Resilience Is Not a Coincidence. Companies Should Not See Competitive Intelligence as Mere Analytics.

From research

How can Competitive Intelligence (CI) contribute to building organizational resilience in an environment of hypercompetition, digital disruption and growing uncertainty? A new study by a research team from the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics at Prague University of Economics and Business shows that CI cannot be understood merely as a technical process of data collection and information analysis. Above all, it is a dynamic organizational capability that helps organizations identify changes in their environment early, respond to them appropriately and subsequently learn from them. This capability is now essential for companies and institutions that want to succeed in rapidly changing market conditions and in a broader social environment.

Why Connect Competitive Intelligence and Resilience

Organizational resilience is one of the decisive prerequisites for the long-term survival and development of organizations. Although CI and resilience often appear separately in the academic literature, their interconnection has not yet been sufficiently theoretically addressed. The research therefore focused on three key questions:

How does CI strengthen resilience?

What role is played by the individual phases of the so-called intelligence process?

How does this relationship change according to the level of intelligence maturity within an organization?

The main idea is clear: CI must be understood as a key dynamic capability of an organization, not merely as a supporting analytical function.

“The present clearly confirms that organizations must not only respond in time, but also base their decisions on externally validated data set in context. They obtain this data thanks to carefully built and maintained Competitive Intelligence processes, which help eliminate data and information overload and strengthen organizational resilience,” says research co-author Jan Černý from the Department of Information Technologies at the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics of Prague University of Economics and Business.

Theoretical Foundations: From Existing Studies to Dynamic Capabilities

Although previous studies had suggested a relationship between CI and organizational resilience, they often remained limited to partial or geographically specific findings. The new research, conducted by Jan Černý, Martin Potančok, Ota Novotný and Augusto Bargoni, therefore uses a comprehensive Dynamic Capabilities View framework that explains precisely how CI operates within an organization. The text directly translates the classic intelligence cycle into the logic of dynamic capabilities: sensing, seizing and transforming. This connection confirms that resilience does not emerge as a one-off outcome, but as a continuous process of recognizing signals, responding strategically and adapting afterwards. CI therefore plays an irreplaceable and continuous role in companies.

The Competitive Intelligence Process as a Practical Mechanism of Resilience

Each phase of the CI intelligence process makes a specific contribution to organizational resilience:

Planning and collection: They strengthen the ability to detect relevant signals from the environment in time.

Analysis and synthesis: They help transform data into strategically usable insights.

Feedback: It closes the entire cycle by supporting learning and the adjustment of future practices.

CI therefore does not serve merely to keep an organization informed, but to actively shape the organization’s ability to respond to uncertainty. And that is essential.

Measuring the Quality and Maturity of Competitive Intelligence

The study also introduces a methodology for assessing CI within an organization. It includes a set of evaluation questions and metrics that help assess the quality of the individual phases of the intelligence process and their link to resilience. The maturity model then shows that organizations pass through different stages of development: from the complete absence of intelligence, through ineffective and isolated attempts, to a comprehensive, centralized model. What is important to know, however, is that maturity is neither linear nor a definitive state — it requires continuous care.

“Companies today face a series of decisions that will shape their future. Take, for example, artificial intelligence, which affects all social processes. Companies cannot stop at simply integrating AI into their structures; they must see its impact from a much broader perspective. How will AI affect their macro-environment as well as their micro-environment, including customers, suppliers and even potential new competitors? Thanks to Competitive Intelligence, they can navigate ongoing changes and prepare for possible scenarios. Their resilience is then greater,” Černý adds.

Implementation in Organizations and Common Practical Challenges

In practice, the implementation of CI often encounters obstacles. Many companies may formally support CI, but they struggle with:

missing infrastructure and low management trust in outputs,

weak employee engagement and insufficient analytical capacity,

overestimating software solutions at the expense of processes and people.

High-quality CI does not emerge simply by purchasing a tool. It requires the development of processes, competencies and organizational culture. This is precisely where the study offers immediate application of its findings for all organizations that want to truly integrate intelligence into strategic management.

The full text of the article is available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11846-025-00966-y