Fireside Chat: SAP intelligence study
Understanding how a global technology leader like SAP manages its intelligence function is a rare insight — and one that has taken years of dedicated research to uncover. In this Fireside Chat, competitive intelligence scholar Klaus Solberg Söilen shares his academic journey and previews the landmark findings of a four-year collaborative research project.
Competitive intelligence professionals often ask how world-class organizations actually put CI into practice at scale. Klaus Solberg Söilen, a leading academic in the field with over 25 years of teaching experience and more than 50 published works, has spent four years investigating precisely that question — with a focus on SAP. In this conversation with Rainer Michaeli, Director of the Institute for Competitive Intelligence, Söilen outlines his background, his research contributions, and what attendees of the upcoming Frankfurt conference can expect to hear first-hand.
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Be among the first to hear the premiere results of the SAP intelligence function research — presented live by Klaus Solberg Söilen and his co-authors.
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Program Overview
Overview
Understanding how a global technology leader like SAP manages its intelligence function is a rare insight — and one that has taken years of dedicated research to uncover. In this Fireside Chat, competitive intelligence scholar Klaus Solberg Söilen shares his academic journey and previews the landmark findings of a four-year collaborative research project.
Competitive intelligence professionals often ask how world-class organizations actually put CI into practice at scale. Klaus Solberg Söilen, a leading academic in the field with over 25 years of teaching experience and more than 50 published works, has spent four years investigating precisely that question — with a focus on SAP. In this conversation with Rainer Michaeli, Director of the Institute for Competitive Intelligence, Söilen outlines his background, his research contributions, and what attendees of the upcoming Frankfurt conference can expect to hear first-hand.
Welcome & Introductions
Rainer Michaeli, Director of the Institute for Competitive Intelligence, opens the conversation by welcoming Klaus Solberg Söilen to the audience. Michaeli introduces Söilen as a professor from Sweden and invites him to provide an overview of his professional background.
Background & Specialization
Klaus Solberg Söilen was born in Norway and has dedicated more than 25 years to academia, preceded by a decade of hands-on professional experience in the industry. His primary area of specialization is intelligence studies within a business context — a discipline variously referred to as business intelligence or competitive intelligence — which has remained the defining focus of his academic career.
Publications & Research Work
Söilen completed his doctoral dissertation in Germany on the subject of Wirtschaftsspionage (economic and industrial espionage), a topic on which he produced one of the first academic PhDs at the time. Since then, he has authored three to four books and published more than 50 scholarly articles in the field of competitive and business intelligence.
Conference in Frankfurt
Söilen announces an upcoming conference in Frankfurt, which he characterizes as an outstanding gathering for researchers and practitioners in the intelligence field. He will attend alongside two long-standing collaborators: Jonathan Kalov, an academic from Canada, and Dirk Kanski, a representative from SAP. The three colleagues have worked together for approximately four years on a joint research project examining how SAP structures and executes its intelligence function.
The Frankfurt conference will mark the public premiere of their research results. Participants will be among the first to receive the findings from this multi-year investigation — making attendance at the event a prerequisite for early access to the data.
Closing Remarks
Söilen extends a personal invitation to join the Frankfurt conference, noting that the event has consistently proven to be a highly rewarding and enjoyable experience over his many years of participation. Rainer Michaeli closes the conversation by expressing his gratitude and anticipation for an in-person reunion at the conference.
