At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
/ The 4th International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA):12 & 13 May 2011
FTA and Grand Societal Challenges:
Shaping and Driving Structural and Systemic Transformations
At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
Authors: / J. Marcela Sánchez-Torres:L. Landínez:
J. Galindo:
Sponsors: / Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Type: / Building FTA capacities for systemic and structural transformations
Geographic Coverage: / National
Scope: / Strategic sectors
Applied Methods: / Characterization
Evaluation: Impacts: / There is an overview of the practical of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia.
Identification of foresight type, foresight methods, and competitive tools used; scope of the results; and nature of stakeholders, sponsors and beneficiates.
Organiser: / Universidad Nacional de Colombia; J. Marcela Sánchez-Torres:
Duration: / November 2009, August 2010 / Budget: / NA / Time Horizon: / 10 years retrospective / Date of Brief:
Keywords: / Foresight, Competitive intelligence, methods, tools, strategic sector
Purpose
An exercise to charactize a set of Foresight and Competitive Intelligence (FCI) studies let to know the most usual methodological layouts, actors involved and recommendations given in Colombian context during 2000 – 2010
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
Background & Context
In Colombia, by one side, there has been a set of approaches related with the identification and definition of strategic industrial sectors to facilitate the productive and social transformation processes in order to become part of the knowledge society. Another side, during 2003 -2007 were developed a model to design research agendas thorough Colombian Program of Technology and Industrial Foresight -NFP. Then, the question about what foresight, technological watch and competitive intelligence explorations have done arises.
At the same time this question let born others related questions, for instance, what are the most important variables to characterize a Foresight and Competitive Intelligence -FCI-exercise, how we know if a foresight exercise or competitive intelligence exercise belongs to a strategic sector?.
Thus, the aim of the present article is to characterize FCI exercises, especially for strategic sectors in Colombia during 2000-2010.
The performed analysis of the state of the art did not provide us with published works exactly matching the research question that could be used as a reference, so we need to establish basic concepts, as well as a methodological framework, that we will explain below.
Thus, we identified as a strategic sector as a sector where a competitive advantage can be achieved and exploited, and it generates: i) positive externalities; ii) economies of scale; iii) high number of upstream and downstream relations; iv) products and services with added value; v) infrastructure for other companies of the sector and related sectors. (Henderson, 1975) (OECD, 1991). And in Colombian context is a sector based on knowledge, with exporting vocation, (Instituto Colombiano para el desarrollo de la Ciencia y la Tecnología “Francisco José de Caldas” Colciencias, 2008)
FCI studies are systematic processes that are articulated through work cycles with possible points of encounter between both disciplines that are serviceable in different ways (Cunningham et al., 2006) where different techniques coexist and have been integrated in the frame of Future Analysis Technologies (Porter et al., 2004 ). Empirical evidence of such synergy has been presented for the Colombian case (Medina and Sánchez-Torres, 2008)
Thus, on this research FCI studies are understood as those initiatives that use and combine such methodologies and are based on concrete data structured or not structured (primary and secondary), for the identification of trends and the construction of consensus regarding possible futures. The methodologies, tools, and sources of information depend on the scope, objectives, capabilities, and resources of each initiative. In the current document, the principal characteristics of the FCI exercises will be analyzed for the strategic sectors found in Colombia.
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
To Characterize a Foresight and Competitive Intelligence Exercises
Because the state of the art did not provide us with published works exactly matching the research question that could be used a reference, three phases were designed to carry out the research:
i) Identification of the strategic sectors proposed for the country from two types of documents. In first place, political documents that define national strategies for development and in second place, studies by national and international consultantships referenced in those political documents. The sectors that are defined are homologized and standardized based on the Unified International Unified Code “CIIU”.
ii) The consolidation of the Inventory of the Foresight or Competitive Intelligence studies carried out in Colombia since the year 2002 for each of the strategic sectors previously identified. The search, recollection and organization process of the FCI studies is included.
iii) Study characterization. Comparison variables are defined for the FCI studies. Then, the statistics. The characterization was done based on selected criteria such as: i) foresight type (i.e. strategic, technological, territorial) and class of foresight methods used; ii) competitive intelligence type (i.e technological watch, commercial, strategic) and class of competitive tools used; iii) scope of the results; iv) nature of the stakeholders, sponsors and beneficiates.
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
Output & Impacts
22 strategic sectors were identified in the different documents of political nature, and studies that were consulted. Those sectors that were mentioned at least once in such documents were considered. 118 documents were found of which 105 correspond to studies of the 22 strategic sectors identified. The additional 15 documents correspond to models that propose FCI studies inside organizations, FCI manuals, or documents that describe software tools to support the CI practices.
