Building corporate knowledge and supporting the competitive intelligence process

Abstract

The importance, forms and means for corporate knowledge are discussed, with an emphasis or the role of individuals in knowledge information and management. The competitive intelligence (CI) is understood as an organizational process, whose purpose is investigating the environment where the company is inserted, with the objective of uncovering opportunities and reducing risks, as well as improving the knowledge of the internal organizational environment, to support the establishing of strategies of action in the short, medium and long term. Human knowledge is fundamental for the organizational competitive intelligence process (OCI), since all its inherent activities are based on data, information and knowledge. It is impossible to implant OCI without information and knowledge management, because both support all its phases. Knowledge management is an important resort for OCI, as it works essentially with informal fluxes, and can be understood as a set of strategies for creating, acquiring, sharing and using assets of knowledge, to support the generation of ideas, the solution of problems and the decision-making process. Build knowledge, therefore, is a sine qua non for OCI.