveal the state of the art of organizations and practices by helping to set the major challenges to be met. The inaugural conference of 2017 has indeed drawn options for the further challenges of global security of an Africa “confronted with the emergence of a new generation of wars brought by cyberattacks of different natures and unconventional digital weapons of more in more sophisticated”.
The ThinkTankers network was created in 2009 by Mounir Rochdi, expert in competitive intelligence and international consultant to the International Trade Center, UN agency and WTO in Geneva. It brings together known and recognized African experts (including diaspora) in the areas of business intelligence, knowledge management, information systems strategy and security, expert network management and collective intelligence and innovation. The objective of this network is to actively participate in the development and improvement of the global approach to competitive intelligence in Africa. ThinkTankers experts participate in conferences, workshops, seminars, training, awareness raising and expertise, as well as regularly supporting public and private organizations in developing their competitiveness. ThinkTankers today brings together business leaders, research professors, journalists, practitioners, representatives of public institutions and representatives of civil society organizations.
The African Business Intelligence and Intelligence Center (CAVIE) is made up of a monitoring and business intelligence network created in 2016 by Guy Gweth, a young specialist in African markets and founder of the firm Knowdys Consulting Group, Strategic Intelligence Consulting and Due Diligence in Central and West Africa. By creating CAVIE, he intends to combine two dynamics of the African School of Competitive Intelligence: “a modern dynamic (backed up with powerful tools of numerical intelligence and analysis) mainly drawn by foreigners or Africans who have made their classes in outside the continent”, as well as that of “old human intelligence practices that have shown proof of their effectiveness, but out of the economic field”. He intends to work toward this rapprochement by training, researching and publishing complete watch notes. This is the object of the African intelligence and intelligence center (CAVIE). In 2016, Guy Gweth, largely inspired by the French school and its innovative productions, published the African Repository of Intelligence and Business Intelligence, because “the history, the place and the realities of our continent are such that it was absolutely necessary to define a training repository in Africa”.
Africa is not short of examples and laboratories in the field of collective intelligence that have collectively mobilized social capital and national and local intelligence. The network project of collective intelligence led by the CCI of Burkina Faso in partnership with the CCI of Marseille has combined the skills of Togo and Mali mobilized by their CCI. Concluded in 2011, it allowed these companies and their economies, members of UEMOA [UNI 18a], to have a network of trained watchers, focused on the issues of development and integration of their economies in global value chains and the continent. In this trend, the permanent conference of French-speaking African Chambers of Commerce (CPCCAF) organized several training consular academies on the theme of competitive and social intelligence with the support of the International Trade Center, the ITC the UN and the WTO and experts from CCI France, to equip African consular chambers with expertise in business intelligence, economic security and influence in the service of businesses and industry territories.
To conclude on a perspective of the challenges facing the African school, we will resume the five fields of competitive intelligence targeted by the Forum for African Associations of Competitive Intelligence for African countries.
First, let us quote the intelligence of the strategic knowledge, in order to “have a relevant diagnosis, scientifically valid, credible and objective, because rid of the political and ideological contingencies” for “an intelligence produced by the African experts on their continent from an autonomous knowledge turned on the future of the continent’s development and backed by the priorities, needs, expectations and aspirations of its people”. Secondly, it is necessary to produce intelligence on major risks and threats (economic, financial, technological, political, social, cultural, environmental, climatic and geostrategic). Thirdly, the challenge is to master the intelligence of business intelligence and foresight. Then, it is necessary to master “the intelligence of the influence”. Finally, the last challenge is that of “the intelligence of global security”.
3.4.2.2. The Chinese school of competitive intelligence
There is a Chinese School of Competitive Intelligence. We formulate the hypothesis that it is currently strengthening to form a “strategic mix”, a formidable weapon of support to the conquest of the markets and that our industrialists meet regularly in the negotiations on the transfer of technologies at the heart of the large contracts. What is it about? It is about the crossing of strategic cultures and practices of competitive intelligence, a phenomenon amplified by globalization. It translates into a scholarly combination of traditional Sun Tzu [SUN 09] strategic thinking and American schooling methodologies of competitive intelligence or business intelligence. Since entering the WTO in 2001, China has gradually stopped adopting a “low profile”. The new Chinese power affirmed during the last Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is based on the promotion, especially to emerging or poor countries of a model of development alternative to democratic countries. The strategy of the new Silk Road which targets Europe in priority marks China’s return to power in world trade. Since 2001, Chinese companies have gradually learned to maneuver on the new competitive playing fields. Entrepreneurship and risk appetite are developing, unleashing new productive forces that are shaking up the competitive advantages of both developed and emerging economies. Thus, an essential break has occurred in China: innovation has become the main strategy of the national industrial policy, that of breakthrough innovations in the China 2025 program. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, the towns in the provinces have become platforms for innovation, true clusters with new technical centers at their heart. This orientation is corroborated by Professor Qihao Miao, a figure from the Chinese community of competitive intelligence, a member of the Open University of Dakhla in Morocco, who presents the development of the “competitive intelligence” as a corollary of the development model wanted by the China, that is, driven by innovation and creativity, to put an end to the image of “eternal imitators”.
