In today’s National Post a vague article entitled, Spying doesn’t pay, prattles on about ethics and warns about the weak moral fibre and criminality of competitive intelligence practitioners.
I find it hard to get over pendants who don’t meet a payroll, deal with shareholders, or shifting market forces, who always tell you what you are doing wrong. This inane stuff continues to annoy me — I know it shouldn’t, but for three decades I’ve been hearing the same twaddle. As an example from today’s article:
Perhaps the most surprising finding is that among the troubling incidence of misrepresentation, manipulation, covert surveillance and theft, one of the most common ethical problems in competitive intelligence is the unsolicited discovery of a competitor’s trade secrets.
Theft is a crime, while misrepresentation, manipulation, and covert surveillance may, or may not comprise some part of a crime. Of course no details provided. He just wants us to believe this is SOP in business today. The unsolicited discovery of a competitor’s trade secrets is what Competitive Intelligence is about and he wants to equate that with criminal behaviour.
And he continues in this vein:
Managers in our study repeatedly recounted incidents where sensitive competitor information had been disclosed by customers, suppliers, or disgruntled former employees of their competitors. Sometimes these were not sent purposefully, but were accidentally conveyed by e-mail, or as one corporate lawyer put it, “the mysterious fax problem.” Sometimes, simple eavesdropping of one’s competitors at a trade show or on the plane can reap precious inside information. Quite simply, information insecurity is widespread, and there is no lack of competitors that might be tempted to take advantage.
If somebody sends me useful competitive intel, then I must read it to determine what is to be done about it. If it is obviously stolen, then I must determine my legal position in relationship to possession of this data. If the data was clearly stolen I will not become a receiver of stolen property. The use of the word “eavesdropping” has the connotation that this is criminal or improper. Quite to the contrary, overhearing someone talking about something important to you is not a crime or improper. If receiving the data is not a crime or tort, then it is mine — finders keepers.
And yet it continues:
Use of competitor information known to be confidential can breach trade secret law and goes against the golden rule of “do unto others as they would do unto you.”
If the competitor releases the information in a public venue, then I would like this author to tell us what law has been breached by the party who receives information. If the competitor release the data in public it is no longer confidential. It doesn’t matter how or why he released the data.
And now we get to the objective of this claptrap:
Perhaps even more of a concern for companies is the revelation that a lack of attention to the ethics of competitive intelligence gathering can result in employees assuming they have tacit approval for an anything goes approach to competitors. This can instil a culture of moral laxity that incrementally takes hold in other practices, roles and functions within the organization. Bottom line: lack of attention to industrial espionage can have repercussions for the entire ethical culture of the organization.
Let me translate: you won’t know the difference between criminal industrial espionage and competitive intelligence unless you read my book (Ethical Challenges in Competitive Intelligence) and hire me at outrageous rates to waste your time on this twaddle, after all, you business people aren’t very smart or moral.
