Situation: A CEO is concerned that many of the ways that her company might gain competitive intelligence could compromise the ethics and values that she has worked to instill in the company. What legal and ethical methods have others used to gain competitive intelligence? How do you obtain competitive intelligence ethically?

Advice from the CEOs:

• It’s critical not to use methods that compromise the company’s legal position. Using spies or spy devices fit into the category of both illegal and unwise methods to obtain intelligence.
• Do not misrepresent the company, or have employees misrepresent themselves to competitors in order to obtain competitive information.
• Do not talk about prices directly with your competitors. This compromises both companies legally.
• Here’s a test: If an action is being considered to gain competitive intelligence, would the company be willing to put up a banner in the office for all employees to see, telling them about this? If not, don’t do it. If questionable activities are employed, it’s likely that they will find out no matter what is done to hide these activities.
• Here are primary sources for gathering competitive intelligence ethically:
  • Customers;
  • Competitors’ customer service and engineering departments, possibly through 3^rd parties;
  • Editors of trade journals;
  • Former employees of competitors;
  • Trade Associations; and
  • Trade shows and conferences.
• In addition, these are good secondary sources:
  • Google and other search engines – whatever appears through these is publicly available;
  • D&B Hoovers;
  • Web sites;
  • Reverse engineering – without using information obtained unethically;
  • 10Ks and Annual Reports available on the SEC web site.

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