[1] Established in 1996, the academy has expanded its training to thousands of managers from 58 countries and six continents at its campuses in Cambridge, MA and Brussels, Belgium.
For example, as a survey by the academy showed, one of CI's main objectives, avoiding strategic surprises, was not being accomplished in many large companies.
They were: Leonard Fuld, whose book, Competitor Intelligence, was the first best seller on the subject,[8] Ben Gilad, whose book The Business Intelligence System created the benchmark for setting up a corporate CI function,[9] and Jan Herring who was the founding director of the first competitive intelligence function created in 1982 at Motorola Corp.[10] Together with the growth of SCIP, the creation of the academy accelerated greatly the formalization and acceptance of CI functions and positions across global companies, with some estimating that 97% of Fortune 500 corporations today have at least one CI analyst in each of their larger business units.
Other programs include the Ecole de Guerre Economique in France and Institute for Competitive Intelligence in Germany.
Though the typical trainee is a manager at a Global Fortune 500 company, past participants included some unusual representatives from the Catholic Church, various governments' defense agencies, farmer cooperatives, national economic development boards, and a cabinet minister.