ICT jargon is funny. Names come and go, mostly before they ever reach the state of maturity. Some topics and/or names are hot this year and totally taboo the next. Then of course there are silly names that do not properly describe what they actually are, but for some reason are generally used. The various subtopics of intelligence are no exception. You have Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, Marketing Intelligence, Competitor Intelligence, Enterprise Intelligence, et cetera. In a way they describe what they actually are, but a lot of people do not use them properly anymore. And with properly I suppose I mean that they lost the original meaning somewhere along the path. Business Intelligence for example is now commonly seen as a reporting solution for management information, accompanied by a datawarehouse. But is that really what it is about?

What kind of host would I be not to welcome you to this blog. So, welcome to this blog! Before I further introduce myself, I would like to explain the subtitle. Because one might get the wrong idea to think ‘doing’ Competitive Intelligence is something you do when things get rough. You might actually consider that, and hopefully it is not too late at that time, but it’s not what I meant. What I did mean is that every company has to cope with it’s environment – competition, customers, legislation, the weather, et cetera – and that environment is bound to be changing rapidly. More often than not more rapidly than we’d like it to change. That is what I mean with stormy weather. And stormy weather is not so bad, once you are well prepared for it.