GE 630 — Competitive & Market Intelligence (14-week elective syllabus)
The federal market publishes its own intelligence: award records, contract forecasts, registrations, and debriefs. The firm that reads the public record well competes with its eyes open; the firm that does not competes blind. This elective teaches competitive and market intelligence as a discipline — where the information lives, how to collect it, how to analyze it, and where the hard line between intelligence and espionage sits.
Course number: GE 630 · Credits: 3 · Format: 14 weeks, one 75-minute session per week (plus reading and a weekly deliverable). Audience: Graduate students in the MS program; capture managers, business developers, and analysts. Prerequisites: GC 510 (competitive strategy) recommended — intelligence exists to feed strategy. GC 530 (research methods) recommended — analysis is measurement. Texts: the doctrine and literacy folders of this repository; the course reader on competitive intelligence and the public-record substrate. The course is stack-agnostic by design (doctrine/08).
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, a student can:
- Define the ethical boundary of competitive intelligence: the public record is fair game; non-public, proprietary, or source-selection-sensitive information is off-limits — with no gray zone.
- Navigate the public-record substrate: award data, contract forecasts, registrations, published debriefs, and what each reveals.
- Segment and map a market: agencies, NAICS bands, vehicles, set-asides, and the competitors who live there.
- Identify and profile competitors from public records: who they are, what they win, where they are strong and where they are thin.
- Analyze incumbency: the holder, the source of its advantage, its churn signals, and its pressure score.
- Estimate the competitive price band from public evidence — and state the uncertainty around it.
- Read customer signals: engagement events, sources-sought responses, and the unstated preferences that become ghost themes.
- Convert intelligence into strategy: discriminators, displacement plays, and a competitive landscape that a capture team can act on.
- Produce the standard intelligence artifacts: a competitive landscape, an incumbent analysis, a price-band estimate, a market map.
- Run an intelligence program with the discipline of the public record — documented sources, dated findings, and an explicit "what we do not know."
Weekly schedule
| Week | Theme | In-session (75 min) | Reading / material | Assignment due next week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Intelligence vs. espionage | The public-record boundary. What intelligence is (the discipline of the published), what it is not, and why the line is absolute. | doctrine/04; the course reader on CI ethics | Boundary memo: state your personal intelligence boundary — what you will collect, what you will not, and why. |
| 2 | The public-record substrate | Award data, forecasts, registries, debriefs, bid-protest decisions. What each source reveals and its blind spots. | literacy/where-the-money-flows; the course reader on procurement data | Source map: for one market, list the public sources of intelligence and what each would tell you. |
| 3 | Market segmentation and mapping | Agencies, NAICS bands, vehicles, set-asides. Drawing the market so the competitive set becomes visible. | doctrine/01; the market-map canon at concept altitude | Market map: draw the structure of a chosen market segment with the players positioned. |
| 4 | Competitor identification | Who actually competes. Distinguishing the real field from the registered universe. | the competitor-profiling canon at concept altitude | Competitor list: identify and rank the real competitors in your chosen segment. |
| 5 | Competitor profiling | Building a competitor file: wins, focus, strengths, weaknesses, and the pattern of its behavior. | the competitor-profiling canon at concept altitude | Competitor profile: build a one-page profile for your top competitor. |
| 6 | Incumbent analysis | The holder, the source of its advantage, its churn, and its vulnerability. Incumbency pressure from the facts. | the incumbent-analysis and incumbency-pressure canon at concept altitude | Incumbent file: profile the holder in your segment and rate its pressure band. |
| 7 | Price intelligence | Estimating the competitor band from public evidence. What the record shows, what it does not, and how to be honest about the gap. | the price-intelligence canon at concept altitude | Price-band memo: estimate the competitive price band for a case pursuit with sources and uncertainty stated. |
| 8 | Customer intelligence | Engagement, signals, and the ghost theme. Reading the customer from the public record and from legitimate engagement. | doctrine/02; the customer-intelligence canon at concept altitude | Customer-signal memo: collect three public signals about a customer and convert them into ghost-theme candidates. |
| 9 | Midterm | In-class: build the intelligence picture of a real market — map, competitors, incumbent, price band — in 75 minutes. | (review weeks 1–8) | Midterm submission. |
| 10 | The intelligence collection plan | A plan that names the questions, the sources, the cadence, and the owner. Intelligence as a production system, not a scramble. | the collection-plan canon at concept altitude | Collection plan: write the plan for your market — questions, sources, cadence, owners. |
| 11 | Analysis and synthesis | From raw facts to a defensible picture. Corroboration, the confidence label, and "what we do not know" as a first-class output. | doctrine/05; the course reader on analysis | Intelligence brief: synthesize your collected facts into a one-page brief with confidence labels. |
| 12 | The intelligence artifact set | The competitive landscape, the incumbent analysis, the price band, the market map. What each is for and who consumes it. | the intelligence-artifact canon at concept altitude | Artifact set: produce the standard intelligence artifacts for your segment. |
| 13 | Intelligence into strategy | Converting the picture into discriminators, displacement plays, and a capture plan. Where intelligence ends and strategy begins. | doctrine/05; doctrine/07 | Strategy memo: translate your intelligence into two discriminators and one displacement play. |
| 14 | Synthesis | The intelligence discipline in one frame. Final defense of the market intelligence package. | (course synthesis) | Final package: a complete market-intelligence dossier for your segment, defended before a panel. |
Assessment summary
- Weekly deliverables — 40%. A cumulative intelligence dossier built across the term.
- Midterm — 20%. In-class market-intelligence build.
- Final intelligence package + defense — 30%. A complete dossier, defended.
- Participation and peer review — 10%.
The graduate rubric
| Criterion | Excellent | Proficient | Developing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boundary discipline | Every source is public record; non-public data never used | Mostly clean | Boundary unclear or crossed |
| Source rigor | Every finding cites a source and a date | Most findings sourced | Unsupported assertions |
| Analytic honesty | Confidence labels and "what we do not know" are explicit | Partial honesty | Overclaims certainty |
| Strategic use | Intelligence feeds a defensible strategy | Strategy loosely connected | Intelligence unused |
Policies
- The public-record line is absolute. An assignment that proposes or uses non-public, proprietary, or source-selection-sensitive information fails outright and is reported per the host institution's policy.
- Real markets, safe exercises. All analysis is on published markets and records.
- Late work. An honest early warning beats a silent late submission.
The market tells you everything it is allowed to tell you. The disciplined firm reads it; the undisciplined firm guesses.