By Robyn Reals Education Manager SCIP

SCIP European Chapter Development

Currently SCIP has affiliates in Israel, Benelux, Italy, Germany (DCIF), Switzerland (SCIA) and United Kingdom (UKCIF). Andrew Beurschgens, SCIP board member and chair of the international chapter group, recently completed a survey of European members concerning their interest in expanding the affiliate footprint and need for local chapter meetings.

The survey showed a strong demand for local networking, personal development and continual learning, with an emphasis on providing an environment to discover, enhance, exchange and problem solve. Survey respondents also indicated their interest in specific topics for chapter meetings, including intelligence to recommendations, competitor profiling, scenario analysis, communicating intelligence and war gaming.

Through the survey, Andrew has identified passionate colleagues in a number of countries to take developments to the next stage. If you are interested in supporting future European chapter growth, please contact Robyn Reals at rreals@scip.org

SCIP India

Currently SCIP has international chapters in Brazil and Canada. Now, the newest international chapter is chaired by Arun Jethmalani in India. Here are some of his ideas on chapter development.

“In India, which has traditionally been a protected market, the awareness of competitive intelligence has been low. We believe this is now changing rapidly, and we find more people beginning to understand how CI could enhance their businesses. SCIP has done a lot in terms of creating awareness of the importance of CI in the U.S. and Europe, and this should happen in other parts of the world – perhaps most importantly in India, one of the fastest growing economies.

“Having attended several SCIP conferences, I’ve found the learning and sharing to be of tremendous value, and I’d like to replicate this in India. We will work on building awareness of competitive intelligence through chapter sessions, webinars, blogs and events. Through this new SCIP chapter in India, we will have a stronger platform to reach out to CI practitioners and users via regular events, content and knowledge sharing, etc.

“In 2007, we conducted a survey of the leading companies (including multinationals) in India to understand whether they had a formal CI (or equivalent) function in their companies. At the time, less than three percent of respondents had a CI (or research) function, and not even 10 percent were aware of the term CI. Last year, we found a quantum change. More and more companies are doing CI now (even if they don’t have dedicated professionals) and see the value in good intelligence.

“Furthermore, we recently ran a survey to gauge the interest level amongst CI professionals in India in being part of a SCIP India Chapter. We got more than 100 responses with almost everyone showing an interest in being part of a SCIP chapter in India. The profiles of respondents varied from CI professionals with over a decade of experience to young professionals just foraying into the CI domain. Our survey showed significant interest from three cities, Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

“We plan to start with Mumbai as we found from our survey that the maximum number of respondents were from Mumbai or were willing to travel to Mumbai. Our intention is to start the chapter in Mumbai and, after a few months, hold meetings in Delhi and Bangalore as well. The idea is to seed the concept of a CI community at these locations.”

If you are interested in supporting this chapter, please contact Arun at jetu@valuenotes.com