Reverse engineering, hiring consultants who have worked for the competitors, and taking tours of competitors public facilities can all be used to gather information about competitors. Reverse engineering can generate information on exactly how a product or service is manufactured, and could net ideas to improve inhouse products. Hiring consultants that have worked for competitors could net information on how the competitor’s organization is structured, or the processes they use, but may not net any information if the consultant has signed client privacy agreements. The last method is taking tours. This could net information on manufacturing processes, or office and facility layout that could aid in generating new ideas.

Reverse engineering will yield accurate information on how a competitors product works, but it will not aid in the identification of how it was manufactured. Taking tours of the manufacturing facility may help resolve some of the unknowns but will not paint a complete picture including all processes or vendors. This could also cause a strategic myopia where the firm is focusing on the wrong aspects of the competitors advantage. They may not even be advantages to the competitor, but the investigating organization may mistakenly see them as advantages (Wheelen, et al., 2018). Only inhouse, first person knowledge can fill in these gaps. Hiring a consultant that has worked for the competitor can be beneficial, but must be researched heavily before hand to ensure that the consultant is willing and able to share competitor information. If they can not share the knowledge, then it will be money wasted, as well as potential environment consequences like reputational loss.

There are ethical concerns with many of these activities. Reverse engineering can be used to unwind someone else’s intellectual property. This can also generate a substitute product threat to the competitors (Wheelen, et al., 2018). This is beneficial to work through quality control concerns of similar products (Saiga, et al., 2021). If this substitute infringes upon any patents or copyrights then the company can be held liable for damages from copying products. Working with consultants can bring ethical concerns if the consultant has a no compete clause, or has signed non-disclosure agreements. If the consultant overlooks these documents, and shares competitor information they could be held liable. If touring a competitors’ facilities during a public showcase is the chosen method, there are little ethical concerns present as long as you abide by the rules of the tour. If no photography or recording is allowed, then refrain from taking pictures or recording conversations and you will be safe from ethical concerns.

An additional method of gaining competitor information is staging a current employee in the competitor’s company as a spy. Corporate spying has been increasing in recent times. This allows an abundance of information to be passed back and forth between corporations without consent, or allow information to be planted in either firm that may cause future harm (Geoghegan, 2021). While this may be a quick method to gain insight on strategic operations, it carries ethical concerns such as the trading of intellectual property without consent. This method should not be condoned by any organization, but it is utilized in present times even with the concerns.

 

Geoghegan, P. (2021). Hacks for hire, spooks for sale: The murky world of ‘corporate intelligence’. TLS. Times Literary Supplement, (6173), 9. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A669807910/AONE?u=colstglobal&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=cc4c92a9

Saiga, K., Ullah, A.S., Kubo, A., & Tashi. (2021). A sustainable reverse engineering process. Procedia CIRP, 98(1), 517–522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2021.01.144.

Wheelen, T., Hunger, D., Hoffman, A., & Bamford, C. (2018). Strategic Management and Business Policy. Pearson. https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/243595/sp/15514147/mi/50902138?menu=table-of-contents

Be sure to respond to at least two posts from other students or your instructor. In your response, identify what agreements you have with your classmate’s post and what areas you disagree with from your classmate’s post. If you disagree, include why and your own understanding of the material and analysis. Your responses in the discussion board must be formatted according to APA style. The CSU Global Writing Center offers resources on how to  and  in APA style.

Finally, be sure to include in your initial post at least one reference using the CSU Global Library or other professional and scholarly references. Refer to the Discussion Grading Rubric for more information on expectations of class discussions. In some cases, additional or more specific language may be used to encourage peer-to-peer interactions such as taking the opposite view of another student’s discussion focus.



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