Library

Competitive Futures has published on strategic intelligence and foresight since 2002. This library collects the durable pieces — the methods, the ethics, the reading lists, and the arguments — restored from eighteen years of the firm’s archive and organized by subject. For the chronological feed, see Analysis.

Competitive intelligence: what it is, and how to do it ethically

The discipline, its legal boundaries, and the professional code that separates intelligence from espionage.

What is Competitive Intelligence? (2017)
Explaining Competitive Intelligence to the Sales Team (2025)
The Ethics of Competitive Intelligence (2025)
Ethical collection of competitive intelligence (2016)
SCIP Code of Ethics – How to Do Competitive Intelligence The Right Way (2017)
Elicitation, the Soul of Human Intelligence (2025)
18 U.S. Code § 1832 – Theft of Trade Secrets (2025)
The Economic Espionage Act Criminal Statute (2025)
Taiwan makes arrests for theft of trade secrets against TSMC (2025)
The Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (2025)

Analyst tradecraft and cognitive bias

How analysts go wrong, and how to build the habits that keep judgment honest.

What is a social cognitive bias? (2025)
Social Cognitive Bias: Herd Instinct (2025)
You Must Understand Cognitive Bias and AI (2025)
Operation Iraqi Freedom, cognitive bias, and intelligence (2025)
How would Ricky Bobby do strategic intelligence? (2009)
Social Media and Intelligence: the role of authority (2009)
How to Research Federal Court Documents Like a Pro (2025)
Why the Steele Dossier Wasn’t Legit (2025)
Top 5 Reasons to Be an Intelligence Analyst (2025)

Strategic foresight: the methods

The Future Intelligence Process and the tools inside it — trend analysis, STEEP, scenarios, and the frameworks they replace.

The Future Intelligence Process (2016)
A Guide to Future Trends for Business Strategy (2025)
Future trends and how to use them for business strategy (2015)
How to use trend analysis for business strategy (2015)
How to Use STEEP Analysis in Business Strategy (2025)
How to Use STEEP Trend Analysis in Business Strategy (2016)
An effective tool to use scenarios in your business planning (2015)
The Impact Probability Matrix tool for scenario planning (2017)
Why SWOT Analysis Sucks (2025)
Michael Porter’s Five Forces of Competition (2025)
Strategic Foresight: Integrating Intelligence and Innovation (2025)
Where Is Your Organization On This Chart? (2025)

Forecasting, and the futurists who built the field

A reading list that runs from Herman Kahn to Michel Godet and Joe Coates, and a 2009 series on why forecasting works.

Best books to get you started in futures studies (2015) — the reading list, including Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War
The Evolution of Forecasting (2016)
Michel Godet comments on why Joe Coates was such a great futurist (2016)
In praise of forecasting: a series (2009)
You are not crazy, and forecasting works (2009)
What real forecasting looks like (2010)
Forecasting works: Functional foods 1999 – 2009 (2009)
And they mock FUTURISTS for bad forecasts… (2009)
Our view of history guides our view of the future (2009)
May I offer some bad advice about the future? (2009)
Numbers are just relationships (2009)
Check your assumptions – it appears to be the hot new style (2008)

Intelligence services and government

Histories of the services, the agencies, and the statutes an analyst needs to know.

The World’s First Permanent Military Intelligence Service (2025)
The History of the Czech Intelligence Service (2025)
The History of Cuban Intelligence (2025)
Your Guide to 18 American Intelligence Agencies (2025)
What Is a GLOMAR Response? (2025)
The Secret History of DOGE (2025)
Trend data about the U.S. Government Shutdown (2025)
Trump Shows Why Political Trends Are Important (2025)
The Illumina China sanctions raise unexpected questions (2025)

Political warfare and game theory

From Eric Garland’s personal archive, 2011–2020

Essays first published at ericgarland.co, restored here: the analyst’s craft and the cognitive traps that undo it, and the practice and defense of foresight as a discipline.

Intelligence analysis and strategic mind traps

Foresight, forecasting, and the futurist’s trade

Hating on futurists (2011)
When they say you cannot know the future, they are planning it for you (2011)
Garland’s law of foresight journalism – why the news gets it wrong (2011)
Five ways to achieve strategic foresight – and five ways we fail (2011)
Our inability to envision alternative futures (2011)
Confusion over my status as a futurist (2012)
The eternal tension between long term and short term thinking (2012)
“You’re bitter” and other ways to avoid thinking about uncomfortable subjects (2012)
Global Trends 2030 learns from past mistakes (2012)
Forget Futurists: Unless You Plan on Doing Futurism Right (2013)
Five tips on how to run a great meeting on future trends (2013)
Elegy for my mentor, Joe Coates (2014)
Why I’m proud to be a futurist (2015)
Futures studies and the psychology of loss (2015)
Back to the Future, a technology foresight handbook (2015)
How to identify and manage future disruptions (2016)
More thoughts on the future of foresight (2017)

Keynotes

Books by Eric Garland: Future, Inc.: How Businesses Can Anticipate and Profit from What’s Next (AMACOM, 2007) and How to Predict the Future…and WIN! (2011). For commissioned analysis, see Services or request a consultation.