Hemisphere's First "Competitive Intelligence" Graduate Programs to be Launched in Boston this Spring:
Center for Competitive Intelligence at Simmons College to Train Professionals Nationwide

BOSTON (Feb. 1, 2001) – Responding to companies’ exploding demand for highly trained professionals who can gather and analyze information that will help them beat the competition, Simmons College announced today it is establishing the first master’s degree program in competitive intelligence in the Western Hemisphere.

Beginning in May, the Competitive Intelligence Center (CIC) at Simmons College in Boston will offer courses to working professionals that can lead to a master’s degree or post-master’s certificate in competitive intelligence, as well as professional development courses. Course selection will be tailored to each applicant’s career objectives.

The curriculum, based on survey results from more than 200 members of the international Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), is being offered in an end-of-week format convenient for working practitioners to travel to Boston for intensive, personalized in-class training. Courses will be offered from Thursdays at noon through Saturdays at 5 p.m.

CIC courses are designed for both experienced and novice intelligence professionals. They include primary and secondary research; analysis; and security, ethical, and legal issues. The interdisciplinary program, which is under the aegis of the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science, will draw faculty from Simmons’s nationally recognized graduate schools, faculty from other colleges and universities, and members of SCIP.

"A comprehensive program like this is long overdue in the fast-growing field of competitive intelligence," said Larry Kahaner, author of the best-selling book "Competitive Intelligence."

Jerry Miller, Ph.D., an international expert in competitive intelligence who has published widely and lectured worldwide, is CIC director. Miller, a professor in the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science, is author of "Millennium Intelligence: Understanding and Conducting Competitive Intelligence in the Digital Age," and a prominent member of SCIP.

The field of competitive intelligence — gathering and analyzing information and insights through legal means about business-related issues that could provide a competitive advantage for a firm — has grown dramatically during the last few years, emerging as a "must have" tactical tool for corporations. Membership in SCIP, for example, has doubled to 6,500 in four years.

Businesses have expressed a growing need for intelligence professionals who have been rigorously trained through a formal educational program. And since the signing of the Economic Espionage Act, which makes it a federal crime to steal intellectual assets from an American firm, corporations are anxious to verify that their intelligence professionals have been rigorously trained.

Corporate executives increasingly are using intelligence professionals to help them make better decisions in an era of networking technology and globalization, to provide them insights that aren’t immediately obvious.

For further information, contact CIC director Miller at 617-521-2809. After March 1, information will be available at the CIC Web site.

Simmons College, founded in 1899, is a nationally recognized small, private, comprehensive university in the heart of Boston.

CONTACT

Diane Millikan
617-521-2369

 

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