Competitive Intelligence vs. Industrial Espionage: What’s the Difference?

Is there a great expanse of gray area dividing these two practices? My guess is that there is not. I’m going to say that they overlap. A lot. Industrial espionage or corporate spying is illegal. Kinda.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 511 b.c.

Like armies in battle, business organizations must have a thorough understanding of what they are up against to succeed. Competitive intelligence (CI) is the legal and ethical process of collecting, analyzing, and applying information about the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of the competition.

Economic Espionage is conducted by governments in the International arena. Outside of corporate espionage, or competitive intelligence, it’s all about national security. There’s those fuzzy lines again, if you are in the business of being a country. What makes it right when it's not government sponsored? It's just business competition.

Do consumers benefit from competition? We are told that we do. It seems to me that in certain arenas, like the development of drugs and new treatments for the sick, money and effort would be better spent if it focused on the research and development of these drugs itself. Instead, it ends up being all about the payoff.

Of course the workmen are worth their wage. We all need to get paid. But unfortunately, this highly competitive, healing-for-hire attitude causes less potentially profitable illnesses to get the attention and resources required to develop cures. These type of diseases and disorders are commonly referred to as "orphan diseases" for this reason.

There is a market for gathering actionable intelligence needed to grab a bigger share of the payoff on developing drugs and treatments for common diseases. Disorders like erectile dysfunction get the attention of all sorts of highly skilled, intelligent people. Unfortunately, those who don't have much of a sex life because they died of an orphan disease -are ignored.

It doesn't seem ethical to compete so fiercely to come up with a treatment for limp-dick while someone is slowly dying of Lou Gherig's disease. When the practice of competitive intelligence starts off on an unethical foot, how many more steps does it have to take before becoming what could be called industrial espionage?

What do people like Judith Giusto or her boss, Chad Stimson at Fletcher CSI consider to be the difference? How does their profession benefit the health industry and patients/consumers? That's what I would like to know. I'm not stating that it doesn't in any way, it just might somehow, but I'm not sure. I have a lot to learn about this obscure, complicated but intriguing realm of the corporate world. I welcome their comments. Anyone else with insights into the intelligence industry, especially in how it affects the drug industry, is very welcome to offer their thoughts here.