He's a young university searcher and this time he talks about the link between Intelligence and Economic culture of safety, now indispensable society of today and tomorrow

In my opinion, the Economic Intelligence (EI), is the discipline through which instruments and research activities, acquisition, analyses, elaboration, storage, interpretation and communication of the information is able to detect the critical factors in the global economic competitive context, with the aim of discovering the opportunities, predicting the emerging threats and reducing the risks involved in the safety and soundness of the National assets.

In a globalized context which is always more flexible and competitive, in which the communication systems have increased the speed and volume of the transmission of information, in which the multi-nationals and trans-nationals have reinforce the globalization process without completely eliminating the negative factors such as crime and corruption, to have an efficient informative apparatus available, which is able to support, promote and defend the specific activities of the national economic protagonists, represents a crucial resource for the success and the autonomy of a State.
The results of such changes have drawn the attention of the policy-makers to issues related to the economic competitiveness and to the distinctive advantage of a given Country.
Therefore, the ability to detect anomalies from the analysis of financial-economic data helps to:
• thoroughly understand the International financial-economic dynamics;
• protect the strategic economic interests of the Country;
• develop and defend the National critical structures and the industrial technological assets;
• monitor the activities and operations of organized crime rooted and ramified throughout the economy, such as: money re-cycling, illegal traffic and commerce of products of high technological content.

Advanced knowledge: to carryout intelligence is, above all, to thoroughly understand, learn and analyze the civil, national and international economic matters that affect a Country, so that all the activities (public and private) on the foreign markets can have good returns for the economic operators and for the development of the State with the support of their own functions and to aid the competitiveness of the national enterprises with:
• activities of information research aimed to highlight the picture of foreign competition (also with specific operations in support of National technological innovations, as is done in Japan, Germany and France) on the basis of data and information deriving from the industries and shared with the public administrations;
• analyses activities of the geo-economic scenarios of the foreign Countries, risk assessment to protect insolvency situations, and the nations in which the principal domestic investments are made.
The analysts must thoroughly research into the method of execution of such investments (e.g. indirect exportations, strategic agreements, joint ventures, acquisitions, Brownfield, Greenfield) and the discovery of the access channels used.
Entry into a foreign Country – for example – is determined by five essential conditions:
- the intensity of the relations with the parties involved in the geographic context;
- the degree of control over the competitive variables in the target market;
- the appropriability of the economic results and strategies of the operations themselves;
- the degree of embedment in the market;
- the employment of human and financial resources.

Protection against the penetration of foreign interests into National strategic sectors is certainly an extremely important function. A function which can indicate hidden interests of acquisition operations of important equity shares of companies operating in sectors such as energy, banking, telcos and broad scale distribution (gdo). This protection function is supported by the following activities:
• contextual control of the activities of the financial operator (principally, investment banks, hedge funds, special investments vehicles, money market funds and rating societies) which, due to the volume of cash they are able to move and control could cause difficulties to the decision makers and public administrators. Difficulties tied to the loss of controllability of key parameters for their economic policy choices;
• monitoring of the International financial variables, e.g. the inflationist trends, in order to avoid that unforeseen financial hysteria does not take the monetary policy makers and the users in general by surprise.

The control of the operations of economic criminality through the detection of illegal activities which penalize the National investors and make the control activities of the markets more difficult could be made more effective with:
- monitoring of the unrecorded transactions which come through unofficial channels, such as the trade in high value commodities and real estate, commonly used in money laundering operations and, in general, the control of the circuits through which the transfer of “anonymous” funds is done, thanks to the activities of small private realities (particularly, the money transfer circuits or couriers), very common among the migrant communities in transferring funds to their families. The characteristic of the “difficult traceability” of these funds makes them particularly useful to the purposes of organized groups involved in illicit or criminal activities;
- control of the trends of the raw materials and industrial products – focusing on the Energy sector – where it would be opportune to establish synergies with the Authorities and competent representatives in order to determine the information requirements in support of the choices of International agreements, rather than the construction of infrastructure; - watchfulness with regard to “attractive realities” for the pursuit of illegal activities: financial havens which, for the type of regime offered from a fiscal and legal standpoint, specific controls are necessary to combat money money laundering operations and other financial offences.

The complex activity of the analytical process of EI requires the collection of information and raw data which is assessed, verified and analyzed in order to create intelligence.
The EI avails itself of both confidential information derived mostly from the acquisition of documents and the classic Humint, and from the assistance of the OSINT Open Sources, using the analytical process of available information through the normal channels of communication in paper and electronic form.
For example, the immediate withdrawal of capital on the part of investors, following a threat of expropriation of assets in a specific Nation or for other reasons of instability of the economic system, represents a clear signal, in the long term, of political revolutions, conflicts or liquidity crises that hit the State economy and the International markets. At this point, the need of information and the priorities of the knowledge change, developing over time and varying according to the nature of the organizations (public or private), of the member sectors and of the primary targets.
The EI process – in my opinion – could be sub-divided into nine steps and for each one of these steps, it is possible to state the actors involved, the operative activities followed, the methods and support instruments used.
Obviously, each State is responsible for the choice of the intelligence strategy and of the consequent process of choice realization, keeping in mind that many factors can influence the potential choice:

- the social-political organization; - the security culture; - the legal basis;
- the economic values of each single Country.
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1) identification of the problem to be resolved, in terms of threat, risk and/or danger;
2) definition of the objectives;
3) identification of the pertinent sources of information;
4) validation of the information sources;
5)collection of the information;
6)elaboration of the gathered information for the calculation of indicators;
7) interpretation of the indicators;
8) definition of the decisional process for the resolution of the problem;
9)protection of the patrimony of information during the entire process.

