Competitive Intelligence: The act of stating, gathering, examining, and distributing information regarding products, customers, competitors and any feature of the environment required to support executives and managers in building strategic decisions for an association.
Continuous procedure of observing a firm's industry or market to recognize (a) present and future competitors, (b) their present and announced actions, (c) how their events will affect the firm, and (d) how to react. It differs from industrial espionage in that it employs legal and ethical means to collect and sift the publicly accessible information.