What can the CIA learn from GE? What can a pediatric urologist researching intersexuality learn from a forensic anthropologist working mass disasters? All use "intelligence" in their own ways to make more informed decisions, but rarely do they share with each other what works and what doesn't.
Now, for the first time, leading practitioners - or as management guru Peter Drucker coined "knowledge workers" - from national security, business, education, medicine, forensics and the law will share 'trade secrets,' opening doors to new approaches in interpreting threats to national security, conducting business, analyzing medical cases and more. Different faces, different backgrounds and, more importantly, different ideas will drive the agenda of the first Global Intelligence Forum: The Dungarvan Conference July 11-13 in Dungarvan, IE.
Organized by the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies (MCIIS-Erie, Pa.), this unique intelligence sharing will cast the spotlight on knowledge workers and reinforce their value in the global marketplace. Like Google predicted in 2005, organizations that attract the best performing knowledge workers will secure the "single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years."
One of the world's best known knowledge workers, Tom Ridge, first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, will deliver the keynote address to representatives of 15 participating countries. Competitive intelligence professional Liam Fahey will show how corporations can predict competitor actions using open source data. Former CIA official Mark Lowenthal will discuss "intelligence analysis" as "art not science" to explain why outcomes are not always predictable. Urologist Justine Schober will detail how the medical profession uses intelligence to analyze the challenging considerations - psychological, surgical and endocrinological - of cases where children are born with a sexual anatomy not defined as typically male or female.
"One way professional intelligence analysts are improving their practice is by looking to other domains to see if their best practices might provide insight into how to do intelligence analysis better," said James Breckenridge, chair of the Mercyhurst College Department of Intelligence Studies. "The U.S. national security sector, in particular, is innovative in this way, explicitly evaluating best practices in medicine and journalism for their utility for adaptation or adoption in the national security sector. This conference is intended to continue that path of innovation and discovery by exploring the nature of analysis and its application in various disciplines from a global perspective."