The participants in the process would carry out – in strict observance of confidentiality – activities of research, selection and the study of threat phenomena which would concern National security (terrorism, subversion, proliferation, criminality, clandestine immigration, etc.)
In particular, participants would: • analyze the information and elaborate reports with reference to the pitfalls and details inherent in the individual threats;
• formulate predicative analyses on the potential developmental profiles of the risk factors connected to the threats;
• furnish information support to the operative sectors, making “information exchanges” with external structures, making reference to the structured iterative process which presents the various steps connected to each other in a linear and cyclical manner.
The best management of the process activities provides for the combination of specific know-how and the use of information tools connected and fuelled also from the previous experience of research and analyses.
Furthermore, the EI management should tend to increase a communication approach between the different actors of the process, in order to transform the knowledge – hidden or implicit – into explicit and intelligible knowledge: establishing, from time to time, the fine-tuning operations to be followed during the entire process of gathering information, analyses and diffusion.
Much financial-economic and corporate information is available through specific research on the Web, rather than through the use of data banks able to assess the activities of M&A of the societies, to outline the profile of a certain Country (e.g. macroeconomic and demographic indicators) and to monitor the sectors of the market. Thanks to automatic systems, also of text and data mining, such information can be organized, compared and assessed through massive types of non-structured, multi-national and multi-issue information, with a view to identifying and anticipating an event or a change.

For example, an unusual increase, above the threshold of average requirements, of the trend of the importation by a specific nation of goods and components of high technological content, combined with information of suspicious ground transportation, could be assessed as a potential threat of arms proliferation.Another example could derive from data coming from financial markets and from the activities of the financial institutions. The analysts continually monitor the portfolio strategies of the sovereign wealth funds created by emerging Countries including Brazil and the United Arab Emirates (e.g. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Investment Corporation of Dubai, and the Mudabala Development Company). Such operations could give rise to concern over possible interference from foreign governments in the management of the enterprises in order to control critical infrastructures (telecommunications, energy etc.,) or to have access to the natural resources considered to be strategic for the national economy.

The transfer and protection of the tacit or implicit knowledge represent the critical aspects tied to any learning process and, consequently, necessitate particular attention and – according to some experts (2) of Knowledge Management – this may be done following a process subdivided into four phases:
1) socialization: in an informal context, the experts and analysts share experiences and approaches used on projects concerning issues related to those treated;
2)externalization: in this phase projects/study cases are created that allow one to tap into the tacit knowledge of the individual, favouring the explication, communication and selective sharing within the group.
3) combination: allows combining the externalized knowledge of the individual through the passage of information, in order to mature the methods and the correct approaches;
4) internalization allows interiorizing the learned knowledge, putting it into practice through learning by doing sessions) in order to make it part of the professional expertise of the individual. The proposed approach creates this cycle of sharing, development and protection of the information, allowing the selective transfer and dissemination of the implicit and explicit know-how among the participants of the work group, favouring the involvement and active participation of all the resources, also those at a more operative level.

The EI contribution substantially consists in understanding and anticipating the causes, the logics of the actions and operations that are potentially harmful to the National system, in supplying the right information to the right person at the right time, in order to take the right decision.
Therefore, one of the most significant aspects is that of developing a security culture, which permits experts to create a system and a valid information network for both the ordinary citizens and the decision makers.
The EI activities have become indispensable for the National security, above all, in relation to the strategic sectors which are considered essential to the economic growth of the entire National system.
The State, understood as an autopoietic system (3) , has the task of knowing how to ensure that the communities and the economies are immune to the attacks which characterize this historical period - dominated by the hyper-competition, by the financialization and computerization – by utilizing every adequate and effective tool: from the lobbying to the misinformation, to the most sophisticated operations of economic policy.
Therefore, to increase the information base, it may be useful to obtain the collaboration of all the institutions, universities, public and private research centers and acquire the widespread consensus on the activities of the Economic Intelligence.
These are important steps towards the recognition of a renewed role of the Intelligence, preliminary to the development of the intelligence culture, which considers the businesses not only as beneficiaries, but also collectors of information to be shared and consolidate economic positions, increasing the feeling of the perceived/supplied security.
The concept of the security culture cannot be separated from the assimilation of the indispensability of the intelligence in the economic-financial sector, today, as never before, engine of the solidity of a Country.