The Corporate CIA—A Prediction of Things to Come

This paper presents the case that there will soon be a confluence of the technical capability, manpower and motivation for corporations to know their competitors much better than they do now. An argument is given that a recognized new corporate activity will develop whose mission will be to study competitors with a view to finding weaknesses which can be capitalized upon. A likely consequence of this development will be the growth of covert activities of a kind which are at least distasteful, are probably immoral and possibly are illegal. If the development of corporate CIA's takes place there will be a new and fascinating arena for analytic skills, but the practitioner will be faced with some very demanding questions of what shall constitute moral behavior.