strength lies in the ability to interpret and not in the seditious nature of the information gathered. Economic intelligence is a major component of any strategy.
Economic Intelligence has had difficulty establishing itself in France. Nine years after the Martre report, the government asked MP Bernard Carayon for a new report. Five years after this last report, the 2008 Defense White Paper paid particular attention to economic intelligence in the context of the protection of fragile industrial sectors whose skills may be of a sensitive nature. Finally, in its progress report of January 5, 2010, the “états généraux de l’industrie” (general industry report) underlined the need for French industry to better understand its competitive environment, its potential markets and the opportunities that new technologies can offer. This report insists on support for exports through a better match between production and world demand through economic intelligence and a sustained promotion of “made in France”.
1.2.1. The three major steps for decision support
The proposed model retains three concepts; “Data, Information, Knowledge” which make it possible to define the global concept of economic intelligence by highlighting the central place of “Information”. This global concept leads to the decision-making and the cycle of Strategic Business Intelligence. This work was presented for the first time on 19 April 2005 at the CCI of Montpellier during “Des Matins De La Cité”.
The explosion of a phenomenal amount of data, the need to analyze and visualize it, brings to the forefront the well-known hierarchical model: “Data, Information and Knowledge”. This model is often exploited in the literature on information and knowledge management. Several studies claim that the first appearance of the hierarchy of knowledge can be found in T.S. Elliot's poem “The Rock” in 1934. The poem contained the following lines:
– Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
– Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
In recent literature, several authors cite R.L. Ackoff's 1989 publication “From data to wisdom” as a source of the hierarchy of knowledge. Indeed, this hierarchical model highlights three words: “Data”, “Information”, “Knowledge”1. The relationship between these three words can be represented in the schematic form below, where knowledge takes the highest place to emphasize the fact that a lot of data is needed to acquire knowledge.
Figure 1.1. The three concepts (source: Monino and Lucato 2005)
1.2.2. Modeling the concept of strategic business intelligence
A schematization of the concept of Strategic Economic Intelligence can be proposed from part of the hierarchical model described by Thomas Stearns Eliot in 1934, which establishes a link between wisdom, knowledge and information starting from data. This model leads to wisdom (Ermine et al. 2012) that can be approached through strategic decision-making.
“I want the right information at the right time to make the right decision2. (Porter 1979).
Figure 1.2. Business intelligence model of data to decision-making (source: Monino and Lucato 2005). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/monino/control.zip
1.2.2.1. Data
For a company, data are essential, and there are more and more concerning the environment in which it operates or will operate. We will no longer work on classes of behaviors, but on individual analysis. It is easy to understand that this revolution is leading to the creation of so-called “startup” companies whose aim would be to automatically process the wealth of data that make up what is known as “Big Data”. This is certainly one of the components of what some people call the new industrial revolution. The Internet, digital technology and connected objects have opened up new horizons in a multitude of fields.
As an example, access to data allows quantitative and qualitative analyses to be enriched. We can analyze customer contacts with data collected by a call center, as well as offer this kind of product in limited numbers as E2S-Conseils does. Indeed, the web offers immense information possibilities, Internet users demand clear, precise and immediate information. The responsiveness of the demand for information is a key point in this type of demand. Indeed, it is often necessary to wait to have a more than disappointing result. The start-up E2S-Conseils and the TRIS laboratory of the University of Montpellier are developing an innovative service based on a community platform to buy and sell multi-product and multi-country contacts and appointments.
According to Taylor, the value of information begins with a piece of data, which acquires value as it evolves, to achieve the objective and specify an action for decision-making. Information is a message with a higher level of meaning. It is a raw data that the subject then transforms into knowledge through a cognitive or intellectual operation.
Companies are very aware of the importance of knowledge and even more so of how to “manage”, enrich and benefit from it. Beyond all the factors (financial, technical and other), the knowledge that the company possesses also represents an important survival factor. Whether it is market knowledge, legal, technological, normative or other information.
This implies that in the information cycle, the data collected should be optimized so that needs are identified instantly and processed as quickly as possible. This will highlight the interaction between a multitude of actors (decision-makers, analysts, advisers, technicians, etc.) within the framework of a group dynamic and will allow the complementarity of knowledge, to improve understanding, analysis of situations, and production of information necessary for action. Indeed, “The quality of the production of knowledge for operational purposes depends on the skills of interpretation and analysis of the human factor in collective problem-solving situations” (Bulinge 2006, 2007).
1.2.2.2. From data to information: monitoring
Business intelligence concerns data collection, whereas business intelligence is a request from the company's management to know its environment. Of course, economic intelligence must mobilize human and financial means, but it also calls upon working methods, computerized or not, tools for collecting and especially analyzing these data. The data once collected, verified, processed and validated becomes strategic information of the company. The company manager must be able to find the necessary support when the decision is taken. This procedure makes it possible to consider:
– a set of possibilities;
– execution constraints;
– simulations to calculate indicators of success and failure.
In her research in 2008, Lesca addresses the problem of interpreting data to transform it into strategic information or knowledge. Interpretation systems, the heart of the “business intelligence” process, are defined as the set of “systems for attributing meaning” to the information that the company receives, manipulates and preserves (Baumard and Benvenuti 1998).
1.2.2.3. From intelligence to economic intelligence
“Monitoring” involves gathering, storing and sharing information
