Competitive Intelligence could be an expensive exercise albeit a necessary one. Therefore, the reality is, it’s rare for a small or mid-size company to have an independent competitive intelligence team. For most, CI lives within their Product Marketing or Sales department. In most of these cases, gathering and analysing competitive intelligence is only a fraction of a single person’s job. It is unsustainable. Still the most occurring model for CI is the hybrid model where certain elements of CI are done in-house while others are contracted out to external suppliers. As competition continues to heat up across the board, more and more company leaders are realizing that this ad-hoc approach to CI isn’t cutting it and investing in hiring a dedicated CI department is necessary to compete in their market in any which way of form. Please read here for a piece written by Crayon’s Madison Blask on scaling the CI team – Read the article here