Uso de la inteligencia competitiva en los procesos de colaboración en el sector farmacéutico español

It is quite common to find competitive intelligence (CI) activities in pharmaceutical companies. These companies use the CI process, not only to act against competitors, a traditional goal of the CI, but also with the purpose of enhancing cooperation. This paper proposes that this trend should be deeply analyzed so that IC techniques can be adapted to the new demands of information. CI cycle is used to extract offensive intelligence, defensive intelligence, and, more increasingly, cooperative intelligence. The results of a study developed with a sample of 186 Spanish pharmaceutical companies are presented. The main goal was to analyze the extent to which these companies use CI processes for cooperative purposes. Results confirm that companies use CI tools for finding partners to share information sources, funding sources, or to carry out innovation projects.