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The development of counterintelligence is the next logical step for an organisation after tackling competitive intelligence. By the end of implementing our Competitive Intelligence solution, the question often arises: "If we can know all this about the competition, how can we prevent them from watching us?" In reality, we cannot avoid being watched, but we can minimise the risks.
It is the same with my students. When they begin to glimpse the dimension of Competitive Intelligence, I start talking to them about Competitive Counterintelligence and they drop their arms in a huff. But it also needs to be managed. So let's not get overwhelmed and get on with it.
Counterintelligence is a function that relates to many areas of the business, as does Competitive Intelligence, as we explained in the post "The Three Musketeers". That is why we will address the issue in parts, in more than one post. This first post of the series will discuss the relationship between Marketing and Open Innovation.
Marketing & Counterintelligence
The conflict between marketing and counterintelligence is one of the most neglected areas, so let's start with it.
Today, the customer - be it a consumer or a company - makes purchasing decisions not only based on the price and features of the current product but also on expectations about the future evolution of that product. Moreover, on the expectations of the evolution of the company itself and the future products it will launch. This is in line with the new marketing of engagement or loyalty.
Therefore, any company with some knowledge of current marketing will tend to communicate to the market not only the features of its products but also previews of future products and how they will revolutionise the market. Sometimes we will communicate future features, at other times product concept images, or we will promote simple - not false - rumours for third parties to spread, as we are used to suffering from some well-known technology manufacturers. How long have we been hearing about flexible screens or advanced batteries, without being able to buy them on the market?
We will even tend to advertise agreements with renowned scientific institutions with which we will collaborate. All this will strengthen our customers' trust in a long-term relationship. As the slogan of a department store used to say years ago: "Come today, because tomorrow we will have new things". It is about establishing a permanent bond of expectation and identification with the brand. Whether it is a consumer or we are in business-to-business.
But this continuous generation of content for loyalty marketing feeds the Competitive Intelligence of our competitors, so it must be under the attention of our counterintelligence. And "no, we can't intentionally release false information here" - as I recently responded to an engineering company. It would be suicide from a marketing point of view.
Therefore, Marketing and Intelligence must be in continuous coordination to maintain the flow of information to the market, while minimising damage to future competitiveness.
Open Innovation and Counterintelligence
Sometimes counterintelligence monitoring must also focus on our partners. The growing trend towards open innovation leads our companies to innovate in collaboration with partners, especially from academia. And here a double problem arises: On the one hand, researchers have significant pressure to publish (that is what they are measured by), and on the other hand we cannot exercise as tight control as we have over our own team in the company.
This is where the need to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) comes in. But that is not enough. We must ensure that all researchers - grantees too - are aware of the terms of the agreement. If explicit penalties are included in the NDA, they must be achievable. We already know that we should never threaten actions that we are not willing to carry out (whether we are contractors or educators).
But that is not enough either. We must set up a joint committee with our partners to ensure counter-intelligence, controlling the publications that will emerge from the innovation effort. Publications cannot be launched without going through the committee, preventing them from including key information that affects the company's competitive advantage or IPR (Intellectual Property Rights). On how many occasions has an ill-timed paper "killed" the chances of a patent, not to mention the much-prized trade secrecy? And here the researcher's usual excuses such as "the deadline for publication was the very next day..." are not acceptable. Any potential publication - or press release - goes through the Committee.
But let us not only look at the partners. We ourselves must be aware of our weaknesses. I won't name names, of course, but I have experienced these cases at close quarters. I remember the case of the Technical Director who was doing his PhD and published the technical solution for the company's new product. It was a paper in English for a scientific congress, which I think I remember was in Poland... Maybe he thought nobody would notice. The competition saved more than 8 person-months of work, ensuring the success of the development while eliminating the competitive advantage. A 3-in-1.
Or the case of a South African company that applied for an innovation award. To justify its decision, the jury had no choice but to publish a "cut and paste" of part of the submitted report, describing the company's research plans.
Or the time when a client applied for R&D financial support for a project, and the report ended up in the hands of the competition through one of the evaluators. Let's remember that more and more Public Administrations are relying on contracted evaluators to whom they even send the reports... We detected this because, after a few months, the competitor included textual parts of the report in a proposal to a common prospect.
We are living in hostile territory. We can only do our best to minimise the risks.
To be continued...
(The hurt locker is a film by Kathryn Bigelow released in 2008.).
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The opinions of the authors reflect their own views and not those of the company.
