โ Scribed by Stevan Dedijer
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Last August 22, the 100,000-circulation Swedish newspaper Dagens Indstri (Daily Industry) published a 12-page special report on competitive business intelligence in Sweden. Having taught and researched all kinds of intelligence at Sweden's Lund University since 1973, I believe that the Dagens Industri survey gave-with a couple of misses-an accurate review of the present state of the CI field in that country. It included articles by CEOs and managers responsible for intelligence in key Swedishbased, multinational corporations and by leading Swedish consultants, and even included descriptions of courses and seminars on competitive intelligence offered by Swedish universities.
In the Dagens Industri report, P. Augustsson, the CEO of the SKF group-with 43,000 employees in 130 countries-declared that "business intelligence is a key function that is becoming ever more important for SKF. The capacity to rapidly and effectively acquire information and to analyze its meaning gives the corporation a definite competitive advantage." Augustson adds that in 1996, J. Delombre, responsible for business intelligence in SKF, was given the task of creating an image of SKF's future up to 2007, when the firm celebrates its 100th anniversary. At the same time, Augustsson stresses that SKF's business intelligence department can provide the firm's leaders with information even when based on weak signals.
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