Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence
Encyclopedia
The Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence is a first of its kind global educational organization solely dedicated to bringing professional training to the then fledgling field of competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence
A broad definition of competitive intelligence is the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.Key...

 (CI). Established in 1996, the Academy has expanded its training to thousands of managers from 58 countries and six continents at its campuses in Cambridge, MA and Brussels, Belgium. The Academy is the only CI-dedicated institution to be externally accredited by the International Association of Continuing Education and Training (IACET). It grants the Competitive Intelligence Professional (CIP) certification based on a 9-course program, including a course in ethics and a pioneering course in business war gaming. To be certified, managers must complete the required coursework and pass a certification exam. To accommodate managers whose main interest is in using CI tools and managers working as CI professionals, the Academy offers two levels of certification: a basic CIP-I, and an advanced CIP-II. The Academy is currently the largest training institute in its field.

Competitive Intelligence Standards

On March, 2011, the board of the professional association in the field of competitive intelligence- SCIP (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Profesionals) voted to adopt the Academy's CIP program as its official global certification program to help create standards in the field of strategic and competitive intelligence. The certification was renamed SCIP-CIP certificate conferred by ACI.

History

The history of the Academy tracks closely the history of the field of competitive intelligence which has risen in importance during the 1980s with the increase in global competitive pressures and the spread of Internet search engines which made information more accessible. In 1986, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals
Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals
The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals - is a global nonprofit membership organization designed to enhance the skills of knowledge professionals in order to help their companies...

 (SCIP) was founded in Washington, DC to serve as the professional association for academics, practitioners and consultants in CI. During the next decade, organizations experimented in acquiring and using CI with little discipline and no consistent results. For example, as a survey by the Academy showed, one of CI's main objectives, avoiding strategic surprises, was not being accomplished in many large companies. Three early developers of the Society banded together to create a standard of training and performance in the field. They were: Leonard Fuld, whose book, Competitor Intelligence, was the first best seller on the subject, Ben Gilad
Benjamin Gilad
Benjamin Gilad is a pioneer in the field of competitive Intelligence, he has published multiple books and articles on the subject, is a co-founder of the Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence, and serves as a consultant for many Fortune 500 companies.- Education :Benjamin Gilad...

, whose book The Business Intelligence System created the benchmark for setting up a corporate CI function, and Jan Herring who was the founding director of the first competitive intelligence function created in 1982 at Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

 Corp. Together with the growth of SCIP, the creation of the Academy accelerated greatly the formalization and acceptance of CI functions and positions across global companies, with some estimating that 97% of Fortune 500 corporations today have at least one CI analyst in each of their larger business units.

Competition

As the field continued to evolve, several organizations in recent years have joined the Academy in offering training programs in competitive intelligence, mostly as an extension of other degree programs, among them Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies
Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies
The Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies , located on the campus of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, offers undergraduate and graduate studies programs in intelligence analysis. The program also offers graduate certificates in Applied Intelligence, Counterintelligence and...

 in PA (an extension of a government intelligence program), Simmons College
Simmons College
Simmons College may refer to:*Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville, Kentucky*Simmons College , a liberal arts college in Boston, Massachusetts...

 in MA (part of Library and Information studies), and the University of Denver
University of Denver
The University of Denver is currently ranked 82nd among all public and private "National Universities" by U.S. News & World Report in the 2012 rankings....

 in CO (part of a graduate degree in information management). Other programs include the Ecole de Guerre Economique in France and Institute for Competitive Intelligence
Institute for Competitive Intelligence
The Institute for Competitive Intelligence was founded to provide post-graduate professionals a solid and flexible Competitive Intelligence training program to become a certified CI-Professional...

 in Germany. Entry level courses are also offered by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

Student body

The functional distribution of the Academy's alumni body covers managers and professionals from competitive and market intelligence functions, marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

, market research
Market research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...

, business development
Business development
A subset of the field of commerce, business development comprises a number of techniques and responsibilities which aim at:1. Researching new types of business/products/services with an emphasis on identifying gaps in the mitigation of needs of potential clients .2. Attracting new customers3...

, strategic planning
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. In order to determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues...

, research scientists and development engineers. Though the typical trainee is a manager at a Global Fortune 500 company, past participants included some unusual representatives from the Catholic Church, various governments' defense agencies, farmer cooperatives, national economic development boards, and a Cabinet Minister.

Faculty


Advisory board

The Academy's advisory board includes executives from US-based Intel, Procter and Gamble, Genentech
Genentech
Genentech Inc., or Genetic Engineering Technology, Inc., is a biotechnology corporation, founded in 1976 by venture capitalist Robert A. Swanson and biochemist Dr. Herbert Boyer. Trailing the founding of Cetus by five years, it was an important step in the evolution of the biotechnology industry...

, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, Fidelity
Fidelity
"Fidelity" is the quality of being faithful or loyal. Its original meaning regarded duty to a lord or a king, in a broader sense than the related concept of fealty. Both derive from the Latin word fidēlis, meaning "faithful or loyal"....

 and Wyeth
Wyeth
Wyeth, formerly one of the companies owned by American Home Products Corporation , was a pharmaceutical company. The company was based in Madison, New Jersey, USA...

 corporations, as well as Europe-based Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

, Roche
Roche
Roche is French for "boulder/rock". The word is several names:-Business & companies:* Hoffmann–La Roche AG, Basel, Switzerland, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world....

, TetraPak and Orange (brand), and Mexico-based Cemex
Cemex
CEMEX is the world's largest building materials supplier and third largest cement producer. Founded in Mexico in 1906, the company is based in Monterrey, Mexico...

.

Sources

1. http://www.scip.org/Publications/CIMagIssueDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=1988
2. Herring, Jan P. Measuring the Effectiveness of Competitive Intelligence: Assessing &
Communicating CI's Value to Your Organization. Virginia: Society of Competitive
Intelligence Professionals, 1996.
3. Fuld, Leonard, Competitor Intelligence: How to get it, how to use it. NY: Wiley, 1985.
4. Gilad, Ben and Tamar Gilad, The Business Intelligence System. NY: American
Management Association, 1988.
5. www.academyci.com
6. Matthew Boyle, “The Prying Game: A little knowledge is a dangerous...weapon. No
wonder competitive intelligence schools are on the rise.” Fortune Magazine,
Advisor/Careers, 17 September 2001, Vol. 144, (5), p. 235.
7. Allan Hall, “Military moves on the corporate battlefield”, The Evening Standard, 8
May, 2002.
8. Dale Buss, “Berlitz for the boss”, Chief Executive, 1 December 2001, p. 38.
9. George S. Day and Paul J.H. Schoemaker, “Scanning the Periphery”, Harvard
Business Review, November 2005, p. 135.

External links

  • http://www.academyci.com
  • http://www.scip.org
  • http://www.mercyhurst.edu
  • http://www.simmons.edu
  • http://www.iacet.org
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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