Abstract
The Internet has the potential to become a major strategic information tool for commercial enterprises. Many companies, large and small, are already using the Internet to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive business environment, both domestically and internationally. It may well be that the Internet is the next major phase in the evolution of the competitive intelligence function in advanced organizations, especially as commercialization of the network intensifies. This article describes an exploratory study of business use of the Internet for competitive intelligence purposes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 204-222 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | International Journal of Information Management |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 1994 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The Internet is not a single network, but is a series of smaller networks which inter-operate, creating the image of a single, seamless entity. The ‘backbone’ of the Internet, the NSFnet, serves to connect NSF-funded supercomputing centres and various regional networks, such as BITNET (primarily academic sponsored systems). In addition, commercial networks, such as Prodigy or CompuServe allow members to connect to the Internet.26 The Internet, while the child of the Department of Defense’s DARPANet (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), is essentially an ungoverned, decentralized, self-regulating communications entity.27 No single authority exists to enforce the Accepted Uses Policy (AUP) governing the use of the NSFnet Backbone, which states specifically that unaccepted uses include:*s 0 use for for-profit activities; l extensive use for private or personal business; l advertising of any kind.