In today’s business surroundings, competitive intelligence is compulsory. There are many ways of learning what your competitors are up to, and they run the range from searching the web to hiring spies who will lie or steal to get what they want.
From time to time the understanding of competitive intelligence in the media is frightening.
The San Franciso Chronicle just published an article (Spying: Business as usual Subterfuge seen as a gray area in world of corporate snooping) where the author (Carloyn Said) points out:
Corporate spying may be as simple as a company president visiting competitors’ stores to see what’s on sale, as elaborate as engaging outside experts to learn about a rival’s business or as high-tech as hiring a hacker to try to breach a company’s own security measures to identify weaknesses.