Let’s Give SCIP a Second Chance

This has been a tough time for many of us in this rocky economy and SCIP has been no exception. SCIP 09 attracted many fewer people than SCIP had hoped for since many companies have cut back travel and education budgets this year.  Like most associations, SCIP is fueled financially by its annual conferences.  SCIP leadership and its Board of Directors were ready and presented the membership with a voting opportunity to keep SCIP in business.  Frost & Sullivan’s Institute has agreed to give SCIP a cash infusion to keep it in business, and to propel the CI profession into new directions, most particularly up the organization where Frost is well positioned.

Like many I was disturbed by the suddenness with which we were presented with this bad news: that SCIP was facing such financial difficulty that this infusion of cash was expedient, and we better vote YES to keep SCIP in business.  This was bad emotional intelligence on SCIP’s part I think.

There is a tremendous amount of emotional and analytical discussion on this subject on our CI Ning.  Check it out as you will read so many great ideas on how our field is evolving globally as well as organizations that do bits and pieces of CI.

What I get from this discussion is that we all benefit the most by having one place to represent competitive intelligence, so I hope that SCIP remains in business, and takes some of the constructive suggestions that have been raised in the last week through the CI Ning, the Fellow’s phone call, the CI chapter’s phone call…the outpouring of ideas.

I also hope that SCIP learns to work better with other interest groups all over the world in SCIP and brings back some form of an academic journal since schooling is a great way to build the profession!

Read about the proposed merger with Frost & Sullivan’s Institute right on SCIP’s home page .  The latest I heard was about 90% of the votes have been YES to the merger.  There has never been such a high voter turnout in SCIP’s history. SCIP needs 5% of the membership to vote and a 2/3 majority to say YES in order to move forward with negotiations for the merger.  I voted YES and encourage SCIP members to support our Board and SCIP leadership. We all win if SCIP moves forward and continues to support the competitive intelligence profession.

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