Competitive intelligence course model for the information science and knowledge curriculum

The purpose of this research is to present a model for the competitive intelligence course in the Knowledge and Information Science curriculum by drawing a picture of the status of competitive intelligence in the international arena from the perspective of research and education as well as obtaining expert opinion.

This research used a mixed approach and quantitative content analysis is done in two parts. The first population of this research is all the scientific productions indexed at WOS Database from 1945 to 2018. In the second part, among the countries that produce scientific works in the field of library and information science, purposive sampling was done and the curriculum of library and information science schools of the country with the most scientific products in the field of competitive intelligence was analyzed (52 universities, the second population research). After analyzing the content of the competitive intelligence curriculum at five universities, the curriculum model was developed. The third research community consists of experts and professors of information science and science. The data from this study was collected through two researcher-made checklists and one questionnar. For data analyzing, statistics such as frequency, percentage and ration test were used.

The results of the research showed that the fields of Librarianship and Information Science, Business, Computer, Chemistry, Engineering are concerned with Competitive Intelligence, respectively. But, the field of information science and librarianship has the highest scientific output in the subject of competitive intelligence. Most of the products are in 2016, and the United States has been the leading supplier of these products and Spain ranks second and Brazil third in the competitive intelligence field. Universities in Grenada and West Eurasia have had the most number of participants in this field. Jin, Vaughan, Bouthollier, Wiley, and Simon have the most products. Scientific products are more in the form of paper and then books. Most of the citations given to scientific productions are in the topic of intelligence 220 and it happened in 2018. Competitive intelligence is taught in most schools and educational departments of library and information science in the country with the highest scientific output. In the model, the name, syllabus, etc. were considered and this model was approved by experts.

The results indicate that the lack of Iran and Iranians in the field of competitive intelligence in Knowledge and Information Science is very clear and it is necessary that this issue is considered in the curriculum of Knowledge and Information Science. The agreement of the information and knowledge experts is an indication of their interest in the extent of the frontier of the field and in gaining more market share.