More thoughts on intelligence:

Organizations must focus on managing a viable intelligence process, rather than stay focused on churning out intelligence products. The intelligence process, reflected as behavior, requires the active, on-going, and cogent participation from a variety of sources in order to assimilate products related to data, information, and knowledge in order to determine the existence of potential threats. Like Einstein’s notion of time as a flowing river which may be observed through a hollowed tube so as to be able to witness only the fleeting presence of ‘now,’ so too intelligence agents of organizations must focus on the moving information stream through a fixed lens; what is critical is the observer retain as much of what has been observed to in order to make sense of what will be observed. Based on what is observed, the intelligence agencies must be capable of making real-time assessments, which are intended to impact future events. Too often information from the external environment is pigeon-holed and used to generate unimaginative responses. Consider an example from the private sector, Shawn Fanning, an 18 year old, in 1999 created an application that enabled to share audio and video files with their peers – Napster. Napster allowed users to download music of their choosing and create their own unique libraries. The best response from the Recording Companies was to file a legal lawsuit, a weak and unimaginative response. All the lawsuit could achieve was to slow down Napster’s development and fuel the development of several legalized clones of Napster. The Recording Companies are still trying to play catch-up to capture their lost market share.