I’ve just read an interesting blog post by Philippe Silberzahn and Milo Jones. The post “Competitive intelligence and strategic surprises: Why monitoring weak signals is not the right approach” looked at the problems of weak signals in competitive intelligence and how even though an organisation may have lots of intelligence, they still get surprised.
Silberzahn and Jones point out that it’s not usually the intelligence that is the problem, but the interpretation of the gathered intelligence. This echoed a statement by Issur Harel, the former head of Mossad responsible for capturing the Nazi war criminal Eichmann. Harel was quoted as saying “We do not deal with certainties. The world of intelligence is the world of probabilities. Getting the information is not usually the most difficult task. What is difficult is putting upon it the right interpretation. Analysis is everything.”
In their post, Silberzahn and…
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Errol A. Adams, J.D., M.L.S' Blog 
Thanks for this 😉
The whole subject of competitive intelligence is becoming important for lawyers – and I know that in the US at least one person specialises in supporting law firms. (Donna Fryer of http://www.searchitright.com/).
It’s also becoming more complicated – with social media. Being based in the UK, my perceptions will be different to those of the US. However there have been several cases where social media has been an important information source in various legal areas.
You are welcomed. You are absolutely right regarding the social media comment, as many law firms are somewhat leery of social media for confidentiality reasons etc. I know the UK recently introduced the concept of a non-lawyer/partner sharing in the equity of law firms. That concept is also being discussed here.