Web-Based Analysis for Competitive Intelligence

Responding to the needs of market researchers, business analysts, CI professionals, and other decision makers who understand online technology, Vibert provides a series of problem-driven, analytical frameworks to help them make better sense—and use—of the vast amounts of information now available and easily accessed on the Internet. Organizational decision makers, forced to understand complex competitive environments, have two important aids; analytical tools and information sources. To be truly effective, these tools must be used in concert. Vibert's book focuses on these tools and their usages. In doing so it provides ways for organizational decision makers to protect their own operations as they seek to gain better knowledge of their competitors.

Analysts, market researchers, corporate trainers, CI professionals, and others in decision-making capacities, in industries enabled by the Internet, will see quickly how well the content of Vibert's book fits what they do day-to-day. Academics and other teachers will find that the book challenges the traditional case method style of teaching by showing how real-time analysis can be brought into the classroom, the corporate training suite, and other places where information and knowledge are transmitted. Vibert maintains that real-time teaching or training depends on the use of library resources—and the world's largest library is the Internet. Unfortunately, the net has grown so large so fast that stakeholders lack ways to organize the vast quantities of information available there. It is these ways, these tools and resources, that Vibert provides in his discussion of question-driven analytical frameworks, the core of his book.

Explains how vast amounts of information available on the Internet can be used to make sense of complex competitive environments and how to make fast, effective, real time decisions based on this knowledge.

Conor Vibert is an Associate Professor of Business Strategy at the Fred C. Manning School of Business at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Conor obtained his Ph.D. in Organizational Analysis from the University of Alberta in 1996. At Acadia University, Conor teaches Business Strategy and Organization Theory, while his current research interests focus on the application of management theory and online information sources to contemporary business challenges. He is also a recipient of the 2002 Outstanding Teacher Award for Acadia's Faculty of Professional Studies, as well as a recipient of the 2000 Acadia University President's Award for Innovation.