Intelligence Thinking: What Do We Know, and How Do We Know It?
Intelligence agencies like MI6 and the CIA do not just ask, “What information do we have?” when faced with a situation. A good intelligence process tries to separate the facts, assumptions, gaps, hypotheses, deception risks and alternative explanations before reaching any judgement. The thought process for competitive intelligence is something like this:
What is the intelligence question?
Define the decision that needs to be made. What exactly are we trying to understand, predict or decide? A vague question produces vague intelligence.
What do we know?
Establish the known facts. What is supported by reliable evidence? Separate genuinely established information from things that have just been repeated frequently.
How do we know it?
Examine the source and evidence behind each “known”. Is it first-hand, documentary, independently corroborated, inferred, or claimed by the subject?
What do we think we know?
Identify information being treated as fact but which actually contains assumptions, interpretation or weak sourcing. This category is particularly important.
What don’t we know?
Carefully and deliberately list the intelligence gaps. These are often more valuable than another page of collected information.
What do we need to know?
Not every unknown matters. Identify the gaps that could materially change the decision. These become the Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs) or Key Intelligence Topics.
What are our assumptions?
Write them down. For example: “We assume Competitor A is discounting because it is losing market share.” Then ask what happens to the assessment if that assumption is wrong.
What are the competing hypotheses?
Develop several plausible explanations rather than falling in love with the first one. For example:
- H1: The competitor is cutting prices because it is struggling.
- H2: It is deliberately buying market share.
- H3: A lower-cost product has changed its economics.
- H4: The apparent discounting is limited to particular customer segments.
What evidence would we expect if each hypothesis were true?
This is where techniques such as Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) become useful. Look particularly for evidence that contradicts a hypothesis rather than simply accumulating evidence that supports it.
What are we missing because of collection bias?
Ask whether the sources available to us are distorting the picture. Salespeople, former employees, customers, distributors, financial reports and competitors themselves all see different parts of reality.
Could someone be deliberately misleading us?
Consider deception, strategic messaging, selective disclosure and perception management. A competitor saying “AI is central to our strategy” doesn’t necessarily mean AI is commercially important to them.
What would change our minds?
Define the evidence that would cause the current assessment to be revised. If nothing could change the analyst’s conclusion, it has probably become a belief rather than an intelligence assessment.
Red team the assessment.
Give someone the job of attacking the prevailing conclusion. Their task is not to agree with the team but to ask: “Why might this assessment be completely wrong?”
Adopt the adversary’s perspective.
Ask: “If I were the competitor, what would I be trying to achieve?” What constraints are they facing? What do they know that we don’t? What would be the rational move from their perspective?
Look for alternative futures.
Intelligence should not necessarily produce a single prediction. Develop plausible scenarios: most likely, optimistic, pessimistic and potentially disruptive/outlier outcomes. That sort of thing.
Identify indicators and warnings.
For each scenario, determine what you would expect to see beforehand, such as hiring patterns, distributor changes, executive departures, pricing changes, patents, product releases or unusual customer activity.
Assess source reliability separately from information credibility.
An otherwise excellent source can provide incorrect information. Equally, an unknown source can occasionally provide something accurate. Ask both: “How reliable is the source?” and “How credible is this particular information?”
Distinguish fact from analytical judgement.
An intelligence product should make clear the difference between: we know, we assess, we believe, and we don’t know.
Assign confidence.
Conclusions should include an indication, such as high, moderate, or low confidence, based on the quality, consistency, independence, and completeness of the evidence.
Ask “so what?” and “what next?”
Intelligence only becomes useful when connected to a decision. What does this mean for us? What opportunities or threats does it create? What action should we consider? What should we collect next?
Intelligence Thinking
One particularly powerful discipline is to force every project team to complete six sentences before starting substantial collection:
We know
We think we know…
We don’t know…
We need to know…
We would change our assessment if…
If we were the competitor, what would we want our rivals to believe?
That last question introduces deception, signalling, and competitor intent into the process, making the framework considerably more intelligence-led than conventional market research.
From Question to Action
Most competitive intelligence projects fail before they even start. Teams collect whatever they can, write it up, and end up with a report full of facts no one needed. The framework above prevents this by making you ask the right questions before you start collecting information.
What decision are you supporting? What are your assumptions? What would prove you wrong? Answer these first, and your collection plan will almost create itself. Try writing the six sentences for your next project. It takes about an hour and will show you, before you spend any money, whether you are really doing intelligence work or just gathering information.
Write out the six sentences before you begin your next project. It only takes an hour and will show you if you are truly producing intelligence or just collecting data.
We are Octopus. The Global People-Powered Competitive Intelligence Agency.
Outsmart your competition. Make the unknown known. Octopus helps you gain clarity in complex markets. With clients and tentacles around the world, we deliver sharp, actionable competitive intelligence through a blend of deep primary (HUMINT) and secondary research. If you’re looking to make smarter decisions, beat the competition, and reduce uncertainty, we’re the partner you want on your side.
