Improving Competitive Intelligence Through System Synamics

Abstract

To survive in a complex and dynamic world, organizations need relevant, timely, and accurate information about their environment. Due to the increasing complexity and dynamics of the environment, organizations run into several difficulties in their efforts to structure the intelligence activities. Two particularly persistent problems are (1) determining the relevant environmental cues and (2) making sense of the particular values of these cues. The current available methods for competitive intelligence do not eliminate these problems. In this chapter, system dynamics (SD) is proposed as an appropriate tool for competitive intelligence. System dynamics is a simulation methodology that deals with the dynamics of complex systems from a feedback perspective. How SD can help in dealing with the problems in direction (selecting the relevant environmental cues) and analysis (making sense of cues) stages and how ICT can support the use of SD in intelligence activities are discussed.