| Competitive intelligence will in this paper be considered as a process in which organisations capture weak signals and interpret their importance and impact on the organisation. Although competitive intelligence may be useful when making tactical decisions, we will focus on the strategic use of this asset. Competitive intelligence involves collection of information, knowledge creation, dissemination and use of the information. Knowledge Management has as its objective to make the right information available to the right persons at the right time. In this context, both Davenport in his Knowledge Market analogy and Nonaka with the SECI model consider creation and dissemination of knowledge a social process.
Competitive intelligence has a more shallow scope than Knowledge Management, namely to provide management with strategically important information to be used in the strategic planning process. But in order to be effective, competitive intelligence also has strong elements consisting of social interaction. This is an important part of the L.E.SCAnning method proposed by Humbert Lesca.
We come to a general comprehension that companies may benefit from taking Knowledge Management (KM) into consideration when designing a Competitive Intelligence (CI) System, as KM enhances and supports the key processes of any CI system.
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