The main goal of this chapter is to originally analyze one of the irreversible factors of the international competitiveness of the companies that are related to the entrepreneurial economic intelligence. The originality of this research lies on the assimilation of the actions related to the identification and exploitation of opportunities and thus, the entrepreneurial orientation, as an integral part of the entrepreneurial economic intelligence which is able to stimulate the international competitiveness of the companies in the specific case of Tunisia.
TopIntroduction
The historical developments on the economic plan that have marked the world have long been at the origin of the strategic trends of companies, countries and even territories that have economic policies. In this regard, the concept of intelligence was developed since the two world wars, in the framework of military operations and was resumed during the Cold War when the conduct of the security policy has had a compelling importance for the implementation of the policy of power. In fact, intelligence is apprehended as a value added to one or more information and it is assimilated to a confidential knowledge which is not accessible to all and also the fruit of a research work both dated and updated. In addition, recourse to intelligence during this period has been prompted by the desire of a better prediction of the actions of opponents. Later, the intelligence cycle has had many benefits including the Informational Plan particularly with the rise of the competition between the large western countries. These benefits can be designed on three levels:
- 1.
Thanks to its iterative process, it allows to correct the malfunction as a result of a positive feedback in the informational field.
- 2.
It allows to differentiate between the mere collection of information and the strategic decisions.
- 3.
It is able to optimize the informational system thanks to its recurring character. In fact, the devices for information have been mobilized since the Cold War in order to succeed the geopolitical strategy. This last is apprehended as the study of the relationships that exist between the conduct of a policy of power, scope to plan international and the geographical framework in which it operates. 1
However, the mutation accentuated with capitalism and the competitive pressures that flow from it, the end of the cold war with the collapse of the communist bloc that was followed by a confrontation of the interests of power at the international level and the emergence of a new form of qualified war of economic war also followed by the informational war. All of these events have contributed to the emergence of the economic intelligence as a new world. In effect, the intelligence to Him Alone is necessary but insufficient. The expression of needs in terms of information, the collection, analysis, processing and dissemination of information2 must be combined with a true doctrine of global security and strategic decision making. In this regard, the economic intelligence is the result of a displacement of the center of gravity of the history of the geopolitics at the geo-economy.3
In addition, the geo-economy is treated as a new field of application of the geopolitics and the objective of the geo-economic strategy for a business state or a territory is to conquer the new markets or to preserve a preferred position of force in the world of economy. In this regard, the geo-economy and geopolitics complements are the: States, companies and territories that must have a geopolitical vision to develop a geo-economics strategy.
On his side, the reporter Martre (1994) defines the economic intelligence as the whole range of research actions, treatment and dissemination4 of useful information to the economic actors.
In addition, Eric Delbecque and Gerard Pardini (2008) focused on the fundamental actions that define the IE and this was done for postulating that on the operational plan. The economic intelligence includes shares of standby (acquire the relevant strategic information), security (do not let know its secrets) and influence (propagate an information or standards of behavior and of interpretation which promote its strategy. To this effect, we believe that these definitions can be refined by taking into account the legal character which allows to evacuate any act of economic spying, the integration of other shares assumed to be strongly connected with the concept of economic intelligence and the distinction of the scale of the entity concerned. In effect, the concept of economic intelligence must be identified by distinguishing between three levels: companies, the State and the Territory. These latter refer respectively to the economic entrepreneurial intelligence, national and territorial.