Identifying and describing sub-processes in the strategic intelligence process by qualitative content analysis in an inductive way

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the sub-processes of the strategic intelligence process in organizational level analysis. Data were collected by searching the major academic and practitioner books, theses and journals in the Ebsco, Google Scholar and IranDoc databases in Persian and English. Nine thousand pages of text data were examined using content analysis. Fourteen main sub-processes were identified to describe the strategic intelligence process: (1) Identification of strategic environments and prioritizing them, (2) determination of organizational information needs and prioritizing them, (3) determination of monitoring period for each section of strategic environment and organization key information needs (KIN), (4) determination of information sources and assessment of information capturing, (5) external information scanning, (6) internal information extracting, (7) setting criteria for gathered information assessment, (8) information filtering, categorizing and abstracting, (9) information analysis, (10) interpretation and sense making (intelligence generation), (11) determination of intelligence users and intelligence distribution media, (12) intelligence distribution, (13) feedback from recipients, revision and adjustment, intelligence storage, and (14) intelligence use. The results provided useful insight for strategic intelligence process implementation in organizations and its effectiveness evaluation. The innovative aspect of this study is its response to a lack studies about strategic intelligence process modelling.