18 of the selected sectors have at least one exercise performed for a total of 105 documents analyzed. Out of these, the agricultural, livestock and forest sector and the ITC sector are identified as the sectors with the highest number of exercises performed – 28 and 22 studies, respectively. Some sectors only present a single stud. y performed as s the case of the metal-mechanics and machinery sectors. For Craftsmanship, Defense, and Pharmaceuticals sectors, no exercises were found for the period pointed out.
The majority of sectors have used both Foresight as well as Competitive Intelligence studies as management and information tools: 43% Competitive Intelligence, 25% Foresight studies and 32% using both disciplines. The consolidation in the use of these disciplines has been seen since the year 2004 with a clear peak in these experiences in the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Regarding the scope, 83% have application in the national scenario while16% have applicability in the regional scenario and only 1% covers the international scenario.
In Colombia, the generation of FCI studies involves at least three types of actors: the sponsoring entities, the executing entities and the receptor or beneficiary entities. The majority of these executing organizations are universities and consulting agencies that work indistinctly between strategic sectors although in the case of the CIDEI there is a specialization in the TIC sector. The participation of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the CIDEI, COLCIENCIAS and the Universidad Externado de Colombia have been of great importance. In the mentioned institutions, capabilities and skills have been developed to execute analysis techniques that are both quantitative as well as qualitative; within the first techniques you can mainly find the methods of expert consultation in FCI, while the quantitative analysis correspond mainly to scientometrics, forecasts and statistics based on data.
Regarding the types of Foresight studies, 70% of the exercises correspond to technological Foresight, followed by territorial Foresight studies and strategic Foresight studies with 13% each.
53% of the exercises perform scientific-technological intelligence; another significant portion (45%) combines elements o commercial and scientific-technological intelligence. The latter implies that over 90% of the exercises involve technological intelligence.
Furthermore, fifteen documents that correspond to five models that propose FCI systems inside organizations were identified as well as six manuals of FCI and four documents that describe software tools that support FCI practices.
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
Outcome & Evaluation
The FCI studies take importance when the results, in terms of information of strategic value, are used as inputs in decision making and in the strategic planning process.
It is necessary to undertake studies that revise the real impacts in the competitiveness of the different sectors after implementing FCI studies. A follow-up and evaluation of the impact of the results of the 105 identified exercises is necessary.
The exercises present Foresight and Competitive Intelligence components that reflect the synergies that have been developed between these two disciplines in the past decade in terms of methodologies and organizational capabilities.
It is gratifying to establish that 18 of the 22 strategic sectors defined for the country have undertaken or been part of at least one NFP exercise. The last three years have shown the greatest activity in the generation of exercises, guaranteeing that the results may be useful for current decision making processes.
This analysis displays empirical evidence that the use of different methods is possible, as to confirm results and obtain different types and degrees of knowledge detail and information as has been indicated by (Scapolo and Miles, 2006).
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
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At glance of foresight and competitive intelligence in Colombia, 2000-2009.
References
CUNNINGHAM, S. W., PORTER, A. & N, N. 2006. Special Issue on Tech Mining. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 73, 915 - 922.
HENDERSON, B. 1975. Strategic Sector.
IINSTITUTO COLOMBIANO PARA EL DESARROLLO DE LA CIENCIA Y LA TECNOLOGÍA “FRANCISCO JOSÉ DE CALDAS” COLCIENCIAS 2008. Colombia siembra y construye futuro. , Bogotá, COLCIENCIAS.
MEDINA, J. & SÁNCHEZ-TORRES, J. 2008. Sinergía entre la prospectiva y la vigilancia tecnológica. . In: MEDINA, J. & SÁNCHEZ-TORRES, J. (eds.) Sinergía entre la Prospectiva y la vigilancia tecnológica. Bogotá: Colciencias.
OECD, O. F. E. C. A. D. 1991. Strategic industries in a Global economy. Policiy issues for the 1990's. Paris: OECD.
PORTER, A., ASHTON, B., CLAR, G., COATES, J., CUHLS, K., CUNNINGHAM, S., DUCATEL, K., VAN DER DUIN, P., GEORGEHIOU, L., GORDON, T. & LINSTONE, H. 2004 Technology Futures Analysis toward integration of the field and new methods. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 73, 287-303
SCAPOLO, F. & MILES, I. 2006. Eliciting experts’ knowledge: A comparison of two methods Technological Forecasting & Social Change 73, 679–704.
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