This set of dynamics makes it possible to put in perspective the rise of the practices of the competitive intelligence. These become a significant factor of strategic efficiency and strategic innovation deployed in companies. How are China’s national competitive intelligence capabilities moving today? They reinforce themselves to form a formidable weapon of support to the conquest of the markets. The crossroads of strategic cultures and competitive intelligence practices are amplified by globalization and feed schools of competitive intelligence since the founding beginnings of the American school.
The combination of traditional Chinese strategic thinking, the thought of Sun Tzu [SUN 09], the methodologies of the American, Swedish and French schools of competitive intelligence, illustrates this point of view. These different cultural approaches come to feed the actual Chinese strategic culture. On the occasion of a desired “detour” through China to create a “gap” and better revisit European thought, François Jullien strives to reveal the essential features of Chinese strategic thinking based on intuition, able to use the potentialities of the environment, the “situation potential”, to better carry its influence and overcome without a fight. Another conception of efficiency that seems foreign to us.
Based on “cunning intelligence” knowing how to take advantage of the circumstances and “detect buoyant factors within the situation to let themselves be carried by them. Here we are at the heart of the Chinese strategic world, in which “the mind is supposed to be able to compensate adversity, or physical weakness, by cunning, stratagems, intellectual radiation, to the point of despising the force […]”, “How then to oppose cunning to violence, intelligence to force?”
Here is the politics placed at the forefront. In this regard, the Chinese authors of La Guerre hors limite (The Transfinite War) illustrate the rapprochement of the new strategic matrices of the English-speaking world based on the art of influence and avoidance, levers of action dear to the Chinese. They consider that in order to “avoid the exhausting and hopeless arms race, the answer […] is an extension of war actions to all areas other than the military, to all means other than military means”: the art of economic war and information war, influence as a tool of power. “Weigh the situation to produce the desired effect for your interests or how to manipulate and make the other do what I want him to do.” Joseph Nye, who studies the dynamics of power, wonders: “how far will a country be able to control the international environment to get other nations to act according to its views?”
The competitive and strategic intelligence in China is the heiress of Sun Tzu who recommended in particular to attack the plans of the enemy by “the preliminary information”, acquired by secret agents and allowing to anticipate the intentions of the opponent. In the 1950s, the Chinese government promoted the development of the discipline of scientific and technical information within the Academy of Sciences in close partnership with Soviet experts. It is gradually organizing a network of documentation centers in the country led by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China.
In 1996, the network included 60,000 people. Its mission today is, among other things, to respond to the information needs of economic decision-makers on globalization.
Competitive intelligence in its contemporary meaning is built in the movement of the discipline founded by the American school, but in complete independence. One of its iconic founders is Professor Qihao Miao, director of the Shanghai Library. He is Vice President of the organization that brings together competitive intelligence professionals, the Society of Competitive Intelligence China, SCIC, established in 1991. Qihao Miao is one of the historical figures of the international community of competitive intelligence. He worked with Professor Stevan Dedijer, chose Robert Guillaumot as advisor to the SCIC organization and “only western horizon” of the association. He also worked with the founders of the American Professional Association (SCIP) in the United States. He began to describe in the journal of the association some elements of the Chinese economic intelligence device. He introduces himself as a knowledge broker of strategic culture, who in China strives to make “the link between the international community and local professionals”. It thus crosses in efficiency the firepower of the Chinese strategic thought, the historical know-how of collection and systematic analysis of scientific and technical information, today economic and competitive, the precepts of the social intelligence of Dedijer which also marked the French approach, and the basis of the Anglo-Saxon culture of competitive intelligence. SCIC now has 1,000 members, including 400 companies and 600 individual members. It organizes a conference every year and offers several training oppurtunities. In 2002, Chinese experts had already published a dozen books/manuals on competitive intelligence. In 2005, a new quarterly business intelligence magazine was launched in Chinese.
