Competitive Intelligence- What we learnt from the leaders?

Competitive Intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing information about competitors and their strategies. It is used as a tool to analyze the external environment, but the challenge of gaining access to classified data has often led big corporates into unethical practices- Volkswagen (1993), Oracle (2000), P&G (2001), to name a few.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/10/business/vw-agrees-to-pay-gm-100-milli...
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/29/business/oracle-leader-calls-microsoft...
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/09/17/...