Strategic Intelligence Teaching to Leverage Professional Success

Abstract

This research investigates  whether undergraduate students believe that Competitive Intelligence (CI) teaching leads to an increase in their chances of professional success, regardless of whether they want a career in CI or not. It is an exploratory study, with an initial section on bibliographic research about CI teaching, followed by assessment of the perceptions of a class of six undergraduate students in a semester-long CI course. The data analyzed were: 1) teacher assessment; 2) students’ self-assessment of the Degree of Learning (DL) in certain attributes of competence (i.e. pre-established knowledge, skills, and attitudes); 3) self-assessment of the Degree of importance (DI) for the same attributes in achieving the students’ professional success (the reference for this part of the self-assessment was the individual career strategy, created by each student during the course). Based on the DL results and the teacher’s assessment, it was found that CI instruction was positive for all students. In addition, the self-assessment results indicated high DL and DI medians for almost all attributes, suggesting broad mastery of various attributes of competence considered important by students for their own professional success (despite the limitations in terms of statistical confirmation). The present work is original and relevant as it provides initial evidence that CI teaching can increase the chances of professional success for undergraduate students, even for those who do not wish to act as CI professionals. Furthermore, it is expected that the same benefits achieved by Brazilian students will also be available to CI students around the world since the appropriate adaptations were made, which have significant practical and social implications related to their employability and success.