During a visit to Paris, Professor Miao participated in the first Innovation, Competitiveness and Knowledge Meetings held from September 28–30, 2005. It was an opportunity to hear and read about the evolution of the Chinese economy, the role of competitive intelligence as an approach to support companies in the world markets and the entry of China into the WTO, for the purpose of learning the market economy. The new strategies are geared toward industrial reform driven by market opportunities, a new approach to intellectual property, standardization and corporate social responsibility. Confrontation with international competition opens the door to “coopetition” and encourages the implementation of a “cooperative” intelligence. The French Assembly of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI France) was one of the important vectors of this cooperative intelligence by creating in 2009 after several missions in the Hunan province with the new territorial center of competitive intelligence, a French–Chinese cooperation committee on innovation and competitive intelligence.
In general, the concept of competitive intelligence remains poorly known and only large Chinese companies refer to it. The 2004–2005 studies showed that behind the name of economic and competitive intelligence, the market is distributed as follows: 55% for the acquisition of databases, 20% for software, 10% for consulting, 15% for training (in full expansion). Many companies do not know how to put in place or how to mobilize the concept of competitive intelligence. According to Professor Qihao Miao, the explosion of the teachings is a favorable sign of the progress of the economic intelligence.
Certainly, but we must not underestimate their ability. He also described in his articles the Chinese know-how, mastered for years and based on scientific and technical culture and watch: the monitoring and control of the state of the art, the techniques of “reverse engineering”, technology transfer and diffusion, environmental monitoring and strategic planning. In the field of social intelligence, the Chinese are implementing this cultural and historical practice of “valuing social relations” according to a logic of “return on investment”. This requires constantly mobilizing the analytical capabilities of environments and social environments, as well as influence.
According to Professor Qihao Miao, the state system has gradually been structured, except for a few more supervised sectors, especially energy and telecommunications. He considers that the government could do “much more to help private companies to improve their competitiveness, whether it is early warning systems in commercial matters, mutualization of monitoring of trade and regulatory policies for exporting companies”. Part of what we call “territorial intelligence”, networks of technical centers and especially the provincial institute for scientific and technical information serve as intermediaries for the computerization of SMEs, support for industrialization, the day before technology transfer and technology transfer. Technological and market information is at the center of companies’ concerns, but the absence of experience to refer to prevents experts from local structures from meeting these considerable needs. However, this delay is offset by the fact that our analysts report strategic capabilities of the Chinese state through the various transformations of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, MOFTEC, inspired by the Japanese model and become MOFCOM, Ministry of Commerce in 2002. Its global economic intelligence structures and networks are among the most successful in the world. It would be wildly pretentious to want to evaluate the firepower of Chinese competitive practices and organizations. However, reading in the last 10 years the content of the interventions and articles translated by Chinese experts, we measure the weak evolution of practices and organizations, based in part on the imitation/translation of the Anglo-American matrices into an often reductive form. Of course, we must neither underestimate the great learning capacity of the Chinese world, nor their formidable mastery of “cunning” and misinformation. Attendance every two years, at international meetings on competitive intelligence organized by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information in Beijing and Peking University with the assistance of the Beijing Academy of Science and Technology is a means to note the regular changes of the Chinese school: in 2013 we dealt with the upheavals caused by the Big Data revolution on the practice of competitive intelligence. In 2016, we discussed new industrial policies and international investment control by national authorities.
3.5. Conclusion
The different schools of competitive intelligence have a doctrine built on the hybridization of content developed by pioneering schools and supplemented by specific and unique analyses. These doctrines must not remain fixed. They must evolve over geoeconomic and strategic breaks. On the other hand, the bases, the foundations of these doctrines of competitive intelligence, at the service of Nations and communities of Nations, have a much longer life span. It is therefore from these foundations that it will be necessary, in a world uncertain and in motion to change practices and initiate the revolution of artificial intelligence. We thus join the problem underlying this book: thinking and acting differently, keeping the same goals. Also, one of the major projects to be urgently committed turns out to be that of bringing together or even hybridizing between the competitive intelligence approach and the prospective approach [UNI 18b].
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